“Let’s define dumb as being different from stupid. Dumb means you don’t know what you’re supposed to know. Stupid means you know it but make bad choices. […] Dumb used to be a by-product of lack of access, bad teachers, or poor parenting. Today, dumb is a choice, one that’s made by individuals who choose not to learn. If you don’t know what you need to know, that’s fixable. But first you have to want to fix it.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“If there’s information that can be written down, widespread digital access now means that just about anyone can look it up. We don’t need a human being standing next to us to lecture us on how to find the square root of a number or sharpen an ax. (Worth stopping for a second and reconsidering the revolutionary nature of that last sentence.) What we do need is someone to persuade us that we want to learn those things, and someone to push us or encourage us or create a space where we want to learn to do them better. If all the teacher is going to do is read her pre-written notes from a PowerPoint slide to a lecture hall of thirty or three hundred, perhaps she should stay home. Not only is this a horrible disrespect to the student, it’s a complete waste of the heart and soul of the talented teacher. Teaching is no longer about delivering facts that are unavailable in any other format.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
“We can teach people to desire lifelong learning, to express themselves, and to innovate. And just as important, it’s vital we acknowledge that we can unteach bravery and creativity and initiative. And that we have been doing just that. School has become an industrialized system, working on a huge scale, that has significant by-products, including the destruction of many of the attitudes and emotions we’d like to build our culture around.”
Seth Godin, Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success [Book]
Book Overview: Carol Dweck explains why it’s not just our abilities and talent that bring us success—but whether we approach them with a fixed or growth mindset. She makes clear why praising intelligence and ability doesn’t foster self-esteem and lead to accomplishment, but may actually jeopardize success. With the right mindset, we can motivate our kids and help them to raise their grades, as well as reach our own goals—personal and professional. Dweck reveals what all great parents, teachers, CEOs, and athletes already know: how a simple idea about the brain can create a love of learning and a resilience that is the basis of great accomplishment in every area.
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Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, says you aren’t a failure until you start to blame. What he means is that you can still be in the process of learning from your mistakes until you deny them.” ~ Carol Dweck, Mindset
“When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world – the world of fixed traits – success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other – the world of changing qualities – it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself. In one world, failure is about having a setback. Getting a bad grade. Losing a tournament. Getting fired. Getting rejected. It means you’re not smart or talented. In the other world, failure is about not rowing. Not reaching for the things you value. It means you’re not fulfilling your potential. In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you’re not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn’t need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented. You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind.” ~ Carol Dweck, Mindset
“Sometimes we all need to be reminded the best parts of life wouldn’t be as sweet without intermittent struggle. The key to survival is learning to laugh at the universe’s inherent chaos.” ~ John Haltiwanger, Elite Daily
“When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles – generally three to twelve of them – that govern the field. The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.” ~ John T. Reed, James Clear Blog
13 Provocative Osho Quotes on Love, Freedom, and Aloneness
Excerpt: This collection of Osho Quotes on love will challenge not only how you think about love, but how you think about freedom and aloneness, too.
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“One of the finest beliefs I developed years ago that helped me to enjoy all of my life experience was the idea that there are no bad experiences, that no matter what I go through in life – whether it’s a challenging experience or a pleasurable one – every experience provides me something of value if I look for it.” ~ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
“The power of reading a great book is that you start thinking like the author. For those magical moments while you are immersed in the forests of Arden, you are William Shakespeare; while you are shipwrecked on Treasure Island, you are Robert Louis Stevenson; while you are communing with nature at Walden, you are Henry David Thoreau. You start to think like they think, feel like they feel, and use imagination as they would. Their references become your own, and you carry these with you long after you’ve turned the last page. That is the power of literature, of a good play, of music; this is why we constantly want to expand our references.” ~ Anthony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within
“The enemy is a very good teacher.” ~ the Dalai Lama, via The War of Art
“Masters are not experts because they take a subject to its conceptual end. They are masters because they realize that there isn’t one. On utterly smooth ground, the path from aim to attainment is in the permanent future.” ~ Sarah Lewis, The Rise
“I discovered at a very early age that life is a classroom. You get the best education in everyday experiences when you take the time to absorb what is happening around you. Life is the best teacher, and if you’re lucky, your education doesn’t end after college – it’s just the beginning.” ~ Cristina Carlino