Adopting the Creator Mindset
Throughout the course of a lifetime individuals are given the opportunity to make choices. Some may be as little as deciding to wash the car or watch the football game one's been waiting to see all week, while others may be more severe in nature, like deciding what college an individual may want to attend and choosing an intended major. The decisions and choices we make may not always be equally important but the way we go about the thought process in mindset of choosing them surely is. In Dr. Skip Downing's on course he describes Creators as people who consistently make the choices which create the favorable outcome they wish to enjoy. That is, they create their lives through choices they make. On the other end of the spectrum Downing describes Victims as people who don't feel they can affect the outcomes they get in life and so tend to passively accept what happens to them and deal with whatever outcomes they get from their choice not to be Creators, which is also a choice. So as life goes on with each passing day I choose to take life by the horns and create a destiny I can be proud of.
In the article by Prof. David Mirman, Do You Think Like a Victim or a Creator? The author describes the on goings of a classroom at a higher education institution. Mirman explains the story of two individuals in corresponding situations. In the story two students are told the textbook they would need for the course should be obtained by the 2nd week of class, however; when the class next meets and the instructor asks both students if they were able to purchase the text one student replies, “No, I do not have the textbook. I was not able to get it because the bookstore didn’t have any more. They said they ran out. It was their fault, not mine”, and the other student goes on to tell the instructor that she was able to purchase the textbook and the way she went about doing so. The second student implemented a Creators' mindset while the first invoked a Victims' approach. Even after finding out that her campus bookstore did not have what she was searching for the 2nd student called others, and even after she encountered failure here she continued to pursue her options until she finally found the book online for an even cheaper price. The author would like us as readers' to understand that adopting a Creator mindset will not only help us to achieve our desired goal, but also open our minds to other options we might not have thought we had.
If I were to think of a time in my life where I most prolifically played the role of a victim, I would have to think back to my freshman year of college right after I graduated high school. My whole first semester of higher education I had a victim mindset, I was consistently late for class if I even showed up at all, I rarely completed assignments and when I did they were usually procrastinated and poorly thrown together, and I was often disengaged in class discussions and group work. Instead of looking at myself as the problem I looked to place the blame elsewhere, I blamed my poor performance on instructors, environmental aspects, and other classmates. I often thought to myself that I didn’t need this class and the professor was so awful that I’d be better of teaching the material to myself. All the while instead of complaining and criticizing others I should’ve been evaluating myself and working on creating a solution to the circumstance I was in.
The most inspirational creator that I personally know would most definitely have to be my mother, Belinda Moss. Over the years she has overcome many struggles and adversities only to persevere through it all. At the age of 30 my mother set out on her journey of higher learning, with two children and a husband at home to take care of she began classes at a local community college. After dedicating herself to the goal she had set out she graduated with an associate’s degree in social science and a 3.7 GPA. Soon after she diligently began working towards her bachelor’s at UTEP and Saint Martin’s University majoring in the social work field of study. With four years of college an associates and a bachelor’s degree under her belt my mother began taking more classes and eventually received her master’s in social work. Throughout her educational journey my mother never accepted defeat as an option, whenever she found herself in a tough situation instead of just quitting because the going got tough, she used a creator’s mindset to find the solutions to her problems and came out of it all on top.
As I have made the decision to become a Creator, holding the accountability of my decisions and my destiny solely in my hands, I vow to do what it takes not only to become a better student but a better individual as well. I will schedule appointments with my instructors, Complete all assignments in the allotted amount of time given, and I will create a study schedule that coincides with the time my classes disperse because I believe at that time I am most susceptible to learning and reviewing material covered in and outside of my courses. So as I have made a promise to myself to adopt a Creators mindset, I ask. What choice will you make?
Mirman, David. "Do You Think like a Victim or a Creator?" Web log post.
Youaretheprimemover.com. N.p., 2 Jan. 2012. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.
<http://youaretheprimemover.com/2012/do-you-think-like-a-victim-or-a-creator>.
Downing, Skip. "Chapter 2/ Accepting Personal Responsibility." On Course. 7th ed. Vol. 1.
Boston: Wadsworth, 2014. 42. Print.