think you can think you can't you're right

How do you view setbacks? As learning opportunity or as failure? Do you view your capabilities as fixed, somewhat set at birth, essentially carved in stone or do you believe that you can get better at anything you put your mind to, if you just try hard enough, long enough, and make it a priority?

Yes, some traits are more amenable to improvement via effort than others and certainly we all have abilities that come easier to us in some areas than in others. BUT it is a rare attribute where we cannot “move the needle” with sustained, focused effort if we are motivated.

Closing Quotes:

“People do get better when they apply themselves and they apply themselves when they believe they can get better.” – ‘Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well … even when it’s off base, unfair, poorly delivered, and, frankly, you’re not in the mood’ by Douglas Stone and Shelia Heen

“Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.” – Howard Zinn, 1922-2010, Left-wing author, activist, professor 

“Self-doubt is a self-fulfilling prophecy.” – Laurell K. Hamilton, b. 1963, fantasy and romance writer

“Optimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy.” – Jeannette Walls, b. 1960, author/journalist, former MSNBC gossip columnist

“The problem with worry is that we attract the very thing we are trying to avoid. We live a self-fulfilling prophecy. Life keeps its agreement with us through our beliefs, because whatever we think about, we bring about. Life is like a mirror. It reflects back whatever image we present to it.” – Robert Anthony. 1916-2006, HBS professor, organizational theorist

As always, I share what I most want and need to learn. – Nathan S. Collier