debate

Dec 5 2011

You control your future?

Mindset by Carol Dweck is a book that says we sometimes develop a fixed-ability mindset. A mindset where who we are can’t change. This mindset says that our level of ability and skills are determined from birth and are constant, and since most of us define ourselves by our skills and what we do, it means that we ourselves can’t change.

This happens when we start believing that the reason we are good at something is because of natural talent. Unfortunately, I had that mindset for years and years throughout school. When people tell you you’re smart, you start believing it. You also start shying away from areas where you’re not smart. I carefully and methodically avoided languages, history and woodwork because it didn’t come to me easily and because I had a “bad memory”.

If I wasn’t smart at it, it wasn’t worth putting effort into especially when I might fail. At least if I failed without trying, I had an excuse that I hadn’t given it my all.

But having a hobby, an obsession, a martial art, an anything really; it gives you an example of how your skills can change and can grow. For me, in Form 4 (something like grade 10) I started playing basketball.

Basketball taught me that I can grow

Before this, I’d always defined myself as the smart kid. Why? Because I didn’t really have anything else. It sounds a bit nerdy now, but it really was true at the time. I’m not saying this for pity, that part of my life is done and over with now and I have very little, if any, regret about it. I embrace it as part of my past.

My parents are awesome. They never said they wanted results. Rather, they continually stressed that they wanted effort. “If you work hard and do badly, it’s fine. It’s not about the result, it’s about the effort. Remember that.”, my mom repeated again and again. But I just never really got it, not least because other people kept piling on the “praise”.

So in Form 4, the apartments that I stayed in built a basketball court. Afterwards, it was only natural for all the kids in the area to go down and test out the court. We had no experience mind you. None of us knew anything about basketball. My dribbling (bouncing the ball to move it around), my shots, my knowledge of basketball rules, they were all zero. I vaguely knew who Michael Jordan was but had never watched even a single NBA game.

But we learned. It was just a bunch of kids playing around without much skill involved, but I stuck to it. 6 pm, the kids would usually come down. I was usually there every day from 5pm to 7pm. I’d practice throwing shots in, over and over again. Then somebody told me something that hurt. He said that I should just stay near the ring and wait for the ball, because my shooting was alright but my dribbling was horrible. I was hurt, but it made me think that I wanted to show him up. I did. And my dribbling improved. (P.S. It was stupid of me to feel hurt because he told the truth, but there you go)

An odd thing about basketball was that there were no real metrics for me to keep track of. It wasn’t as if my goal was to be able to dribble the ball 80 times a minute and if I was below that count then I had failed. No, it was much more subjective, and that subjectivity meant that I could feel myself improving, but without the existence of numbers that would distract me from the game itself. I couldn’t fail.

This was completely different from my normal “intelligence” and being “smart”. We had tests and exams, and every time there was a grade that went along with it. When I did well, it was just because of my “natural (and fixed)” intelligence, while low grades just proved that I wasn’t “naturally talented” at that subject. I was fixated on those grades.

I would look at them and keep looking at them to reassure myself that I was “smart”. I wasn’t proud of my effort. I was proud of skills that I had never had to work on. It’s like being proud to be a guy. Or proud to have fingers. Yes, they were (and still are) integral parts of me, but the pride I had in them was extreme and distracted me from the skills I was weak in and needed to work on.

I’ll be honest, I played basketball because I wanted to play with friends. But then I got good at it. I don’t mean tournament-worthy good, but good enough that I wasn’t embarrassed to play any more.

After 2 years of this, I finally realized that I’d slowly adopted a growth mindset.

The growth mindset

I suddenly noticed that I believed I could change. It wasn’t on a conscious level mind you. I just suddenly wanted to do things to break out of my shell. After 2 years of basketball, I graduated from high school and went to pre-university. Matriculation, they call it here. And crazy me, I volunteered when they asked for names to be the student representative.

Here’s why it’s so crazy. I was a guy who was timid. No, that doesn’t even begin to describe me. Timidity, shyness, social anxiety; I had those in bucket loads and more. I barely knew all the people in my classroom and I couldn’t begin to even look at girls or talk in front of  a room of people. My voice was so low that you couldn’t hear me if you were 3 feet away. And the worst part here is that I’m not exaggerating… not even a little.

And the job of the student representative was to stand in front of nearly a thousand students (if my memory serves me) and recite the student oath loudly for them to repeat. Needless to say, I didn’t get the part. (The person who did get it though, Aiman,  is an awesome person who ended up being my classmate and a good friend.)

But playing basketball, having that hobby; it drilled into me that I can change, that I can improve, and that natural talent isn’t the only thing I have.

I made it into a goal for myself to be able to speak, and speak well dammit!

I changed myself and I’m pretty proud of it

4 years later, I found myself in the ESL championships of the World Universities Debate Tournament, speaking in front of around 2 thousand people from all corners of the world, while being recorded.

