You tried once, failed, and never touched it again.
“Reality shows that I am not meant for this, or I’d have already succeeded on my first trial.”

You are afraid of trying anything new.
“What if I fail? It will make me look dumb.”

You judge people’s potential based on their first trials.
“Baseball isn’t his thing.”

If you feel like I’ve accurately described your inner dialogue, congratulations, you have a fixed mindset.

“In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort.”

-Dr. Carol Dweck, in her best-selling book mindset: the new psychology of success

When your mindset is fixed, your life is also fixed.

• You don’t believe your upper limit is pushable, so you never do anything to challenge yourself.
• You don’t believe your ability can be upgraded, so you never do anything to train yourself.

As a result, you live passively in a world of default settings.

If you intuitively know how to do certain things, you will be able to do it; but if not, then you will never.

You just gave up your control over your future. What a smart move!

However, if you have no goals and desires in life, living within constraints will not be a problem for you.

You can still happily survive.

But what if you want something- for example

• the mastery of a particular domain/skill,
• a career,
• a life partner-

yet you don’t intuitively know how to do so?

You will struggle and start to complain about how unfair the world is, how god is making fool of you, how sad you are to be born with the desire but without the talent, and die as a miserable person who has never experienced a day of the life of his/her dreams.

A life like this seems like a living hell.

Fortunately, it is one without a lock.

The only thing you have to do is to open the door, and walk away.

I will show you how.

Growth mindset: You are BUILT to be, not born to be.

Do you use your phone only with its default settings?

The time zone, wallpaper, sound of alarm, the apps?

No.

You adjust it based on your preferences and needs.

You change the time zone with your location, the wall paper with your mood, the sound of the alarm with your preferences, and download and delete whatever apps to help ease your life.

Why won’t you do that with your life?

Why don’t you

• change your character into however you want it?
• change your physical appearance, e.g. design your haircut, dress in whatever aesthetic you enjoy?
• learn whatever skills you desire to have, e.g. learning (yes, it’s a skill), communication?

Because you don’t think you can.

The only reason to be trapped in this current reality of yours, compromising for a life that you don’t really like, is not believing that you can change and hence have never taken the steps to do it.

You stood at your starting point, never moved, and kept wondering why you weren’t at your desired destination.

Move!

You gotta put in the work.

• If you want intelligence, you gonna read, and start to use your brain to solve the problems in your life.
• If you want a nice physique, you gonna work out, and eat healthy most of the time.
• If you want confidence, you gonna heal your traumas and learn the correct mindset for perceiving yourself and your relationships with other people.
• If you want money, you gonna learn how to make money (it’s a skill).

No one is “born” to be successful.

Some successful people may have more privilege, e.g. with wealthier and more educated parents, live in more developed cities- but their success STILL takes pain and effort.

They also fail- more than anyone else.

They also make mistakes- more than anyone else.

That’s what makes them more successful than anyone else.

It’s their effort.

They BUILT themselves.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.

–Dr. Carol Dweck

Essentially, the growth mindset is understanding that you are moddable, and how your life would end up isn’t entirely about your starting point, but most importantly what have you been doing DURING THE JOURNEY.

Think your default setting (including your “talent”) as a stone and your ideal self as a sculpture.

• What converts that stone into sculpture is the right work done in the right way.
• If your stone is more in human shape, you may be a little bit ahead of others, but in the long run, its effect really diminishes.

Your job is to convert that stone into that ideal sculpture of yours.

Life is just a duration of time that you have the opportunity to do so.

If you aren’t spending your time on creating the dream version of you and your life, what are you doing here?

Yes, survive.

But for what?

Why do you want to live another day?

Give it a little thought and you will realise that, life is all about realising your dreams.

Step up your journey

Your starting point is out of your control.

Your past is out of your control.

Your current situation is out of your control.

But what you choose to do in the present moment, which is the only thing that can determine your future, is completely up to you.

If talent isn’t an excuse anymore, you will have nothing to blame but yourself, which is a fact all along the way- just that you haven’t realised it yet.

Start crafting the ideal version of you and your life if you haven’t done that yet.

Start looking for the “how”.

Start taking action. Make mistakes. Fail.

They are inevitable. The only thing you can do is to fail ASAP– the sooner you fail, the faster you learn, the earlier you’ll succeed.

That’s all for this one. See you on the journey of self-improvement.