eustress

distress

stress

"Good Stress"

Motivating

Keeps you Focused

Feelings of Excitment

"Bad Stress"

Overwhelming

Fight or Flight

Increased Tension

How do we go from distress to eustress?

Trying the same thing
over and over

"Hoping" a change will work

Avoiding error messages

Clenched jaw,
hitting keys harder

Building in consistent,
short breaks with Pomodoro

Identify where the problem is instead of only the fix

Ask for help!

Work on something else

If intelligence is static then...

If intelligence is developed then...

I'm not good at this.
I'm great at this.
I give up.
This is too hard.
I can't make this any better.
I'm not good at design.
I made a mistake.
I will never be as smart as her.
It's good enough.
I didn't get it right.

What am I missing?
I'm on the right track.
What other strategies haven't I used?
This is going to take some time.
Maybe I can ask someone for some next steps.
I'm going to train my brain to be better at design.
Mistakes help me learn better.
I'm going to figure out how she does it.
Is this really my best work?
Plan "A" didn't work. On to Plan "B".

Exercise:

Think of some skill you've always considered yourself bad at and then ask yourself the following:

What specifically am I so bad at?

If I wanted to get better, what are the
steps I would take?

Who do I know who would help teach me?

What does success look like?

Exercise:

Consider how someone with a fixed mindset would interpret the following as opposed to someone with a growth mindset.

Challenges

Effort

Criticism

Someone Else's Success

Failure