I'm just a Girl

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (via childmagazine)

don’t insult your kid’s weight

don’t insult your kid’s weight

don’t insult your kid’s weight

just don’t even comment on it

your kid is well aware of their weight

don’t insult your partner’s weight in front of your kids

don’t insult anyone’s weight in front of your kids, jesus christ!

“Arriésgate! No te quedes con las ganas de saber qué pasaría, lánzate, vive, atrévete, que si de los éxitos se disfruta, de los errores se aprende”.

When it comes to success, I think there are a couple of things that are really important. Firstly, your locus of control. Locus of control is defined as follows:

A locus of control orientation is a belief about whether the outcomes of our actions are contingent on what we do (internal control orientation) or on events outside our personal control (external control orientation).

(Zimbardo, 1985)

In life there is only a small percentage of things we have control over. One of the most important things we have control over, is our response to adversity. It is easy to decide that life happens to you, it is just the way things are, and it is never going to change. Fatalism is a trap. This is called an ‘external locus of control’, or a ‘life happens to me’ kind of mentality. This should be your worst enemy. Even when adversity hits, you have control over how you react. If you fail an exam, it is quite possible that you haven’t revised enough. If you have a shit job, it is absolutely up to you to find something else or suffer through it until you do. If you want to be successful, you have to take control of your own fate.

Secondly, self-efficacy is important.

Self-efficacy refers to an individual’s belief in his or her capacity to execute behaviors necessary to produce specific performance attainments. Self-efficacy reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one’s own motivation, behavior, and social environment. (x)

Self-efficacy is important, because believing you can achieve something is the foundation of success. When it come to mathematics, we fall prey to an ‘I am not a maths person so I will never become good at maths’ mentality. Research suggests that there is no such thing as a maths person, and that maths ability is largely created with hard work, and not innate. The most important thing is to believe you can do something. When you are weighing whether or not you can do something, bias towards the ‘I can’ side of the scale. This gives you more leeway and creates more confidence. When you have people around you with strong self-efficacy, it can also lead to more self-efficacy in yourself.