Once, when I went back to my hometown and met a good friend from college, I only had a few words to chat, and she said with emotion, "In a few years, your growth has been turned upside down, and we all have to worship." ”
During the conversation, I also learned that she had been in the "two points and one line" model of home and unit for 5 years after graduation, and she did not take the initiative to learn from the outside world, and rarely made new friends, and had already given up on self-growth.
In the long run, this state of growth is actually terrifying, and the real upper limit of a person's growth is not how much effort you put in or how many methods you master, but whether you have a growth mindset.
If you don't change the books you read and the people you associate with, you will be no different in 5 years than you are today.
Many people are like this when they are just starting out in their careers Doubts: In the past, when I was in school, it was clear that everyone had a similar starting point, but why did the gap slowly widen after 10 years or 0, and sometimes the gap was very huge.
online A very popular formula:
1 to the power of 0 =0,
1 means that you are still standing still, and after a year you are still standing still, and you are still that "0".
1.01 的 365 次方≈ 37.783 434 332 89，1.01=1+0.01，也就是每天進步一
Dots.
365.0 to the power of 0, which means that you improve a little bit every day, and after a year your progress will be far away
Greater than "1".
01.0 to the power of ≈ 0.0 0 0 0 0 0. 0.0=0-0.0, that is, you regress every day,
Even if it's just a little bit, it regresses to almost "0" after a year, and it is far behind by others, really是一事無成。
It seems to be a simple math problem, but it implies an amazing philosophy of life, and the gap between most people is being widened day by day.
The French writer Romain Rolland once said, "Most people die in their twenties and thirties, because after this age they are only a shadow of themselves, and the rest of their lives are spent imitating themselves." Day after day, repeating more mechanically and pretentiously what they have done, what they have thought, what they have loved and hated in their lifetimes."
In reality, there are indeed people who often behave as "dead in their twenties", enter a new environment, work for a period of time, business skills from rusty to proficient, and the needs can be completed quickly, they enter the "growth comfort zone", no longer learn, no longer accept new information, no longer accept new challenges, they either feel that they have understood, or feel that they can't learn anyway, so they no longer learn.
久而久之，如逆水行舟，不進則退。
"Kung fu is outside of 8 hours", the difference between people and people lies in the third "0 hours" in addition to work, school, and sleep. You can use these 0 hours to play Honor of Kings, watch short videos, or use these 0 hours to improve a certain skill.
The reason why I was able to directly cross the line to enter the Internet company was that during my work in a state-owned enterprise, I used the third "10 hour" to teach myself new media writing from scratch, and accumulated 0W+ explosive articles and writing experience, so that I had the success of my transformation and gradually distanced myself from my friends.
A person's aging does not begin with gray hair, but begins with the rigidity of the thinking consciousness, no longer traveling and adventurous, unwilling to leave the comfort zone, and no longer excited about new things.
In our lives, we will basically go through four kinds of education: family education, education, social education, and self-education.
For adults in their twenties, family education has long been a thing of the past, and social education has no conditions or very high costs, and the most effective and low-cost is school education and self-education.
Sadly, most people who have received school education seem to stop learning and progressing when they get out of the ivory tower, and only a very small number of people value investing in self-education.
One of my mentors once said, 在賺到第一個 100 萬元之前，你最應該要做的事情就是投資未來的自己。
Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, also tells us in "Lifelong Growth" that it is not talent that determines the difference between people, but the mode of thinking.
In general, there are two common thinking patterns that people have, A fixed mindset that believes that intelligence and ability are innate and difficult for us to change on our own. In their mouths, you will often hear words like this:
"That's what I'm like, I can't change it."
"I don't have the talent for it, I can't learn."
"That's the way it goes, it's not a choice for me."
This kind of thinking, like an invisible spiritual shackle, can greatly limit a person's development.
The other is a growth mindset, which believes that anyone, no matter who you are, can change through effort and experience. In their view, success means constantly expanding their abilities, not being afraid of making mistakes or embarrassment, and focusing only on the process of growth.
The most common things they say are:
"I won't be able to do this, but I can learn ......"
"Everything has the first time, if you don't do it well this time, it will be good to improve it next time."
"I can't change this environment, but I can change myself."
When it comes to success, a growth mindset believes that success is not because we are "smart", but because of our "hard work" and "perseverance".
When I was in college, I majored in Western medicine and law, but because the school I attended was a Chinese medicine school.
I myself also prefer Chinese medicine, so I often download the school's curriculum at the beginning of each semester, find the courses I am interested in, and follow the time of the curriculum to study with people from different majors, becoming a well-known "professional household" in the school.
At that time, I didn't know that this kind of thinking was called a "growth mindset", which was simply thinking that I was interested in it, willing to learn, and had the conditions, so I went.
It is not difficult to imagine why I had never been exposed to journalism in the past, but I started as a student reporter in college, and later even gave up my major for many years, "gave up medicine and literature", and embarked on the road of writing for a living.
