Recently some researchers tested two types of praise that we give children.
They gave a group of children a task to do and afterwards they gave them either intelligence-praise like, “you’re so smart”, “you’re so talented” or effort-praise such as, “you tried so hard”, “you really persisted, that’s fantastic“.
Later they gave them all a second task and what they found was surprising.
The performance of the children that received the intelligence-praise went DOWN significantly, whereas the performance of the children that received the effort praise increased significantly.
What does this mean for us?
It means that rewarding your children, employees and yourself for effort will very likely increase performance while rewarding them for success or impressiveness won't help as much. (Thank you @hubermanlab for this info)
Now isn’t this fascinating?
How much time do you spend affirming yourself for trying?
Or do you, like many of us, mostly berate yourself for not getting things right?
When you focus on how you 'should' be, and what you 'should' achieve you're focusing on the qualities that you deem successful. I think that's pretty much the same as intelligence-praise.
I'm more successful than that one, I must be worthy.
I didn't lose the weight I said I would, so I'm not good.
I'm clever / pretty/ rich therefore I have value.
I'm not saying you mustn't appreciate your intelligence and success...
But what about the many times you are mediocre?
Or the times you try and fail?
Or stuff you are just learning to do?
Do those not count?
Does it only count when you are clever and talented...?
Because if so, that could leave a lot of your life unappreciated!
Last week I wrote that we are all doing our best and that trying is often the best we can do.
Trying is the way we learn and grow.
We already know that most great successes are the result of many failed attempts.
Basically, every time you fail, you grow and move forward.
But in those important growth moments you are not impressive, or obviously intelligent, or graceful.
Nonetheless, every failure gives you knowledge you didn't have before.
And that is success. That is intelligence.
Why on earth would we not cheer that on and appreciate it?
So if effort-praise is more effective than success/talent/intelligence-praise, the best way to help ourselves improve, is to love ourselves better and become our own (and other people's) cheerleaders and say things like,
“I love that I care”
“I really try hard. That’s amazing.”
“I haven’t given up and I like that about me.”
“Well done me. Keep going.”
"I'm doing better than I ever have before."
“Thank you for trying and for showing up.”
“It’s ok. We are all doing our best. And that’s already a lot!”
Do this a lot this week, ok? Let me know how it goes.
If you loved yourself (and all the rest of us), what effort-praise would you give yourself (and anyone else who is frustrating you) right now?
