The Mindset Mentor - Expectations Dictate Results

Episode Date: December 23, 2016

Episode 210 - In this episode I talk about how teachers expectations of their students will dictate their students results. If that is the case then how else can expectations dictate results in our lives? The fact is we grow into the expectations that are set for us from an early age and we can either succumb to them or break through them. Listen as I dive into this topic much more in depth. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Before we dive into today's episode, if you would like a free copy of our motivational ebook called Hack Your Goals, the Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving Success, go to mwfmotivation.com and download it. It's already been downloaded over a thousand times, so go ahead and get your copy now. All right, I'll get you the podcast right now. Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, which I am proud to say has been rated the number one podcast in iTunes new and noteworthy in six different categories, including self-help and business, and is the podcast designed to help you grow into the best version of yourself in 10 to 20 minutes. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we'll take a life topic, break it down, discuss it, and leave you with thoughts to impact your life and mind. My name is Rob Dial, and

the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode. If you have not yet done so, please subscribe to us, however you listen to us, whatever way you're listening to us, whatever player, just push subscribe so that you never miss another episode from us. And the other thing that I want to cover is if you don't like us on Facebook, join those people on Facebook with us, facebook.com slash MWF motivation. So you can get ahold of the early podcast, the early episodes when they come out, and you can get motivational stuff on your news feed instead of just all of the other crap that

sometimes fills it that you don't want to see. So today what we're going to talk about is how we grow as people into the expectations that are around us. And this came from a conversation that I actually had with someone, a friend of mine who taught school in Thailand. And this came from a conversation that I actually had with someone, a friend of mine, who taught school in Thailand. And what she was saying was that the Thailand, no matter what age they are, they have different rankings from the smartest kids of the classes they teach to put all the smartest kids together. Then they have the, it goes down from the smartest all the way to the dumbest. And what she said was that the kids who are the quote unquote dumbest, that's dumbest or stupidest.

That's the only words they can really use for this because that's what they use over in Thailand. Those were always by the time that they were in eighth, 10th, ninth, 11th grade, they were always the rowdiest, the hardest to get a hold of. And what I was talking about is how I read an article once by NPR and listened to a podcast on NPR that talked about how teachers' expectations will dictate how successful those children are going to be. It will dictate their results. So in that case, over in Thailand, if that's what they do, then if someone at the age of, let's say,

seven, eight, nine years old is thought of as a smart kid, then they will be treated as a smart kid and they will in turn grow much faster and become much smarter over that time. If someone is treated as a dumb kid for nine, ten years, they will then be quote unquote dumb or dumber than the other kids that were seen as smart. And main reason why is because of the teacher's expectations. And there was actually a study that was done on this. And what was happening was they were curious in the study, what would happen if you told teachers that certain students in their class, that some of those students were destined for greatness, that they could tell when a student was about to have a huge IQ boost. And what they did was they had these

teachers give out a standard IQ test. But the difference was on the front, the front cover of the test, it said Harvard test of inflected acquisition. And what they said, they said this test had the ability to predict which children were about to have, which ones were special, but also which ones were about to get a dramatic spike in their abilities and their IQs. And this was just a BS test. It wasn't able to actually, it wasn't from Harvard in the first place, but it wasn't able to predict anything. But what happened was they had all of these kids take this test and they had their teachers give it out. And then they chose children at random. And they said to the teachers, this class that we're going to give you,

just random selection is what it actually was. But what they told the teachers was, these children that we're going to give you, this class that you're going to have, they are destined to bloom. And they are destined to have a huge ability, a huge spike in ability and a huge spike in their IQ as well. And what they found out, and they recorded all of this, that over two years of teaching that the teacher's expectations

for the children affected the kid's ability. And what happened was they put those into, once again, randomly chosen children into one class. And what they found out was that no matter who the kid was, this random chosen one, was that the teachers taught so much more, had so much more patience and so much more belief and drive for these kids that those children, the random ones, completely random, had the biggest IQ spike out of any of all of the classes and all of the kids that they had in those two years. So what happened was the children weren't different. The teachers were different. And they found that the reason why is because their expectations affected the moment-to-moment interaction with their students. Now, why did

this happen? Well, let's give an example. Say Billy, some kid, is believed to be stupid. And the teacher asks, they say, hey, Billy, you know, what's the answer to this question? And Billy can't get it right away. And he takes a long pause before he actually answers. Well, then before they actually would give him a chance to answer, if he took a long time, is he would say, okay, Billy doesn't have it. Sarah, what do you think? And they would move on to the next kid. Now, if Billy was in one of the smart classes, quote unquote, you can't see my air quotes, one of the smart classes, and he had a favorable expectation, then when Billy went silent and was thinking,

