ARE WE SABOTAGING STUDENTS OF LOA?

Good day and I hope you are having a great day.  Today I wanted to discuss topics I learned in a new book I read called Mindset The New Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol Dweck.  In this book there are a lot of discussion about the mindset of the learner and how that effects the learning process, as well as how they deal with setbacks and praise. 

There are two type of people described in this book. One group is called FIXED MINDSET and the other group is referred to as GROWTH MINDSET.  Everyone can learn to be either, and most of us are inadvertently pushed one way or another because of our upbringing as well as learning and  social prejudices. 

The difference is that fixed mindsets tend to believe that their ability and growth is fixed. As in you are either smart or not.  You are good at something or you are not. Conversely the growth mindset believe that with effort you can get better at anything.  In this book there are many experiments performed on children and adults. The participants were tested for growth and fixed mindset  tendencies, and challenges were set in front of them to see how they handle failure.  As you can expect the fixed mindset group took failure as a personal identity. They felt ashamed and even refrained from participating in activities for the fear of further failure. Their performance declined even in areas where they used to excel.  The growth mindset group reacted to failure as a challenge and an opportunity for growth.  They got better and better and took on more and more challenges.

What surprised me and led me to write this blog was the fact that when groups of children were primed by the type of praise to gravitate to the fixed mindset group, they actually demonstrated negative traits that were not there before.  When praise was focused on fixed characteristics like “you are really smart”, “you are a natural” etc. the reaction to failure actually manifested in lying and cheating when asked to report their performance on challenges and shrinking away from tasks that were deemed difficult.  Whereas the group that was  primed by praise like “you really worked hard on this”, or “look at how your hard worked paid off”, reacted to challenges with excitement and saw it as opportunity to improve and the self-report of their performance was not exaggerated. 

How this applies to The Law of Attraction (LOA) and specifically to you the students that are learning this process is the question “are we sabotaging your progress by telling you that you are prosperous, you are good, you are wealthy?” Are we innately setting you up for failure when you will meet resistance as many of us will? Should we paraphrase our teaching by instead saying that “you can learn to be prosperous, you can learn to be successful by utilizing the LOA?”  In this way we are allowing the student to take the information as a challenge and setbacks do not create an adverse effect of resistance to learning, rather it will create the attitude of I will take this challenge and better myself.  

I do not have an answer for this yet. I just know that I will be very careful about how I praise my clients, and teach and write my material from now on.  The last thing I want is for you to take a setback as an identity. Mistakes, and failures are part of our growth.  Sometimes failures are an opportunity for better things that are in store for us. Yet if we take the failure personally, we may never try again and miss out on the rewards and benefits that await us just over the hill.

In summary I tell you this, LOA is a journey, not a destination.  You can create and have everything you desire, with practice and persistence.  Everything from your success, to your failure is designed to lead you to the best possible outcome as long as you do not stop moving through the journey.  I hope this makes sense and if you have questions please post them on my Facebook page under this post link or on my Twitter page here. As always share this, and I wish you success till next week.