Who are we as parents?

Few days ago I entered my daughter’s room and saw that she was doing high-school algebra.
She is in middle school and I asked her, “can you do it?”
She replied, “yes, of course.”
I added, “if you encounter any problem, get help from Tony, my son.”
My daughter became upset. I could read her face.
She replied to me, “Dad, why don’t you trust me?”
I didn’t respond immediately but I felt that I hurt her feelings.
I came back to the kitchen and reminded myself what I had learned from Dr. Carol Dweck book ‘mindset.’
I had read, I had learned but I wasn’t applying the principle given by Dr. Dweck.
I would definitely recommend Dr. Dweck’s book “mindset” as a recommended reading for those who are suffering from a fixed mindset in life.
At the moment when I replied to my daughter, I was operated by my fixed mindset which is actually hidden inside me.
Even Though I was aware of it, I was still not shifting toward the periphery of another area, a growth mindset.

The other day I also saw a similar scene.
I was attending my daughter’s parent conference meeting in her school.
Me and my wife were sitting at one table and my daughter was sitting at another table.
One of her friends’ dad approached my daughter and asked, “what are you doing?”
She replied “I’m reviewing my story for competition. It’s a little bit complicated, I’m a bit confused.”
“You secured first position last time, am I right?” he added.
My daughter replied, “Yes I did.”
He replied, “Oh, you spend so much time on your story.”
He further added, “I used to think you are a genius and your competitors must not be as smart as you’re.”
After watching this scene of conversation, I realized that this is another example of an individual suffering from an ill mindset, a fixed mindset.
Actually, these are only some examples but there are so many of these kinds of stories prevalent in our society.

Incident after incident, our society carries flawed perception.
We all want natural recognition rather than recognition through hard work.
We try to make natural recognition as our desire leaving hard work behind us.
We completely forget how our mindset works.
As Marie Curie said beautifully, “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”
Fear comes from a mindset.
We show fear to our kids to be supertalent as they should be born with it.
We want them as Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan, and Steve Jobs.
This kind of wish is not only bad for the kid’s psychology but it also degrades their confidence for a long time.
Our society is full of people with fixed mindsets.
If we have to teach our kids only to be a genius, then we have to lose a lot for them, most of the natural talents deplete if we have an unchanged mindset.

There is another problem we have as a society.
We label our kids as genius in various fields.
My son is good at math.
My daughter is excellent in storytelling.
It seems like we are encouraging our kids but actually we aren’t.
Unknowingly, we are saying that my daughter can’t do math and my son can’t do story telling.
This happens because we are not creatures of logic and reasoning, we are creatures of emotions.
Logic and reasoning is the result of a growth mindset.
In reality either son or daughter can do either work, math or story telling, fabulously if we develop a exploring mindset, a growth mindset.

People who believe in a fixed mindset need a quick fix to succeed, and when they do, they feel proud, more important, and famous than others.
They feel a sense of superiority, since for them this is a win.
The truth is we shouldn’t lurk behind the self-esteem of a dark cloud.
Fixed mindset is a dark cloud because sometimes it gives us false impressions as clouds cover the sun.
No doubt, a fixed mindset hinders our growth potential and development.
A growth mindset teaches us how to pinpoint our identity when we are unsuccessful because it is so easy to spot who we are when we are successful.
We must be able to give a specific and precise answer for it and most importantly we must teach this phenomenon to our kids.
If we answer this question properly then only we nurture our mindset in a positive direction, and teach others to do the same.

In many cases the societal reality remains opposite.
The answer for a growth mindset as opposed to fixed mindset is hard work.
If we love something or we are thinking of it as our long lasting career, we have to work hard for it to achieve.
One simple example, Michael Jordan became the king of basketball because he used to practice when other players were taking a break.
Michael Jordan wasn’t a natural player by birth, he was the most hard-working person.
He wasn’t selected in his high school team, he wasn’t selected by his college team, and he wasn’t selected by the first two NBA teams.
So then what kind of mindset he had when he was beginning his basketball career.
Truth is he gave his all for basketball that he only valued and cared in his entire basketball career.
Michael Jordan taught us: we have to take the challenge, learn from our mistakes, and continue the positive mindset to achieve more.
He grew his positive mindset every single day.
Our mindset isn’t static, it is dynamic as cloud. Clouds don’t change into something new, it only changes its shape and size.
As what Michael Jordan did, we have to value and respect what we’re doing regardless of the final outcome.
And we have to show and teach the same to our kids.
We must teach our kids: Becoming is way better than being.
The only way we can teach our kids to improve their everyday skills is by keeping track of what works for them and what doesn’t and trying to understand why.
Michael Jordan became the symbol of basketball due to his everyday growth attitude and discipline of keeping track of it.
When we believe our core qualities can be developed through a growth mindset, failures can still hurt, but they shouldn’t deviate and distract us.

One of my friends works in a pharmaceutical company as a lead scientist. He told me that he has to tackle problems everyday, review new courses of actions, figure out what works and what doesn’t in vaccine development.
He once told me during this COVID pandemic, “we haven’t found the effective vaccine for coronavirus yet, but the search is continuous.”

He reminded me once again that mindsets are our beliefs. They’re quite powerful even though they’re just faith in our mind, and we can grow our mind every second.

We don’t always need hard confidence in everyday lives to succeed but we always need a kind of mental push subconsciously.
Our subconscious mind works 24/7 so that it doesn’t contradict with our conscious mind of not having pure confidence everyday. The equilibrium between conscious and subconscious mind could be shifted in our decisions by our mental habits.

From my reading what I learnt is that Buddha passed through absolute stillness and peace on his way into nirvana, this was possible by moving both conscious and subconscious mind in one direction.

We have to have a habit of forming a picture in our brain forming new connections even if we aren’t doing any practice or work. The picture of a growth mindset helps to take challenges and more to learn continuously.
There is nothing like innate talent, this is crystal clear, we must teach our kids about this misconception that talent isn’t born, it is made.
As Dr. Dweck says, “success is more than 99 percent is hard work.”
Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t put into work.

According to psychologists Karen Horney and Carl Rogers, many times our kids feel insecure particularly from parents. Kids feel distress, pain, and lost in the crazy world. The truth is they are very young and cannot speak against parents. They cannot walk alone, they have to find out how to win parents’ trust.
The most important thing is that we must give our kids the freedom to grow.
They learn more from their own interest than our own interest.
We as parents must learn what our kids are trying to tell us rather than what we are trying to tell them.

Let our kids know that Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan, and Steve Jobs have made the word ‘impossible’ a very small word.
‘Impossible’ word is thrown around by fixed mindsets who find it easier to live in a small bubble of the world.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina