Essay - Growth vs Fixed Mindset

First of all congratulations to your wife on the publishing of her first book...great! There will always be people who resent successful people.... I like her attitude and the fact that she is has a mind set to succeed...I'm sure you are very proud of her!

Some of my wife's coworkers resent her

I come from Barnsley, a place diplomats don't come from, so stuff the lazy unimaginative silly buggers at her office who can't be arsed to do anything but shine a chair until they retire and die.

Drive, creativity and passion are to be commended, not rejected because they aren't good enough to do it themselves.

A wendy Deng, lol, lucky u.

Thaiger wrote:

A wendy Deng, lol, lucky u.

Ha, oh no, not a Chinese Tiger Wife. 
A Vietnamese Kitty Cat Wife*. Yes I am lucky.

* I made that up 

Great positive story. Congrats to her.

I agree more with what Clint said in Magnum Force: "Man's got to know his limitations." Google that!

One of the most destructive and unhelpful concepts I was taught as a child in the US was that "There is no limit to what one can accomplish! IF one tries 'hard enough'!"

The trouble is that for most, it's like the "American Dream", because you have to be asleep to believe in that. 

Later, Biology and medical school taught me why that is: most folks are bell-curve average mentally and physically; yet, who doesn't want to be extraordinary in some way?

So, when those two concepts get put together, some complicated psychology often sets up unrealistic, youthful expectations that really beat folks down mentally, physically and financially as adults, while they jump for carrots they are statistically very unlikely to reach. 

I think we've all observed some really sad Pavlovian outcomes of the type when a monkey can't get the peanut after it does its best to get it... 

I think the "no limitations" mindset also leads to jumping through hoops for carrots that prove to be impractical, useless, and bring great discontent and opportunity loss in the long term.

My view is that absolutely everyone does the best they can given the sum of forces in their life - even those with the "fixed mindset"! If they could do better, they would! 

So, what seems most important to me is to teach kids the realistic mindset - how to evaluate themselves realistically, and find on that basis that in which they have the highest chance of being content, if not extraordinary.