Towards the end of my summer I faced myself in a tough decision. A decision which marked a mindset of growth in myself. It was a turning point for the way I faced challenges. While having been in Chile I took the chance to learn how to snowboard. Having had no experience on a snowboard whatsoever, I was told that if you could skateboard that it would make snowboarding a walk in the park. I was wrong to believe this. I was wrong because I kept believing in these fixed thoughts. For example: if I could already skateboard, snowboard is going to take less effort. This might be true in some cases but this fixed mentality made me less open to embrace challenges on the snowboard. Not only that but it also had me thinking in an ignorant manner. Therefore on the first day, as soon as I got onto the snowboard I lost complete control and fell face first into the snow. I spent the entire class doing the same thing. At that moment I realized wow this isn’t as easy as I thought. Quickly I was haunted by numerous fixed thoughts. I was beginning to give up. Asking myself questions like why am i going to keep doing this if I could just ski where I felt better at? I went home that day feeling like failure had just replaced my name. As I mentally reflected on the entire day, I realized that the book Mindset was speaking to me. I began to continue reading from where I left off at. “When people— couples, coaches, coaches and athletes, managers and workers, parents and children, teachers and students— change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. … Everyday presents you with ways to grow and to help the people you care about grow. " ~ Carol S. Dweck This quote struck because it made me think deeper into what I learned that day. I began to realize that I actually learned a lot even though I failed. I learned by helping family friends to learn. They asked me how I dealt with the snowboarding class that day, if I learned any tips that I could share with them. At first, the fixed mindset spoke and began to say no today was a complete mess I didn’t learn anything. Then it happened, I remembered reading the book and this quote and I spoke: "Our teacher taught us today that for a snowboarder the only way to stop or slow down was to turn, position your body, slightly put pressure on you heels or toes , and shave the snow with the metallic side of the board to reduce your speed. " However, now with the correct mindset I wasn't going to let this failure torment me instead it would be the gasoline to my car. It would fuel me up and keep me up and running for the next day to come. The rest of the next day was spent with a powerful effort to test myself in snowboarding down the easy mountain in the shape of an S, trying to master the movement that I could quickly stop forward with my toes and backwards with my heels. The cost to this effort was an entire morning spent falling, tumbling, and crashing into sides of the mountain or trees and sometimes even other people. By the end of that day I was snowboarding at the top of the mountain doing medium level runs. Nonetheless, I was still practicing the correct movement but this time with more of a challenging run. Here is a short clip of me already comfortable on the snowboard.
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BloggerMy name is Stefan Stangl and I am originally from San Francisco, California. Currently, I am senior at Colegio Franklin Delano Roosvelt in Lima, Peru. My passions are sports and art. Personal: @Stefan6 School: @fdrinnovationacademy ♫Tweet me ♫
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June 2015
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