Growing with Every Step

 

Christ Church College Dining Hall Staircase, Oxford

…to understand the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into a gift.

There is this idea of having two mindsets – fixed and growth, spans all areas of our lives from our own intellect, business, goals, and relationships. It can be summarized in this succinct question the author of Mindset poses –

“What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait?”

The author defines the fixed mindset as being ‘carved in stone.’ With only a certain set amount of knowledge and intelligence, a certain character, and certain moral compass, the fixed mindset person is set out to have to prove himself over and over. When faced with a challenge or difficulty, they don’t bother to look at themselves, they complain, they do nothing, they stay in bed, they cry, they eat, they pout, they blame others.

In contrast, the growth mindset is defined as having belief that your ‘qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.’ The idea being that no matter what talents or interests you have you can grow through learning and trying. This growth minded person might wonder – why would I worry about proving myself over and over when I could be getting better and learning more? A deep passion for learning is fostered. When faced with a challenge, the growth mindset will move forward focusing on the learning over time, not about being perfect now.

Using many examples from her life, stories she has heard, research she has done, and from celebrities of all kinds, Carol Dweck takes the reader through all areas of life to show how her thesis of mindsets plays out in corporations, individuals, small groups, relationships, and parenting. She points out that while in one area we could be growth minded, in other areas we might still remain in a fixed mindset. We need to be attentive to this and then it’s up to each of us to work on it. She borrows wisdom from many who have learned this, such as the basketball coach John Wooden who said “you aren’t a failure until you start to blame. What he means is that you can still be in the process of learning from your mistakes until you deny them.” This concept is a key to maintaining a growth mindset, for if it’s always someone else’s fault, you are never willing to look within yourself for things to improve. Instead ask: what can I do to learn from that experience? How can I use that as a basis for growing and learning?

I remember when Enron fell from its pedestal in 2001. In the years to come I studied their mistakes in my accounting classes in college. The author uses Enron as a prime example of a corporation having a fixed mindset, by putting complete faith in talent. Enron created a culture that was fixated on big talent, worshiping the look and feel of being successful in their talent, and thereby pushing themselves into a fixed mindset. They thought they were all brilliant and had no flaws. With this outlook as a corporate culture, nobody was willing to say there was any vulnerability in the company, nobody was willing to admit a mistake or provide feedback for improvement and work together.

On the other side of the coin, we are reminded of some good leaders who have restored companies by putting their ego aside, and being open to new ideas and welcoming changes that are for good. Taking the leader mentality from “me me me” to “we”.  A company is more than one person. What these leaders with a growth mindset have learned is to select people for their mindset, not for their status, degrees, and certifications.

As I was reading this book, I began to quickly notice within myself whenever I was falling into a fixed mindset about something, and I also easily see that play out in other people. The book presented me with the reminders and examples of keeping a growth mindset in all areas of my life. It is very simple to remember fixed vs. growth, but it’s another thing to be observant to it and address it. With this book and its language as a tool, I have been able to incorporate it into my daily life, opening myself to a deeper realized growth mindset.

Learning from Kierkegaard

 

For as the Good is only a single thing, so all ways lead to the Good, even the false ones: when the repentant follows the same way back...Wherever a man may be in the world, whichever road he travels, when he wills one thing, he is on a road that leads him to Thee!
- Søren Kierkegaard

This little paperback book, Purity of Heart, is to will one thing, printed in 1961 is a perfect example of why I love shopping at used bookstores so much (especially in the UK), because I never know what I will find that is no longer in print and I'd never see anywhere else. Some treasure will be tucked in between other books minding their own business when suddenly my eyes will catch the spine that has the familiar and comforting name "Kierkegaard". A favourite author, thinker, philosopher, theologian, writer. I smile and gently pull the small book off the shelf. How long was it sitting there? Was it waiting for me? For a mere £3.00 this unknown title (to me) gets to come home with me.

This time, at the Oxfam Charity Bookshop on St. Giles in Oxford, I found an armful of treasure, this Søren Kierkegaard being one of them. The shop is a stone's throw away from The Eagle and Child pub and just north of the centre of Oxford. I've been in this shop countless times, and I never leave emptyhanded. Downstairs is where I found this treasure. Standing in the same spot I have stood so many times before. Finding different books each time. Each visit filling me with inspiration from these books.

Coming back to Kierkegaard's writing is like coming back to a close friend. One who doesn't let me slip by, getting comfortable in my own pride. A friend who comforts me and then challenges me. I've known him a long time, and have taken comfort in his obedient Christian thinking, he who criticized his culture at the time of being too lackadaisical, making Christianity too easy, watering it down. Kierkegaard recognized that being a true Christian has a cost. It is not easy, and he wrote books about the complexities of being a Christian, and he actually lived it out, making the tougher choices of faithfulness. This little book, however, isn't one of his creative complex debates written in a pseudonym, but rather an edifying discourse that a pastor might present to his congregation. 

This slim work is bringing the attention to remorse, confession, pardon. Seeking to will one thing.

Something has come in between. The separation of sin lies in between. Each day, and day after day something is being placed in between: delay, blockage, interruption, delusion, corruption.

 But life gets in the way. Through distractions and interruptions - oh how Kierkegaard knows us, even from his perspective in the 1840s! Each chapter is a discussion of one of those barriers to willing one thing (great moments, the reward disease, egocentric service of the good, willing out of fear), and then chapters to discuss the price of willing one thing (commitment, loyalty, suffering, listening, living as an "individual", occupation and vocation).

