Do the Math: Growth Mindset And Sucking At New Skills

Why is it important for children to activate a growth mindset when learning new skills?

My daughter is learning a new musical instrument. And unfortunately for her, I’ve passed down my amazing character trait of expecting to be a virtuoso at everything you touch. As she stood in our living room making failed attempts at musical sounds I could see the frustration begin to surface into a desire to quit. This was when I stopped her...
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“When you play video games and you die, do you cry or do you just move on to your extra man?”
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She looked at me wondering where we were going. “I just play the extra man”.
“Exactly, you just move on to the next extra man and try to remember what killed you last time so that you don’t die again. This is your extra man. You’re failing right now and that’s ok. Keep going. Keep using your real life avatar to keep trying at this game of ‘Mastering this Instrument’”.

“Look”, I said, “you started playing this thing three weeks ago. How can you expect to be philharmonic ready in three weeks? That’s an insane and unrealistic pressure to put on yourself”.

We continued to talked about my own journey to “mastering” a musical instrument. I do not remember the first day I picked up my instrument or my first attempt at sounds.

“The mind has a way of erasing all of the hard work that gets you to an accomplished point. You only remember being able to walk or run, you don’t remember your first steps. You may not remember this conversation we are having right now or this exact day of you making no sounds twenty years from now, but if you keep working toward your goal, today will be an important step toward what you want.”

​​“I suck right now… but with practice, I can improve. I may not be great at this, but I can have a great attitude while I try.”

​It’s funny how that works. Many of us remember the big moments along the journey or that we worked hard, but we do not remember each and every time we practiced, each repetition, and each failure. This overview, or summary of our experiences, can trick us into believing that we’ve always been at our current level. This is why hard work is so challenging, so uncertain, and so stressful when we don’t activate a growth mindset. When we activate a growth mindset, we are kind to ourselves because we understand that failure is an important part of success.

During our talk we came up with this great affirmation to help us keep the entire experience in perspective:

“I suck right now… but with practice, I can improve. I may not be great at this, but I can have a great attitude while I try.”

This will hang up in our home to remind us that as we work toward a goal there will be more setbacks than successes in the beginning. We acknowledges where we are, where we’d like to go, and how we can adjust our expectations about mastery along the way.
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We created a math problem to help her keep it all in perspective... (because we both like math) 

“You’re expected to practice at least 30 minutes a day for 5 out of the 7 days a week. How many minutes per week is that?”

“150”

“And if there are 52 weeks in a year, how many minutes a year is that?”

“7800 minutes”

“And we’ll give you 9 days of practice so far this year in the last three weeks. So how many total minutes have you practiced so far?”

“270 minutes so far”

“So you’ve got 270 minutes under your belt. How many more minutes do you need this year?”

“7530 more minutes”

“Let’s get crazy. How many more days do you need?”

“251 days left to practice”

“Exactly. And if you still can’t make sounds after 251 more days of practice, that’s ok. I’ll be cheering for you and clapping for you on this day, one year from now.”
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“I suck right now… but with practice, I can improve. I may not be great at this, but I can have a great attitude while I try.”

“Exactly”.

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Read more here:

• Overcoming Your Potential
• New Year New Habits
• It’s Never Too Late: Mid-Year Goal Setting
• Broken Dirty Dishes
• The Pursuit of Happiness: Lifelong Learning