There is such a sentence in "Lifelong Growth": "Test scores and assessments of current achievements will only tell you where you are at the moment, not where you will be in the future. ”
From the perspective of lifelong growth, except for a few objective circumstances such as height, age, and background experience, which are immutable, body shape, income, education, personality, RV, household registration, talent and ability, pattern, vision, thought, spiritual level, character, and three views ...... It's all variable.
For example, the body skin can be effective in a few months; Education, 5 years can get two degree certificates; Income (RV, hukou) can also be achieved after 0~0 years of hard work; Temperament, insist on self-guided change, and can change within half a year.
It takes a long time for talent, ability, pattern, vision, ideology, and spiritual level, but it can also be significantly improved in 5 ~ 0 years.
Once you have a growth mindset and focus on self-growth and well-being, everything on the outside is a natural result, not an end in itself.
This process, like the growth of a tree, is not to give shade to others, nor to become a pillar, just because it is a tree, it is nourished by nature, and then under the compound interest effect of time, it slowly grows into a towering tree.
So, in the VUCA era – an unstable, uncertain, complex and ambiguous future, how do we have a growth mindset to learn and reinvent ourselves to adapt to new technologies and changing career skills needs and grow by leaps and bounds?
An American psychologist once put forward the comfort zone theory, when we are faced with tasks, there will be three areas of psychology:
The first is the comfort zone, which is the range of abilities that you are familiar with, and you are often at home in it.
The second is the learning area, which is a little higher than your ability, full of new things, and you need to learn and grow again.
Finally, there is the panic zone, which is far beyond your current capacity, in which you will feel a great deal of stress and anxiety.
According to the comfort zone theory, it is easy to know that maintaining a growth mindset is that you have to find a way to get out of your comfort zone and stay more in the learning zone in order to make progress.
Looking back on my writing journey, I am on a journey that constantly moves out of my comfort zone and in my learning zone.
It only took me three months to transition from a novice to a new media writer.
Before the transition, I didn't have any experience in new media writing, or even the concept of new media.
At that time, I would pay attention to the articles of the official account "Ten o'clock Reading" every day, and once, when I saw that the official account had issued a call for papers, I wondered if I could become their signed author.
So, at that time, I had no foundation, and I began to study new media courses on the Internet, deliberately learning new media writing.
beginning I also experienced the embarrassment of not being able to submit for three months, but the growth mindset told me not to give up. 於是，每天上完班雷打不動地寫稿到 12 點再休息。 It is necessary to warn everyone that it is okay to study, but you still have to pay attention to taking care of yourself. It was also at that time that I was irreversibly damaged by overuse of my eyes, and I still can't see the bright light directly, and I have to wear sunglasses every time I go out.
It was those three months of study that made me quickly master the knack of new media writing, and became a signed author of Ten O'clock Reading, and later successively signed contracts with a number of public account platforms with tens of millions of readings such as Youshu, and published a number of 100W+ articles, which were reprinted by People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency and other platforms, and the manuscript fee also rose from 0 yuan to several thousand yuan.
Later, I resigned from a state-owned enterprise, and it was also by virtue of my identity as a signed author of Ten Points Reading and articles with good past data that I achieved a smooth cross-industry and cross-professional transformation.
Transitioning to an internet company, I still maintain a growth mindset and keep myself in good shape in the learning area every day. When I found that the writing skills of hot essays and emotional essays that I had mastered in the past were no longer enough to support the work at that time, I took the initiative to learn the writing of transformational copywriting, learned the skills of copywriting in the circle of friends, and deeply studied the writing of character manuscripts, so that I had the opportunity to interview celebrities from all walks of life later.
Now, the growth mindset has been completely unconsciously integrated into my blood, and I saw that the new media form of graphics and text was no longer sluggish in 2020 years, so I combined my past writing skills to explore short video creation from scratch.
When I used to work in an Internet company, I used to recruit some writers to contribute to the company. At that time, there were many traditional writers with good writing who applied for the job, but they lacked new media thinking.
Out of empathy, I told them that they needed to step out of their comfort zone and study new media skills and network sense.
But most of the people's answers to me are, "New media is too difficult" or "I can't do it", and attribute the failure to my own ability, so that I haven't seen a few people succeed in transformation.
Stepping out of your comfort zone and growing up is a pain in itself, and it means that you need to go against human nature, learn things you haven't been exposed to before, socialize with people you don't know, and see places you haven't been. But once you break through, you will find that life has entered a different realm.
I very much agree with a sentence in "The Technology of Thinking", "Those who are lazy to seek knowledge will have no room to live".
In today's era when even selling vegetables has to be constantly upgraded and iterative, learning should not be a past tense for everyone, but a present continuous tense.
Only by constantly seeking knowledge, constantly thinking, and developing an attitude of lifelong learning can we not be eliminated by society and the times. Lifelong growth is the most reliable "iron rice bowl" in this era.
Note: The above content is selected from Chapter 2 of Elaine's new book "Action Guide to Intentional Growth" [ Thoughts 】。