13 - Tools on Loan

In this episode we discuss how everyone can change, and we are not defined by our natural gifts, but by the effort we put forth.

I'm Menachem Iehrfield, and this is Zero Percent, where we explore world changing ideas. The past couple of weeks, we've been exploring the acronym, be free. Looking at Carol Dweck's growth mindset research from a Jewish perspective, seeing how we learn so many of these ideas and concepts through classic Jewish sources and topics of Jewish thought. We talked about the idea of be curious, asking questions, focusing on questions, constantly being open to learning and to acknowledging what we don't know as a way of learning more. Not just looking smart, but trying to be smart. We talked about the idea of enjoying the journey, embracing life's challenges and understanding that life is a process and life is a journey. And if we fail to recognize and focus on that journey and we're so overly consumed with the end result, we miss out on life. Ultimately, the end result is outside of our hands, so the journey is all we have.
We learned and focused on the idea that failure is not a permanent condition. I may make a mistake, but that doesn't mean that I am a mistake. Failure is where we learn the most. We learn from our mistakes. We grow from our mistakes. Mistakes are human, and they're not meant to be covered over and avoided, but rather acknowledged and learned from. We talked about the idea of recognizing the uniqueness of each person, how every single person is unique. How every single person, every [inaudible], every internal reality is different just as every pun of every face is different. And how no two people have ever looked completely identical, just as no two people are the same inside. Every person is different. Every person is unique and we need to approach people and especially our children as the unique beings that they are and not just make the assumption that everyone is the same and everyone needs the same thing.
We explore the importance of effort and understanding that effort is a key to mastery and not a sign of weakness. What truly matters is not how far I've come, what matters is how far I've come from where I started. And because effort is so important, and because effort is what defines who I am as a person, when I focus on effort, it helps me grow and become better and improve in every area of my life. We explained that the Jewish heroes are not the overnight successes. They're not the people who are born with tremendous intellect or charisma or power or wealth, but rather the person who worked as hard as they possibly could, the person who worked to achieve their success. And that leads us to our topic for today. This week, we're exploring the idea that everyone can change.
Because effort is a key to mastery, the more effort I put in, the more I reach a level of mastery. And as a result of that, I am not defined by my natural gifts or the way I am right now. I am defined by the effort I put forth. I am the sum total of the choices I make based on the difficulty of those choices. There's a Calvin and Hobbes clip that Carol Dweck includes in her book Mindset, where Susie's studying and Calvin comes up to her and says, "What are you doing, homework?" And she said, "I wasn't sure I understood this chapter so I reviewed my notes from last chapter and now I'm reading this." So Calvin looks at her surprised and says, "You do all that work?" And she says, "Now I understand it." And as Calvin walks away, he mutters to himself, "Huh? I used to think you were smart."
Calvin's response is indicative of a culture where we are so convinced that people's value and worth is based on their natural abilities. And in his mind, if you were smart, you wouldn't need to try. You wouldn't need to study. And the very fact that you're doing so shows that you don't have the natural gifts to do it on your own. That is a classic fixed mindset way of looking at the world and it's antithetical to everything Judaism stands for. Judaism teaches that effort is always the key to mastery, that we can never accomplish anything without putting in the effort. In the book of Jeremiah, the prophet says, so said God, a wise man should not praise himself with his wisdom. A strong man should not praise himself with his strength. A rich man should not praise himself with his wealth. Those are not the things that we are proud of.
Those are not things that define who we are. We are proud of what we do with our wealth, what we do with our wisdom, what we do with our influence, what we do with our strength. Like we talked about in the praise episode, if I rent tools from Home Depot and all I do is show them off and I don't do anything with the tools, when the rental period is up, I give the tools back and I have nothing to show for myself. But if instead I use those tools to build a house, when the rental period is up and I give the tools away, I have a house to show for myself. The almighty gave us so many skills and talents, but they're not meant for us to use as crutches. They're not meant for us to coast through life, getting by on them. They're meant for us to use those, to make ourselves and the world a better place, to apply effort and to change ourselves and the world through those skills and talents.
If we define ourselves by our natural gifts, if we define ourselves and others by the natural abilities that we have, instead of what we do with those abilities, then we are setting ourselves and our children up for a life of mediocrity. Why settle for mediocre when you can be great? A person's value is not based on the God-given gifts for which he or she has been endowed. Those are tools on loan like the tools I borrow from Home Depot. Only that which is built with those tools matters. That's why it's so detrimental to praise a person's abilities instead of their effort, because it reinforces to them erroneously that what matters is the abilities that they're given. So why put in the effort, why try? The Talmudic Ethics tells [foreign language] had five students and he would enumerate each one of their praises.
And the [foreign language], one of the commentators on the Talmud explains the reason why he enumerated their praise was because he knew that they naturally were not inclined to these things, but they worked on themselves and through their diligence and through their effort, they developed these character traits. He says, this needs to be the case because otherwise why would he have even considered those their accomplishments? If they didn't work for them, then those aren't their accomplishments. And besides why on earth would the Talmud tell us of these praises if there's nothing we can learn from it? If I wasn't born with the same level of intellect as these great rabbis, then this is completely irrelevant to me. If the Talmud is sharing it, it means that something that I can learn from. But I've always been a little bit conflicted about teaching this episode from the Mishnah in the context of the growth mindset research. On one hand, Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was considered a great teacher because his students became so great.
And the Talmud is telling us how they became so great. They became great because their teacher had focused praise. He didn't just praise them generally. He praised them specifically for areas that they worked on, areas that they put in effort. He praised them specifically for the areas that they personally excelled at. He showed each of them where their particular strength lay, and that is so crucial and so important in building up students. But the following Mishnah seems very different. It explains that the same Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai used to say, if all the sages of Israel were in one scale of a balance and [foreign language] was in the other, he would outweigh them all. However, [Abba Scholl] said in his name, if all the sages of Israel, including [foreign language] were in one scale and [foreign language] in the other, he would outweigh them all.
So here he singles out two students and essentially is praising them, not for their effort, but for their natural ability. Saying they were so much smarter, naturally more gifted. So is he an example of proper praise? Of praise that builds a growth mindset? Or the opposite? I came across an essay from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of lesson memory, where he explains that perhaps [foreign language] was responsible for the tragic aftermath of these two great sages. He had these five students, three of them remained great. And two of his two most promising students ended up going off the deep end. The Talmud relates that [foreign language] ended up getting excommunicated by his colleagues, because he failed to accept the majority view on a Jewish matter of law. So essentially he wasn't willing to accept the majority opinion because he had a fixed mindset. He believed that he was right and there nothing to learn from them.

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