And guess what? I was fine with it. I was worrying more over whether our case would win than I was over the huge number of people watching us. Unfortunately, me and Danial didn’t manage to take the prize. But it still goes to show,

People don’t DO change

We can change. The only downside is that not enough people have the growth mindset, and so they treat you through that filter and treat you as if you can’t change either.

Believing the world is constant

I believe that most people who feel like they are “failing” at one thing or another are operating out of a fixed mindset. We start believing that our skills are constant because that’s what we’re born with, or maybe even because we believe that it’s wrong to change who we are.

Change is the only constant

I’m sure you’ve heard this many times, but I don’t know if you’ve ever really thought about it and internalized it.

If you have, then not only does it start applying to you, it also starts changing your worldview. You’ll now start viewing other people as having the ability to change too.

In a fixed mindset, people won’t believe that you can change and in fact they’ll want you to stay the same. Imagine you were about to make a huge change in your life now. How many of your friends do you think would tell you:

Don’t change, just be yourself

or if you’ve already made a change, how many would say:

I don’t know you any more. You’ve changed.

And they say it as if it’s an insult.

Here’s the thing. To them, it is an insult. You’ve insulted their entire reality and worldview. You’ve just told them to their faces that what they believe in is not true, that people DO change and that their talents and skills are not fixed.

There’s a crazy consequence to this as well. If your talents and skills can be changed by your effort, then your failures are your responsibility. And most of us just can’t handle that fact.

I need to clarify something here very quickly. I didn’t say that your failures are your “fault”. I said that your failures are your “responsibility”. I honestly didn’t notice the language I used until I noticed how it could be misunderstood. This is a great example of how your beliefs determine the word choice you use. Anyway, what I mean by your failures being your responsibility is that even when your failures are caused by something or someone else, it is still your responsibility to make sure that you fix it and get it back on track.

After all, when you have a growth mindset, it also means that you are in control and that even when it’s his fault, you can still do something about it.

So yes, you’ve just insulted your friend because you’re saying that you’re changing to become better, so if your friend isn’t changing, he must be bad and at fault for his life problems.

On a deep subconscious level, I believe this is why we don’t want to change. By having a fixed mindset, we can easily pass off our problems as not being our fault. After all, even if you tried really hard and did your best, your limits are already set. So it’s not your fault if you can’t succeed at life or whatever project you have, because it was just too much for you.

A growth mindset, however, would make you try really hard and when you failed, you’d just try again. Like they say:

It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get back up

Without a growth mindset, you’ll just never get back up. After all, if you’ve failed once, that’s already showed you your limits right?

Conclusion

Ok. So that fixed mindset you have might not completely destroy your life, but it will keep you from changing it. In fact, it won’t just keep you from succeeding at changing; on a deeper level, it will tell you that change is bad.

Planning to make a change in your life but you’re not sure if you should change or be yourself? Here’s a question (and I want you to think deeply about the answer to this): Why is that change bad? When you get your answer, using a growth mindset, figure out a way around that problem, even if it’s not your fault.

A growth mindset means that you believe you have control over your future, and also that you are just a little bit responsible.

Guess what? I don’t believe I have a “bad memory” any more.

By Lutfi Torla • Featured, Understanding Behaviour • 3 • Tags: , , , , , ,

Jun 14 2010

What I learned from debate

Debate is something that took over my life. I obsessed over it. I threw away weekends for it. When people invited me out, I’d say, “I can’t. I’ve got debate.” I even joined a facebook group of the same name (as the quote).

But it’s something I have surprisingly few regrets about. It’s such an enriching experience to learn, not just how to stand up and speak, but to do it in a focused and structured way.

1. It taught me where Iraq was.

I confess. I was horrible at geography and history before this. I could tell you that I had heard of North Korea but I wouldn’t have been able to accurately point it out on a map.

Because of debating, I can safely say that I can at least point out a few countries.

2. It taught me to never stray from your objective.

You should never ever explain more than important. Because they’ll stop listening to you anyway after they hear what they want. And all you’ll end up doing is wasting everyone’s time including your own.

And the importance of having a clear objective becomes that much clearer. Now, I utterly hate people who do things or say things that don’t help them achieve their objective. Ok well, maybe I don’t hate them. But it’s so frustrating to hear them blabber on and on about irrelevant things, or to see them do so many things that are pointless.

Of course, to only do things relevant to your objective, you have to have an objective in the first place. Over 4 years, debate drummed it into me that you must always have an objective.

3. It honed my skills in explaining complex ideas in an economy of words.

You only have 7 minutes to explain how you want to save the world before bedtime.

Let’s say it takes 5 seconds to say a sentence. That’s only 84 sentences you can say to describe the political situation in some country on the other side of the world and explain why aid is the worst thing you can do to the farmers in the area as well as put forward your own solution for the problem at hand and of course defend it from the arguments of your opponent.