instead of them skipping over Billy and going on to someone else, what they would do is the teacher they actually found thought, wow, Billy is a really thoughtful kid. He's actually taking more time to think this thought out and reply. So they gave him more of a chance. They gave him more of an opportunity to learn and to grow and to challenge himself. And they give these kids more time and the teacher will actually dive in deeper to help Billy throughout the process. And teachers teach those kids more as well as they were actually found to smile more, to nod more, and to touch those kids more, give them more of the interaction, interact, interactional cues to help those kids grow and foster their growth as well. So they found that it was thousands of different small little interactions, whether it was verbal,

whether it was nonverbal, whether it was giving more time, whether it was spending more time with these kids to actually have them grow. So this randomly chosen group of kids had a bigger spike in IQ than anybody else. It's all those thousands of different interactions. Now, that being said, is it possible to change the quote-unquote stupid kids? Well, it is because what actually what they found out was that the kids that weren't looked at as just in general, the difference between the quote-unquote stupid kids and the quote-unquote smart kids was that they gave less criticism to the smart kids. They gave them more time. They gave them more help. They actually were actually shown to, I'm completely messing my words up. They were shown to show more belief in those

kids, more praise in them when they got it right, which made the kids want to work harder and less anger towards them. So what can we learn with this? We can learn a couple of things. The way that you were treated as a child, whether it was your parents believing in you or not believing in you or calling you stupid, because I know some people out there, your parents thought you were stupid because you messed up and then that went into your subconscious and you thought you were stupid. Or your parents said you were smart and that you could do anything. And that helped you along the way. So number one, what can we learn from this is how we were treated as children will actually play into how we developed. Another thing we can learn from this is how we treat others around us and how we build them up

and how we actually give them time and we help them and we challenge them, all of those things make them better as well. So if you have children, what can you take from this? If you have friends and family and significant others and loved ones, how can you take this and realize that your expectations for them, and once again, this is not pushing them and making them do things they don't want to do, but your expectations for them will either foster their growth of becoming a better person, a smarter person, or it will hinder their growth of becoming a better person and a smarter person as well. Everyone around you will grow or not grow depending on your expectations that you have for them. And once again, I'm not saying push them. I'm saying assist in their growth.

Be the lighthouse. If you haven't listened to the lighthouse versus the towboat episode that I had, go back and listen to that. Be the lighthouse for them. Now, also another thing that we can learn is how our expectations for ourselves dictate how we treat ourselves and how we grow as well.

We will grow to the expectations that we have for ourselves dictate how we treat ourselves and how we grow as well. We will grow to the expectations that we have for ourselves. If you think you're dumb, then you will allow yourself to do dumb things and you'll think, oh, well, I just did that because I'm dumb. If you think you're smart, well, then you will push yourself to find answers. If you think you are driven, well, then you will have more drive. And once again, this all goes back to your beliefs of yourself. Episode 95, I talk about beliefs. I talk about actions. I talk about results. What you believe in yourself will dictate the actions that you put into it.

And the more actions you put into it, the better results you get. If you believe that you're dumb, though, and you believe that you can't do things, and you believe you're not as smart as people, well, then you will not put as much accident to everything that you do, which will then hinder your results. If you believe more in yourself, you believe that you're smart, you believe that you can get through it, you believe that you're motivated, you will then put more action into it and you will get better results.

So expectations for yourself and expectations for everyone around you will dictate your growth and will dictate their growth as well. So if you want yourself and everyone around you to grow, to become better and to be better in everything that they do, you must make sure that you take the time and give the time to the people that need it the most, but then also take the time and give the time to the people that need it the most, but then also take the time and give yourself the time to learn and to grow into these things as well. So expectations actually have a 100% connection with the results that people will get and the growth they will get as well. So with that, I want to leave you the same way I leave you every

single episode. Make it your mission today to make somebody else's day better. And if you like this episode, if you know somebody else that would be able to get something from it and would really be able to grow from it as well and could really use it, all I ask is that you just share this with a friend and help them grow along the way. With that, I hope that you have an amazing day and I appreciate you as well. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at mwfmotivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can.

And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Both handles are at MWFMotivation with no spaces. Now you know what time it is. So go out and make your dreams a reality. Outro Music