Quotes About Growth

Maybe the unvarnished meaning of growing up is the acceptance that living out our values, and also winning the approval of those who have power over us, is an unfulfillable longing.

We decide to move far enough to the edge of the culture to see it clearly. What is the norm and normal does not serve us well. Many of us have tried hard to live a "normal" life, and how is it going?

change. Each of us has a free will at our core, so like it or not, others will choose to change more readily from the example set by our own transformation than by any demand we make of them.

If there is no transformation inside of us, all the structural change in the world will have impact on our institutions.

Wisdom not only comes with suffering: when it comes, it is radically unusable. (Brooks' comment on the Oedipus tragedy)

Nos estamos ahogando en información, dicen, pero «pasamos hambre de conocimiento». Podemos convertirnos en «gigantes de la información», pero corremos el riesgo de convertirnos en «enanos del conocimiento».

We are poor judges of when we are learning well and when we're not. When the going is harder and slower and it doesn't feel productive, we are drawn to strategies that feel more fruitful, unaware that the gains from these strategies are often temporary.

If you find yourself falling into single-minded, repetitive practice of a particular topic or skill, change it up: mix in the practice of other subjects, other skills, constantly challenging your ability to recognize the problem type and select the right solution.

In virtually all areas of learning, you build better mastery when you use testing as a tool to identify and bring up your areas of weakness.

We make the effort because the effort itself extends the boundaries of our abilities.

Making mistakes and correcting them builds the bridges to advanced learning.

In the school of life experience, setbacks show us where we need to do better. We can steer clear of similar challenges in the future, or we can redouble our efforts to master them, broadening our capacities and expertise.

Study skills and learning skills are inert until they're powered by an active ingredient," Dweck says. The active ingredient is the simple but nonetheless profound realization that the power to increase your abilities lies largely within your own control.

retrieval from short-term memory is an ineffective learning strategy and that errors are an integral part of striving to increase one's mastery over new material.

a failure to know the areas where their learning is weak—that is, where they need to do more work to bring up their knowledge—and a preference for study methods that create a false sense of mastery.11

We make the effort because the effort itself extends the boundaries of our abilities. What we do shapes who we become and what we're capable of doing. The more we do, the more we can do.

When you praise for intelligence, kids get the message that being seen as smart is the name of the game. "Emphasizing effort gives a child a rare variable they can control," Dweck says. But "emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of a child's control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure." 18

In the school of life experience, setbacks show us where we need to do better.

first time and then waited some days before they reread it.

First, to be useful, learning requires memory, so what we've learned is still there later when we need it. Second, we need to keep learning and remembering all our lives. We can't advance through middle school without some mastery of language arts, math, science, and social studies. Getting ahead at work takes mastery of job skills and difficult colleagues. In retirement, we pick up new interests. In our dotage, we move into simpler housing while we're still able to adapt.

Trying to solve a problem before being taught the solution leads to better learning, even when errors are made in the attempt.

It's not the failure that's desirable, it's the dauntless effort despite the risks, the discovery of what works and what doesn't that sometimes only failure can reveal.

One of the best habits a learner can instill in herself is regular self-quizzing to recalibrate her understanding of what she does and does not know.

Learning is deeper and more durable when it's effortful. Learning that's easy is like writing in sand, here today and gone tomorrow.