Transmission 2 - Acting As If and The Growth Mindset

There Is No_System: Transmission Two
Acting As If and The Growth Mindset

Thoughts on our limits and the brakes on our inertia.

Talks and articles mentioned or inspired by:

Carol Dwck ‘Mindset - the new psychology of success’ at Happiness & Its Causes 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGvR_0mNpWM&t=84s

The Latest Science of Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck | The Psychology Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUFbjIFm3SE

Trading Spaces - Everett, WA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2PWMarfVIc&t=2333s

Why Emeril Always Says ‘BAM!’ - Eater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fifveIlcXlA

Written and performed by Brian Behm
Music by Brian Behm/No_System

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Transcripts available at nosysknows.com/podcast
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Special Thanks
Angela Behm
Iris Poole
Jessi Bennett
Cassandra McCollum 

There Is No_System is a production of Brian Behm Creative. 

Transcript
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00;00;09;27 - 00;00;54;00
Brian Behm
Transmission Two, Act As It And The Growth Mindset.

What's your limit What do you think you can or can't do? This isn't some sort of new age urge for you to know the secret. I just want to know how deeply you've worked to figure out what you can even do. You don't need an answer, but my gut is that if you don't have any sort of idea, you probably haven't tried hard enough to feel out where potential can even go.

00;00;54;29 - 00;01;15;06
Brian Behm
Maybe you haven't done it because you've never felt like an artist. Maybe you haven't done it because somebody criticized you when you were a kid and it killed whatever spark had been there. Maybe. Maybe I, you know, I don't know. But maybe you haven't done it just because it's way easier to sit on the couch and medicate with ice cream.

00;01;15;08 - 00;01;42;20
Brian Behm
A bag of Doritos. The most recent call of duty. Whatever. (Whatever. Whatever, whatever. Whatever.) Everybody's got their thing. Even for me, I spent my twenties doing. Not much of anything of note. I mean, I did an Ironman triathlon. One can't say that that's nothing, you know? I got married and I moved to another state, and I figured out how to live on 26,000 a year.

00;01;43;08 - 00;02;05;06
Brian Behm
But all of the interesting things that have happened in my professional life, they only really started after I started taking risks. Before that, it was a whole lot of cooking shows on the Food Network. And whatever the flavor of the month home reno show was, I was anesthetized. I tinkered, but actually executing on things and having those things make progress?

00;02;05;23 - 00;02;37;25
Brian Behm
None of that was really happening. And when I look back on the things that I created they're not bad, but they're not great either. There wasn't a lot of focus. If you spend enough time listening to creative podcasts or reading current pop psychology, you'll be exposed to the work of Carol Dweck. A Stanford professor, her primary area of research has been the growth mindset.

00;02;38;13 - 00;02;45;10
Brian Behm
Basically, it's the idea that we have the capacity to grow and change Do you have a fixed amount of intelligence.

00;02;45;26 - 00;03;21;00
Carol Dweck
In my work, We find that kids and adults can have different mindsets about their basic talents and abilities. In a fixed mindset. Children think their talents, abilities, intelligence are just fixed. They have a certain amount, and that's that. But other kids have a growth mindset. They don't think it's fixed. Facing their abilities can be developed through practice, dedication, help, and good mentoring from others.

00;03;21;08 - 00;03;41;28
Carol Dweck
They don't think everyone's the same or that anyone can be Einstein, but they think everyone can get smarter if they apply themselves. And these are the people who remain vehemently, vigorously engaged with learning, especially in the face of difficulties.

00;03;46;01 - 00;03;55;19
Brian Behm
Is your capacity as an individual predetermined? Or, are you able to influence your own mental performance through grit and continuing to work at something?

00;03;58;15 - 00;04;22;22
Brian Behm
I can't think about Dweck's work without thinking about the observer effect in physics. There's been a crisis in the scientific community over the past decade about the replication of results, particularly in the social and medical science. You know, in a hard science like chemistry or mathematics, equations have answers. H2O is always going to be di-hydrogen monoxide.

