A Personal Growth Experience from a Mother
My mom had a growth-mindset
I’m a mother, and I’ve been raising my children with a growth-mindset. It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it.
They don’t always like me when they’re little, but they still love me and want to be around me. And that’s all that matters to me.
When I was growing up, my mom always thought I was ugly and stupid. She made fun of me all the time. She’d call me names like “stupid” or “ugly face.” My dad didn’t care at all—he just wanted his dinner on time every night so he could go out drinking with his friends and come home late, drunk and angry at my mom for making him wait for dinner.
I don’t want my kids to feel like that! So when they were born, I started teaching them about this thing called the growth mindset—which is basically just how you see yourself in relation to what you can do with your life. When you have a growth mindset, you know that everyone has potential inside them—even if they don’t show it right away! You believe that anyone can change their life if they really want to change it (and work hard enough).
Her personal growth experience grew into my personal growth experience
As a mother, I have always been a very open-minded and supportive person. I have always believed that everyone should have the right to live their life the way they want to. However, as I started my own journey of personal growth, I began to realize that not everyone shared my same beliefs.
I have always been an advocate for LGBT rights and equality, but when it came time for me to teach my children about these issues, I had many questions. How do we talk about this? Should we even talk about it? What age is appropriate? How do we handle bullying?
I decided to ask these questions out loud at our family dinner table one night as we discussed what we were going to make for dinner. The kids all looked at me like I had three heads! They were shocked that I would ever question whether or not they should be taught about gay people or how to handle bullying based on sexual orientation. My son said “Mom! We love gay people”! My daughter said “We don’t hate anyone because of who they love”! My husband said “You need to trust us”!
The mind is a muscle, not an object
I was always told that the mind is like a muscle. When you exercise it, it gets stronger. The more you use it, the easier it is to use. This was my experience with learning English as a second language when I was young. As I learned more words and phrases and gained more command over my speech, my vocabulary grew larger and larger. My thoughts became clearer and clearer as well as my ability to express them.
In fact, this is still true today! You can observe your own ability to think clearly by writing down your thoughts on paper or typing them on your computer keyboard (or even talking out loud). If you’ve been doing this for awhile now, do you notice that your thoughts flow better than before? Do you find yourself thinking about things more clearly than before? If so, then congratulations! Your brain has been exercising itself over time—and now it’s becoming stronger and more powerful as a result!
You may have heard about people who are “thoughtless” or “lack common sense.” What they usually mean by this is that their brains don’t work very well anymore because they haven’t exercised them properly over time.
