Insight

http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/

Excerpts from this article, which is also the first chapter of NurtureShock: New thinking about children, which I am currently reading.:

"For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.

When parents praise their children’s intelligence, they believe they are providing the solution to this problem. According to a survey conducted by Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. In and around the New York area, according to my own (admittedly nonscientific) poll, the number is more like 100 percent. Everyone does it, habitually. The constant praise is meant to be an angel on the shoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their talents short."

and

“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

This is all so very common sense, isn't it? Thinking about my own childhood and early school experiences, it explains so much of my personal struggles with taking on new challenges, "coasting" through school (and work) by taking "the easy way," and even my difficulties getting over personal "failures" into adulthood.

Holy Cannoli!

What I meant to say only I didn't...

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Quick lesson in manifestation

Setting: Ginnie Springs on a beautiful Saturday, getting out of cars, slathering sunscreen, etc.

Friend: You're wearing your flip flops, they might get lost...
Me: Nah, they stay on tight and I don't want to walk all the way to the river entrance barefoot... and besides, if I do lose them, it's no big deal.

Later, upon entering the river, not quite in our tubes yet, we're tying them together, making sure food bag stays dry, cooler floats, etc...

I'm walking in the water, sandals still on. The river bottom is soft quicksand-like mud, which quickly grabs one of my sandals and my foot slips out. I feel around for it, but it's gone, and I, unprepared to dive in to search for it, decide to let the river have its way and let the other one go as well.