00;04;24;06 - 00;04;49;29
Brian Behm
It'll be water. But, do you remember that dumb thing people would say, wondering whether a tree falling in the woods would make any sound? on a rational level, you might say, well, of course it makes a noise. It's falling, it's causing friction in the air. But if something isn't being observed, if we're not there to hear it, there's no way to prove that something happened without some sort of observer.

00;04;50;25 - 00;05;22;26
Brian Behm
Even an instrument is observing an interaction. It's a conundrum Some of Dweck's work has had a hard time being replicated. She's got her assertions for why that could be. And it's worth at least acknowledging that there's an element of faith to what she's talking about being true. But I don't know that it actually matters whether it's true, because I think that the assumption that it's true could end up forcing our brains to do an improvisational "act as if" exercise.

00;05;23;02 - 00;05;39;13
Brian Behm
You may have heard someone say, if you think you can't, you can't. That me that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode who spent a lot of time watching other people make things. Didn't know a lot of things. At the time. The Iron Man ended up being a much bigger deal than he may have thought when he first

00;05;39;13 - 00;06;04;21
Brian Behm
Signed up. Initially, it was an excuse to do another long bike ride. Suddenly, there was a data point that if you spent a year training for something, you could do something that no one else you had known could do. There are few better things in life than being able to look at the jocks that gave you a hard time in high school and know that they couldn't survive 17 hours of running a marathon after you biked more than a hundred miles.

00;06;05;18 - 00;06;30;29
Brian Behm
I'm sure we'll spend more time talking about that day because there are other lessons there. But going back to Carol Dweck, it was curiosity that even led to the race. It was grit and determination that led to finishing the race. But nothing happens unless there's both curiosity and grit. That's the catalyst. And maybe Dweck alters the entire equation by creating an observer effect.

00;06;31;29 - 00;06;57;27
Brian Behm
Suddenly, we're paying attention; and curious. and we've radically altered how a system would have normally operated just because of the fact that we're aware. Whether our brains are malleable or not, that curiosity might end up helping our brain to, even if the capacity is static, better operate with what it does have. So let me ask again. What are you capable of?

00;06;58;27 - 00;07;24;13
Brian Behm
How are you digging into that? Do this for me. Take a deep breath. I really like square breathing. You breathe in for a count of four. Then you hold it for a count of four. Then you breathe out for four and you rest for four. It's one of the only small meditative things that I've been able to make a regular thing.

00;07;25;07 - 00;08;05;08
Brian Behm
It's really great for resetting. And when I'm really stressed out, that four by four exercise can get me to a point where I can think more clearly. So, let's do it. Just for a minute, and then I'll wrap up So just follow me. I'm going to count four. So breathe in two, three, four. Hold two, three, four. Breathe out Two, three, four.

00;08;06;03 - 00;08;18;04
Brian Behm
Pause. Two, three, four. Okay, we're going to do two more. Breathe in. One, two, three.

00;08;18;24 - 00;08;24;16
Brian Behm
Four. Hold Two, three, four.

00;08;25;21 - 00;08;57;09
Brian Behm
Breathe out. Two, three, four. Hold. Two, three, four. And one last one. Breathe in. One. Two, three, four. Hold. Two, three, four. Breathe. Out. Two, three, four. And hold. Two.

00;08;58;03 - 00;08;59;28
Brian Behm
Three, four.

00;09;02;02 - 00;09;02;17
Brian Behm
Now.

00;09;04;05 - 00;09;31;23
Brian Behm
While you're calm, I want you to spend a few minutes writing I want you to think about you in a year. Five years? Ten years. Who are you? What did you end up doing? What was it you wanted to be doing? I don't need you to overthink and don't force it. But let it sort of bubble up. Once you're done,

00;09;32;19 - 00;09;53;02
Brian Behm
take a look. What's the story you're telling yourself? I can't tell what you wrote. I don't know what your dream is, but just based on my own experience, I think you have more capacity than you think you do. See beneath the surface. There is no system.