What is MINDSET?  I would like us to take a  look at a WATCH and how it works. Right from manufacture the watch has been set to work and as soon as it is purchased from the shop, its work has begun, it will work: tick, tick, tick nonstop until the owner decides otherwise. In the past the Swiss watches did not operate on BATTERIES, all one needed to do was to “wind it first thing in the morning and the watch has energy to work for the next twenty four hours. However, modern watches now have batteries and once the battery still has energy,all the mechanisms in  the watch will work perfectly well.

Therefore, one can see from this SIMPLE exercise that the WATCH (CLOCK) runs on   batteries for us to be able operate timeously. What about the Human Brain? Do we need to operate on batteries? And if on batteries. what type of batteries? You must realise that anytime one talks of the MINDSET, reference is being made to the Brain and how it works. The Biblical view is that our perfect God originally, having created us in His image, wanted our brains to work perfectly according to his purpose and plan. Once Satan was allowed access in the garden of eden and our (Brains) Mind became corrupted, it has been subject to many manipulations by so called POWERFUL personalities in public life like the imperialists,politicians,teachers, preachers in our time…….!

Our brains are set just lket the watch. As soon as the child is born and they take the first oxygen on earth, their brains are activated and they are set to work non-stop until the day of death when the oxygen is cut off. Therefore, to talk of the mindset, we are referring to how our brains work. In the past researchers never considered the brain as of any importance to spend time and resources to study how they work and it is the reason why in Africa as soon as a person shows any signs of fatigue in the brains they are cast out in  society as Mentally challenged. –they are mad. Modern studies on the brains and thus how the mind works have come up with ideas and suggestions on such matters that bother the brain such as  depression and other psychological problems could be treated and people lead normal lives

.Mindsets are beliefs—beliefs about yourself and your most basic qualities. Think about your intelligence, your talents, your personality. Are these qualities simply fixed traits, carved in stone and that’s that? Or are they things you can cultivate throughout your life?  Mindset is a simple idea discovered by world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck in decades of research on achievement and success—a simple idea that makes all the difference. She postulates that there are two kinds of Mindsets.Carol Dweck has come up with two type of mindsets: The Fixed Mindset and the Growth mindset

People with a fixed mindset believe that their traits are just given. They have a certain amount of brains and talent and nothing can change that. If they have a lot, they’re all set, but if they don’t that is it. So people in this mindset worry about their traits and how adequate they are. They have something to prove to themselves and others. In this category you get people who always complain and blame others when things do not go their way. Efforts is not part of their setup, but they live a life of chance, you will  often hear them say: If God permits, I will be rich someday, they live a life of hope, like waiting for something to happen, from where nobody can tell.

People with fixed mindset are most of the time miserable to be around because they don’t know anything about reaching their potential, to them whatever come their way, they deserve it, they don’t have to put in  any effort at all. What happens to them most of the time: Poverty

People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, see their qualities as things that can be developed through their dedication and effort. Sure they’re happy if they’re brainy or talented, but that’s just the starting point. They understand that no one has ever accomplished great things—not Mozart, Darwin, or Michael Jordan—without years of passionate practice and learning. People with Growth Mindset understand that until the day they die they would not accomplish their goal. To them, there is no limit to the heights they can scale, they are always looking for new ways of achieving things and as soon as one goal is achieved, they will embark upon new one. They are setting goals all the time and they make sure they are all attained. To the person with the Growth Mindset, there is  no rest as long as they can breathe, every time is an opportunity to do new things.

You can therefore see the world is what it is today because the pace setters never rested, as soon as one invention had taken place they thought of the next one, thus the strides in science and technology all came about because of those with Growth Mindset. (Excerpts from Carol Dweck.)

We at Ghanamindset believe that OUR minds like the watch were set during the colonial.imperialist rule to suit our colonisers. We are programmed pre-independence to behave the way that suited all those who colonised us. They used so many weapons and strategies to achieve that purpose. They told our public and civil servants that their wages would be waiting for them in heaven so they were paid peanuts. As they took our Gold, diamonds,bauxite, manganese,timber and every conceivable viable economic resource, we needed to wait until we die. The major cause of poverty and our gravitation towards low standard of living and development, stem from that mentality. Making the White Europeans  and everything foreign Prosperous  but it is good for the LAND owner, the African poor.

We need to rediscover our GROWTH MINDSET TO OVERCOME POVERTY, Ghanaians join me and  let’s work towards changing our mindset.

Author: Kofi Owusu-Ansah

(Co-Founder,Ghanamindset Institute, ww9.discussghana.com, www.ghanamindset.com ) 2011