The Idea of the Natural

In the book Mindset, the topic of failure is a prominent theme mentioned throughout the novel. It is mainly connected to sports and how failure is never an option for some athletes. One example I liked from this book was about the gymnast named Elizabeth. She failed at her first meet and her father told her if you want to succeed you have to work harder. Elizabeth did just that, and continued to win every other meet. The lesson learned from all this was that Elizabeth learned from her failures. I always have thought that learning from your mistakes is something important that everyone must experience in their lives over and over again. If you never fail you will never grow from that. This in a way to me connects to the fixed mindset. A person with a fixed mindset would have gone to that meet and when they lost like Elizabeth they would not put any effort into becoming better, but just blame something else for their loss. Elizabeth on the other hand had a growth mindset and knew that she needed more effort into her technique.

                Another quote I liked from this novel was in the chapter “The mindset of a champion.” In this chapter the author related failure to an athlete. Billy Beane was a natural and was compared to Babe Ruth. He thought he had everything, but what he was lacking was the mindset of a champion. Whenever he lost he searched for something to break. The quote “It wasn't merely that he didn't like to fail; it was as if he didn't know how to fail,” was used to describe Billy. He believed that since he had natural talent he had no reason to fix things when he continued to fail. At this point Billy had a fixed mindset. Fixed mindset is what will lead a person to failure, just as it led Billy down. But what makes this story interesting is that he managed to change his life around. He watched another player and saw that mindset was more important than failure, and baseball was about the process more than the talent. Billy managed to change his mindsets, and that is what brought him out of failing. I believe that this is true, it’s not about how well you play the game, but instead the set of mind you go into it with. Not everything is about how naturally talented you are. An athlete who is always flawless, that does not make them the best out there. I can correlate this example to my own personal experience.  As a dancer I have seen girls that are just naturally good at dancing but then theirs others that have to work their whole lives. When you watch them both on stage I always saw that the dancer that worked harder was the better one. The dancer with the natural talent it just looked like it was a piece of cake for her. But the dancer that was really trying that went in with the mindset that she could do it was the better dancer over the one that knew she would always be picked and would never fail.