Maybe in my chronology of BEd program history I’ll remember the 17-Day (editor’s note: and running) Cold. I lost a lot of my motivation over this time, and got into a fixed mindset zone. It already seemed like a lot of pressure to do this in 2.5 months; since I’ve whittled away 4 weeks with no progress, there’s no way I’m going to get to the end. I recognize these thought patterns, actually: all or nothing thinking, minimizing the positive, fortune telling. (I’ve done my time in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.) I started thinking about how CBT’s cognitive distortions and fixed mindsets might lead into the other, in a chicken-vs-egg scenario, until I watched this video – now I wonder if they really do just coexist, and our effort is to work against those currents.
One thing I’ve run into is when I’ve talked to my peers about choosing to play the flute, it gets a very positive reaction. Then I’m tempering my pride of being accepted for something I haven’t done yet with anxiety about failing to do the thing that is accepted, both of which tend to make my fixed mindset (FM, hereafter) flare up. A few quotes that explain my mental process quite aptly:
“[FM] increases stress and pressure to perform … it leads people to believe that they know the extent of their intellectual capabilities and are limited by them”
“[those with FM] may avoid taking risks so as to not make themselves look bad in the case that they should fail”
“the mindset is very outcome focused …. when yielding no direct result, [hard work is] ‘all for nothing'”
the decision lab
I try to remind myself that I don’t have to appoint self-blame when I lapse into this type of thinking, but rather, work on the same principles of CBT: notice it, correct it, and move on. I did in fact take my flute out of its case and worked at it, from the top – how do I put this together properly? how do I direct my breath? – to bottom – is learning notes on a scale transferable to playing a song in that key? I got on Microsoft Paint and drew out a few haphazard finger charts. I watched this video so many times. I looked at myself in a mirror and practiced and observed and changed according to what I heard. Afterwards, it felt like when I breathed at certain angles, my throat hurt.
One thing I’d like to remember this week is not to minimize the positive. I’ve done some more practice, and have done a lot of the technical work needed so that now I can just keep playing around and trying different things. Maybe I’ll even upgrade my finger charts by the end of the semester from these janky things (I say, adoringly).