Did I mention you have to find the flaws in what your opponent says and attack those too? 7 minutes is waaaayyyyy too short.

4. It made me meet so many kinds of people.

There are a number of awesome people in this world. It seems that a huge proportion of them are in debate. Not only that, you get to meet so many varieties. I don’t just mean in terms of race or culture. I also mean in terms of people who are just different. Their styles, their personalities, their very outlook on life.

And where else could you find such a diverse group who would be more than willing to talk and talk and talk and…

5. It allowed me to get away from the calculator.

I’m in engineering. The hard sciences don’t give much room to discuss world issues in class. In law or economics or sociology, you discuss world issues all the time. So I stepped out of my classroom and tried to be a little more well-rounded. I didn’t want to just be a guy who knew how numbers worked. I wanted to know what those numbers meant.

Engineering is supposed to use science to solve real world problems. How do I do that unless I know what those “real world problems” are?

So…

If you’ve got the time, join debate. It’s so worth it.

If you haven’t got it, make time.

By Lutfi Torla • Communicating, Reflections • 2 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Apr 27 2010

This must be how a father feels…

Just over a week ago, the 9th IIUM Interschool Debating Championsip started. Nearly 80 schools from all over Malaysia, coming together to debate. There were a few categories: the Malay, English and even Arabic debates. But of course, my interest was mainly for the English debates.

The brother

My youngest brother, Affan, debates.  He’s been debating for just about a year. His team (Al-Amin Gombak) also ranked first in this year’s Interschool debates.

Affan's Team Rank

Ranking first is... *drumroll* Al-Amin Gombak!

Yeah, I know it’s grainy, but that’s the best resolution I could get. I’ll put up the proper tabs (digital) next time.

So I’m really proud of him. He’s only in Form 3! And since he basically skipped a grade, you could even consider his age to be in Form 2.

The story

We were in the hall, just after 6 intense rounds of debating. They were just about to announce the rankings. Al-Amin Gombak had already had 5 wins and had just met up against MCKK in the 6th round. It was a silent round though, which meant that no one knew who won or lost! We were waiting in suspense wondering who won the last round.

And they kept delaying it! First talking about the tournament, then making one announcement after another. Finally though, the big screen up front started up. And…

“Ranking first. The only team with 6-0 in this tournament (6 wins – 0 losses) *drumroll* Al-Amin Gombak!”

The comments

“So, how long did you train them?”

“You must be proud of them.”

“What did you do with them?”

The truth

I actually didn’t do much. It was all mostly them. I only trained them for about a month before that. Actually, more like 3 weeks. And even during that time, we had the weekends off and they had to go for tuition and other co-curricular activities sometimes.

All 4 of them are pretty smart and have good logic. They can think on their feet. They can solve world issues. In their training, I never told them much about arguments that they should use for this case or that case. (No, I won’t tell you more about our trainings. *grin*) They came up with that themselves. Every win they got from that tournament, they got themselves, using their own arguments.

So the arguments were sometimes a little weaker than I would’ve liked, but oftentimes much better than I would’ve expected of them. After all, they’re still in highschool! I didn’t start debating and speaking in front of people until I was 18 or 19. They’re starting at 14 or 15… and winning!

So I can’t fully take the credit for training them. But I can be proud of them. And proud of my brother. But I suppose my father must feel this even more. After all, I only trained him a month. My dad (and mom) have been taking care of all of us and training all of us for the past 25 years. If this feeling is what it’s like to see your child succeed, it’s amazing. I can’t imagine how it would feel as a father to see your son or daughter doing well.

But it was only worth it because Affan wanted it so much. Not me or my dad. He wanted it, and he got it using his own skills and abilities. I think that’s what really makes us happy. That we’re not forcing him to do something but that he wants to do it himself.

The future

I don’t know what’ll happen. But I know that they’ve already made a target of themselves. From a little known school that most people haven’t heard of (did I mention that it’s my old school too?) to becoming the top ranking team at a national interschool debate tournament. Some schools will be gunning for them next year. And I’m sure that both sides will have fun doing it.

The other schools

I know you’ve never heard of Al-Amin before this. I hope that this helps. Because it is honestly annoying that when people ask me what school I went to, and I say “Al-Amin”, they get this blank look on their faces.

So maybe now people will think “oh, I know that school“, the same they do when people say MRSM or MCKK or TKC. Here’s hoping that it’ll happen that way.

The ending

After this whole event though, they proceeded to the knockout rounds. They skipped the double-octofinals and won their octo-finals, but were finally stopped at the quarter-finals by KYS (Yayasan Saad College). They were a good team.

So in the end, Al-Amin Gombak never made it to the finals, and they didn’t win…

…

…but there’s always next year. *grin*



By Lutfi Torla • Events • 2 • Tags: , , ,