Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset is used frequently in school settings in order to get students to reach their full potential. This is so important for our students to understand. But they also need to understand how they can help others and the world around them. This article shares the principles of a mindset and goes on to share about a benefit mindset. The article states that “In a Benefit Mindset we not only seek to fulfil our potential, but choose to do it in a way that contributes to the wellbeing of others and society as a whole. We question ‘why’ we do what we do, and believe in doing good things for good reasons.”
Our country now more than every needs to embrace a benefit mindset because in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.”
Think of the people that you surround yourself with. Do they have a benefit mindset? What have you done today to nurture your own benefit mindset? For those of you that are teachers, how will you nurture this mindset in your school communities? We must all embrace this mindset.