"Feedback Thoughts, Hurtful but Necessary"

 "Feedback Thoughts"

The two articles that I decided to read from the list we were given are "A fixed mindset could be holding you back", and Neil Gaiman's speech on advice for the creative life, I also watched his speech he gave at the University of The Arts in 2012, just to understand more of what his thoughts, opinions and ideologies were. I really enjoyed reading the first article about mindset as it's something that I've had to work on in the past and I'm working on it a lot currently at this moment. I'm going to start of the post saying that I agree 100 percent with everything that's said in the article, and if you don't your in denial.  The current generation, being my own, the kids growing up online, in the digital age are a lot more fragile and easily offended than any other generation than before expecting to be praised and rewarded for the most simplistic tasks and if their not being praised, they're giving out or complaining. We live in a time where this generation of kids is one where each kid gets a trophy, the meaning of first, second and third is going out the window which is leaving kids with no hunger for competition which is leaving kids with little to no work ethic. So when they just take part they are rewarded, they expect things for nothing.

You can't grow or fix your mindset if you don't recover from failure or mistakes, which in this case isn't happening because of constant praise. If you don't develop a growth mindset you will struggle in all aspects more than others who do develop their mindset and are open to criticism. I think the article has everything correct down to a "T" 

Image Source: Pixabay

I really enjoyed reading the article on Neil's speech,  "Make Good Art, Advice on the Creative Life" it was nice that it was completely different to the first one I read. He made a point of saying no matter what challenge, or what's going wrong, always make art, being creative might be the answer on how we can deal with anything. The biggest thing I took away from reading was the emphasis he made on making mistakes. He's right the only way you are going to get better at anything is by making those mistakes , failing over and over until you get it right. If you not making any mistakes, your not learning, growing or getting better because your afraid to mess something up, and you can't advance in any field if you choose to move like that, it won't work. I love how he say's to make "glorious, amazing mistakes",. He is someone who has a growth mindset, even though he doesn't mention mindsets what he suggests let's us know what kind of mindset he has, he has a growth mindset, we know that from him saying "whatever it is your scared of doing, Do it!!", or "Make mistakes nobody has ever made before". Everything comes down to mindset, but sometimes even when your aware of this it's a hard thing to navigate.

For a longtime feedback was something I didn't look forward to, mainly because the only experience I've had with feedback was in school and 90 percent of the time it wasn't good because I found most things hard and it took a while for my brain to get up to speed. Even when you got the feedback it was more of a "what to do next time" session, not giving any help on how to improve next time. But feedback is hard, when you make something and you've spent hours making it right and you want an opinion but you only want to be told that its "amazing" or "crazy" you won't seek advice or criticism because you don't want the feeling of" oh, that's cool, but change that, or that doesn't work". Feedback can be scary but if you want to  grow and get better, in anything you have to be able to take it, in the long run it will be more beneficial for you.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end, hope my thoughts on this topic was just a little helpful!!.