Writing to Be Understood by Anne H. Janzer

Listening to this belief limits your willingness to take on challenges. But when faced with a challenge, you may suddenly hear the voice of the fixed mindset whispering that you are not “good at” the task and are likely to fail.

Of course, you understand that you can learn and improve. While it sounds simple, mindset can be subtler than it seems. Those with a growth mindset believe that they can develop abilities through learning and work. Put in basic terms, people with a fixed mindset tend to consider their talents or abilities as set, inherent parts of their beings. Your response to challenges and setbacks depends, in part, on your sense of yourself when considering the work, and whether you inhabit a fixed or growth mindset.Ĭarol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, describes these alternatives in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. How do you respond when asked to do a task that you haven’t tried before, such as creating a full-length book or a script for a video? Would you attempt it? If the result needs major reworking, how would you feel about the effort as a whole? Each decision could be appropriate for the context. We might approach a financial negotiation in one way and family relationships in another. Neither setting is inherently right or wrong. Mindsets are fleeting, changeable states. These binary, A/B choices oversimplify reality. There are two mental settings that are particularly relevant for writers: Yet we can alter or adjust our mindset, as a photographer changes the filter on a lens. The term mindset refers to a set of acting assumptions and attitudes that affect behavior more broadly, a mindset is a filter through which we view the world.Ĭulture, surroundings, and upbringing each influence our perspectives significantly. This post is about creating an internal environment conducive to writing. Today’s guest post is an excerpt from The Writer’s Process by Anne Janzer ( a product of the human brain, writing is particularly influenced by emotions, moods, and worldviews.

Writing to Be Understood by Anne H. Janzer