The majority of people have a fixed mindset meaning that they believe intelligence, talents, and other abilities are set in stone. They believe that they are born with a particular set of skills and that you can't change them. If you have a fixed mindset, you will likely fear that you may not be smart or talented enough to achieve your goals.
Have you ever gotten a participation award from and school or university? And it probably felt good at that time. It may seem nice at first to award all the people that participated but in reality, it is only ingraining a fixed mindset in people. The society around us has been awarding mediocracy more and more. Here is the thing, there have been actual studies conducted on children which reveal the detriments of a fixed mindset. In a study a psychologist named Carol Dweck of Stanford university gave 2 groups of fifth-grade children some easy questions to answer. After answering 1st group of kids was given fixed intelligence praise such as “thats a really good score you must be really smart” and the second group of kids was given praise on their effort such as “You must have tried very hard”. So after this the same group of kids were given a test a really hard test which was supposed to incite faliure. In this test, the group of kids that got fixed intelligence praise did significantly worse than the kids that got a growth mindset praise. Just think about it throughout your life how many times have you gotten a fixed mindset praise, this may be people that you like, your teachers, parents, or friends, and they only ment to praise you but the praise we get has a role in shaping our mindset on how we view our successes and failures. The praise we get has a role in shaping our mindset on how we view our successes and failures. Having a fixed mindset will lead to complacency. People with a fixed mindset cope by blaming everything on genetics or talent. The average person with a fixed mindset, when you look at a fit person walking past will automatically make the assumption that it was all genetics. While a person with a growth mindset will be like, that guy must hast been training hard for many years to look this way. The conclusions that we subconsciously make about other people's success are also related to whether we have a fixed or growth mindset. If you had a fixed mindset for most of your life that's completely fine the society around us has promoted this and shaped the majority of men to think like this and that was me 3 years ago when I thought I could never get in shape. But I slowly adopted a growth mindset and started working out and seeing progress which kept me going to pursue more growth. By now you probably understand the importance of a growth mindset and adopt it into your life by pursuing goals and making progress.
Action is the key to success but most people suffer from action-faking instead of action-taking. When you are action faking you feel like you are doing something productive and useful whereas you are not. Let's say an overweight man wants to lose weight and gain muscle but what he does is buys expensive supplements, gymshark clothing, and gym gloves. That is action faking, the action taking would be to actually go to the gym. Imperfect action is better than inaction. Most people who are into self-improvement can action fake without realizing it. They first watch hours of youtube videos on self-improvement to feel productive and end up doing nothing. An action faker takes action to feel good temporarily and can be seen as a form of instant gratification. Action fakers procrastinate on the hard work that is needed to achieve their goals but what they do is find the easy alternative. It is easier to watch a youtube videos about losing weight than actually go to the gym and try things for yourself. It is easier to talk about learning a new language than learning the language itself. The author MJ DeMarco says in this book Unscripted says action-taking is when you take solitary and/or uncommitted action that is NOT a part of a bigger process. Instead, you’re acting not to imbue real change but to “feel good” by momentarily fooling yourself about progress.
About a year ago I was a big action faker. I would wach self improvement youtubers but never take action on any of the things they say. I would procrastinate and say to myself that one day I would use that information. It was an action fake it felt good at that moment to watch self improvement video. But taking real action like applying the knowledge into my life didn’t happen as I was distracting myself. I hope that you learned about the detriments of action faking. You can drastically improve you life by knowing when you are action taking or action faking. Whenever you are doing a task just ask yourself for a moment it this is a action fake or a action taking.