Book Review - Mindset:The New Psychology of Success

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck is a book about learning. It's a book about how people can learn their whole life when believing in learning and growth.

Book talks about two different kind of mindsets; the fixed mindset, which means believing that talent is given and born, and the growth mindset, believing that people can always learn to be better on everything. Book goes through examples and science behind it from many different views. It looks sports, business and arts. It introduces many good examples of people who are in growth mindset and some who are in fixed mindset.

Book goes through how this mindset difference affects on people's behavior in different challenges and daily routines. It also introduces reasons why people has grown in to either fixed or growth mindset.

Book has its own section for parents, coaches and teachers. I see parents to be most important ones. They can accidentally grow their children easily to fixed mindset with having good intentions to grow to be successful and open for learning. Giving credit for good grades for example can turn against the child, so that they are not taking challenges anymore in the future, since they become afraid of not being good at something. I actually believe this to be true, many of the people who got the best grades at school, haven't taken the challenge anymore at the work life.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who has kids, is a teacher or is a coach. There is lot of proof that genes don't mean everything and everyone really can learn. Also important is to understand that for learners, willingness to learn is more important than the immediate results and grades.

I really liked the book. It was entertaining with many good examples. I've read couple of books about the same subject from different perspectives , so the area starts to be familiar to me. Still I found some good new information from this book. It was entertaining.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Facebook - the thing our parents used to do

Will Facebook become "the thing our parents used to do"? Idea that our kids will talk in 15 years from now about Facebook as the thing our parents used to use seems bit amusing, but it might become reality soon.

I think it's quite likely that this will actually happen. I can't actually tell a one thing in media that is the same now that was with our parents. They didn't have mobile, TV barely had colors, not to mention Internet and everything there. So why in earth wouldn't change happen as fast with social media also.

Surely there's a lot value in Facebook currently, but will it really last for 10-15 years? I doubt it.. It's now about eight years old and most of the users have been there less than 3 years. So it's easy to say it's still fresh and new. When it will be 15-20 years old, there will definitely be other viable options to keep in touch with friends.

Facebook surely might be live and kicking in 10-15 years from now for sure, but it's not definitely going to be the cool thing out there the young kids will use. I bet it will become the "thing our parents used to do". And as we all know, kids definitely don't want to be like their parents.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Learning goes in mysterious ways

I have to tell you about my daughter. I'm amazed about how fast and well 3 year old can learn. I got some hints how it can happen from book The genius in all of us, but still it amazes me. Here's the full story.

Image from http://lekmer.se

So this is all about a game, bingo game to be exact. Rules go so, that there's own board for each player with 5 rows and 5 columns filled with 6 different looking Hello Kitty creatures in random order. On top of each column there's a letter B,I,N,G and O. Then there's 2 dices with one having the letters (B,I,N,G,O) and a joker and other dice have those 6 creatures.

My daughter, 3 years and 7 months currently, is unbelievably fast on checking from rolled dices, whether she has the item on her board or not. When the dices stop rolling, she immediately tells if she has the item on her board or not. Also she takes in to account if the item was filled in previous rounds. She's so fast, that almost every time, I can't believe she could have checked it already and I always check if she was just guessing. But she's never been wrong.

This got me thinking about learning. We've never ever tried to teach her to be fast on this. She has learned that only by playing. I have got to a conclusion that she must have some kind of map of the board in her head that she wouldn't need to look the board to know if it the item is there or not. There's about 10 different board from which we randomly take our own ones, so remembering by heart is somewhat difficult. I've tried tens of times in my head to beat her, to be faster, but I haven't been able. She must use some other technique than I am.

It's so amazing how human beings have such capability to learn to process things in surprising ways. I'm really sure I could have not taught this skill to her, since teaching anything to 3 year old is really hard. Still somehow she has been able to discover this way to process this much faster than anyone else I've seen her play with. I find it fascinating that even such a young person has this capacity in brains to learn to be such a good in something. It's not rocket science by any means, but still it requires special skill to do it. I believe that we all have these hidden capabilities in our brains that we might not ever really learn to take in to use.

Book I mentioned in the beginning, The genius in all of us, tells also about this. With right stimulus's and right circumstances almost everyone can learn special skills. You are not "born with" some skills, but you really can learn. I think that's essential to understand to be able to enjoy learning. It has been proven that young people learn faster, but it doesn't mean that older wouldn't learn at all. This at least gives me hope and happiness while I'm getting older and also seeing my daughter growing and learning new things.
 
Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Adults should be entitled to play

I've noticed that when I'm sledding with kids, most of parents out there are really excited to get to play. Under two years old kids are brought to sledding with snow-racers and couple of sleds, just that there would enough equipment for all the adults who come with. Many adults really seem to enjoy that time out there.

Playing really refreshes mind. That's something all adults should be doing once in awhile. Sad thing is that it often requires kids before people for example go out to sled or play with snow. Too rarely you see people without kids having real fun outdoors.

Great thing about being parent that you can go out with your kids and really play. You can free yourself to the play state of mind and go play in parks and everywhere else.

I guess one reason that game consoles have come so popular nowadays is that those give the right to play. Everyone loves to play and game consoles like Wii and Xbox with Kinetic gives the right to play and look like a fool.

I don't know what I'm going to do when kids grow older and won't want to come to sledding in winter or creating sand castles in a sandbox in summer. Maybe that time I need to buy one of those game consoles myself too. For now, I'm just enjoying all the playing I can.  

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Will increasing use of social media guide us for healthier self-image?

This Ted talk about Social media and the end of gender got me thinking more widely about social medias affect on desired body-image. Increasing use of social media might help us to move slowly from admiring of always perfectly looking, well shaped and well trained body image to healthier view of a person.

Time spent on internet and social media is increasing and cutting time from old TV and magazine media. This old media is doing everything they can to make people look perfect. Meaning that people wouldn't have any flaws. Models in these picture and videos have perfect skin, hair, body and they are always dressed to coolest clothes. On the other hand social media also reveals true persons. Most of people have photos of themselves visible somewhere in the web. At least in their profile pictures, but increasingly in videos and pictures of real life situations.

People do want to look good and cool in pictures and videos, but most of the pictures and videos in social media are not photo-shopped and taken by professionals. Those photos reveal the real people. I think this will slowly turn the heads of all to realize that everyone has flaws and don't always look perfect.

Media houses and admiring the models and actors in TV, movies and magazines will not suddenly disappear. Social media is lot about sharing and big part of content shared is still produced professionally. Fan culture will always be there and there will always professional models and photographers. Maybe media will still start to turn for more to realistic and amateurish looks with models and content just because of those which are done by amateurs are getting more and more popular. Already now, in some cases it's hard to tell from some of the videos or photos that are those made professionally to look like an amateur or are those really amateur ones.

Even though problems accepting your self-image are often considered as problems of young and teenagers, I believe that most of people have some problems with it. Think about constant diet, gym and other seasons, when there's lot of people trying to do some good about themselves. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but the driver for healthier body, shouldn't come from outer pressure, but from internal drive to feel better. That's the only way to make it last.

Maybe it's just me dreaming, because of two small daughters at home. But I genuinely hope that my daughters would live in a world where not only the slimmest and model looking people would get admired.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen