While you are running your race that can take days, weeks, months, or years as an educator you can lead and encourage others to moving towards a growth mindset. Many factors need to be considered to make a successful impact on the mindset or yourself and others. One includes what you are praising yourself and your learners for (RSA, 2015). We want to stay clear from praising ourselves and our learners for the intelligence that we bring to the environment or setting that we and our learners are in (Dweck, Dec 2014). When we praise the intelligence of ourselves and learners, it can lead us down a rabbit hole that will lead us to a fixed mindset (RSA, 2015). As an educator, praising a learner for their intelligence around other learners can lead to that learner feeling like they are a king or queen, resulting in others losing their confidence in their intelligence. This could also lead to student dishonesty for future assignments by looking, listening, or speaking to the learners that they believe have the potential to have higher intelligence due to the praising that they did not receive.

We are told in professional development courses that we need to praise our learners, but if we do not praise intelligence what can we praise? As an educator or learner with a growth mindset, we are aware that our abilities and talents are not unalterable, but can be progressive through our effort, knowledge, and guidance by adults and peers (RSA, 2015). As educators we want to praise ourselves and our learners for the process of that lead us to where we are at (RSA, 2015). When we praise the process and strategies other learners will hear, and try to incorporate those strategies to grow in the topic they are growing in. This will lead to learners and us wanting to put in effort and time to learn these strategies and processes to enhance our personal learning in the area or areas the processes where praised in. In result, our learners and ourselves will have been growing our growth mindset by putting in the effort, time, and motivation to grow ourselves as individuals, instead of depending on others. We can all be resilient in growing ourselves and our mindsets, but even with a growth mindset we must continue to put in effort, motivation, and willing to learn from others (Dweck, Dec 2014).