Only the Eternal is constructive. The wisdom of the years is confusing. Only the wisdom of eternity is edifying.

 It all comes down to the individual, as much of his philosophy across all his books stresses this. Kierkegaard wrote a lot about the individual, meaning, the ultimate thing that matters is our one-on-one personal relationship with God and how we portray that in the world with eternal perspective. You can follow the crowd all your years, you can try to hide behind others' thoughts and ideas without forming your own, but in the end God is desiring of you as an individual, no third party is going to speak on your behalf when you come face-to-face with God.

For in the outside world, the crowd is busy making a noise. The one makes a noise because he heads the crowd, the many because they are members of the crowd. But the all-knowing One, who in spite of anyone is able to observe it all, does not desire the crowd. He desires the individual; He will deal only with the individual, quite unconcerned as to whether the individual be high or low station, whether he be distinguished or wretched....Each one shall render account to God as an individual. The King shall render account as an individual; and the most wretched beggar, as an individual. No one may pride himself at being more than an individual, and no one despondently think the he is not an individual, perhaps because here in earth's busyness he had not as much as a name, but was named after a number.

How do we, then, live our lives? Kierkegaard challenges us with questions to probe us - if you throw yourself into the world around you, directing attention outwards, relating yourself as yourself the individual with eternal responsibility? Or do you fold into the crowd, excusing yourself with others, blending in and avoiding any topic that indeed falls into anything about responsibility? Kierkegaard is talking here about eternal responsibility, things that matter, the big questions. Avoiding thinking for yourself by "joining the crowd in its defiance, thinking that you were many" and hiding in the crowd's strength. You are not "many". But in eternity, it will be asked of you whether you may have damaged a good thing, and you, the individual must answer, as eternity strips away the crowd.

Yes, Kierkegaard is challenging. He is complex. I wrote in the margins toward the beginning of the book next to a certain passage - "S.K., always making things more difficult". And it's true. He even wrote about how he makes things more difficult and complex, but he is writing about truth and deep philosophical issues of humanity, and he doesn't shy away from the true cost of being a disciple of Jesus. He was frustrated with Christianity being watered down, to make people feel good and smoothly fit into culture. He saw the danger of this. I think his words feel more important today than they were in his day.

Coffee with Augustine and Plato

 

Lately I have been sharing many mugs of coffee with some great thinkers of antiquity and late antiquity. I dance around these two thinkers quite often, as they are referenced and discussed in many books I read. Rather serendipitously I have been reading them at the same time, almost as if they were speaking to one another, though from different centuries 375 BC to 400 AD. 

"...no two of us are born exactly alike. We have different natural aptitudes, which fit us for different jobs."
"We have indeed."
"So do we do better to exercise one skill or to try to practice several?"
"To stick to one," he said.

"He" is Socrates. After Socrates died (executed by the re-instated democracy after an uprising), 30 years later Plato wrote The Republic, putting together conversations including Socrates and friends, to engage in what they would have discussed as philosophers. As they discuss their version of an ideal city if they could build their own, they lay out the dynamics of a society in their terms. An overarching theme of Socrates is unity of the virtues - he believed it wasn't possible to possess one without the others. Embracing good in truth, and what is best for the whole of the community is also mentioned again and again. Things that none of us would have trouble with. 

The ancient world of politics of Rome and Greece, however, would be rather disturbing to us today. Equality is not what we view as equality. Justice is not what we would view as justice. Grasping the ideas and society of their pre-Christian era, while full of familiar terms and some similar aspects, seems like a foreign landscape at times. An ancient realm before Christ had no thoughts toward God as we would think of God, in the scope of our post-Christian modern day. But they believed in gods, and sacrificed to them for good fortune.

Plato writes his arguments through Socrates's dialogues that in their created ideal city philosophers would be the rulers. As nobody else is as detached from money, power, and selfish inclinations than philosophers. The Republic is set out to be a sort of "constitution" for this newly established (imagined) city.

Augustine came later, after Christ, and was the Bishop of Hippo (North Africa) for the majority of his life (he lived 354 AD - 440 AD). He knew Plato's writings, indeed, he was a Platonist before he converted to Christianity. He uses Plato's parables in his own teachings. You can sense his prior learning as a philosopher infused in his writings.

No one doubts that we are driven towards knowledge by a twofold force: the force of authority and the force of reason. I am, therefore, resolved never ever to deviate from the authority of Christ, for I find none so powerful. But as to what the most subtle reasoning can pursue - for I am so stirred up that I yearn impatiently to apprehend what the truth is, not only by believing but also by understanding - I am confident at the moment that what I will fund among the Platonists will not be opposed to our sacred mysteries.

Augustine wrote about a different city, The City of God, which is in fact one of his great books (a hefty one as well, over 1,100 pages) in which he targets paganism. He writes human history from the clashing aspects between two cities - the earthly city and the City of God. Or in the Biblical sense - Babylon and Jerusalem. Augustine himself said "Both cities are now mixed up together; at the end they will be separated." 

Often authors and thinkers do speak to one another across space and time. Across the ages. Across the room. My Plato book was jumping up from my coffee table to my desk where Augustine was sitting when he heard his name mentioned. How fun it is to be amongst such authors, ready to jump at the chance to dialogue.