Growth Mindset

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The definition of the growth mindset for me is the state of openness to continuous development. Because it is continuous, the growth mindset is easier said than done and it is a process that starts when you born and lasts up until you die.

You will never be able to fully catch up with growth. You will try, read and develop yourself up to a very high standard but these efforts still will be insufficient. You will admire the power of the universe because a lot of things are still unknown and you still don’t know everything.

I have argued for long time that this mentality should be taught in the universities, not an abstract course itself. It does not really matter what you study; it matters how you develop yourself to update your operating system.

One of the biggest selling points of smartphones is simple: They get frequent operating system updates that enable the phones to develop themselves continuously. Otherwise you would need to change them much more frequently, and your current handset would be useless more quickly.

Just like humans.

If one believes that he knows everything and that there is nothing to learn and nobody to get to know, the probability of becoming useless in the very near future increases significantly. And there are many people around like this, even in the high levels.

You should exclude these people from your circle because they can be poisonous.

If, after graduating from university, you still don’t have this mentality, you simply don’t have it. You can survive, but you will survive just like any other breathing animal on the planet.

As you may recall, my book review on Homo sapiens mentioned that Homo sapiens start developing because they confess that ‘we don’t know’.

When one believe that he knows everything, he is excluding himself from the outside world and new updates.

The growth mindset opens you for the world of opportunities, and we are living in our narrow world which some of us think is very big.

It is not, especially nowadays.

I wrote these sentences from beloved and cold London. It is always good to be back to London.

All the best.

Sukru Haskan
@sukru_haskan

Brexit: Will it really happen?

Britain is going for another referendum on June 23rd to decide whether to accept the EU reforms or leave the EU. On the street, people are referring to the referendum as the Brexit and the real question is: Will it really happen?

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I really don’t think so.

Since David Cameron declared that he would re-negotiate the relationship with the EU in 2013, I see the whole process as a well-rehearsed theatrical play. There are some good cops and bad cops in the play, but the agenda and the outcome are very well planned ahead.

The good cops are the ones who are very happy with the “special status” obtained from the EU after hard negotiations led by David Cameron.

This group is very happy, since concessions have been obtained and the UK is now a “privileged” member of the union. Of course, nothing should be shown as having been won easily at someone else’s expense, so there the bad cops kick in and the theatre starts.

The other group of people are still not really happy with the EU after the “special status” and they want the UK to leave the EU regardless.

Within this group, there are two distinct sub-groups: genuine politicians who really want the UK to leave the EU, since they are populist politicians, without calculating the damage to the UK; and the others, there to play the bad cop for the drama or for their own personal interest.

Currently half a dozen cabinet members are in favour of leaving the EU; however, most of the cabinet members want the UK to stay in Europe. Boris Johnson’s decision to campaign to leave the EU was an eye opener for the political arena as well as the financial markets.

Sterling dropped from 1.44 to 1.39 against the US dollar.

If the referendum result is to leave the EU in June, David Cameron will be a definite loser and, since Boris Johnson is the strongest candidate for the Tory leadership, the probability that he will win the most desired seat earlier becomes significantly higher.

It is good to remember that this is not the first time that the British public has voted to stay in or leave the EU, and the Conservatives have a good record of being split on important issues, going back to the late nineteenth century and, more recently, the 1990s, when its own MPs prepared the end of Thatcher’s eleven year premiership. In other words, they opened the door for 13 years of Labour leadership.

The UK is currently the world’s fifth biggest economy and it is the fifth largest spender on defence. The EU takes almost half of the UK’s exports and the UK takes less than ten per cent of the EU’s. A decision to leave the EU will definitely harm both sides and a Brexit will create a more dominant Germany in the EU, which I am not sure many of the member states will be happy to see.

Arguably, it may open the door for other members to re-negotiate their status with the alliance, and the models of Norway or Switzerland could be preferable for future members rather than joining the union.

One may discuss the capabilities of the UK in the current world, but nobody can ignore that Britain is still a top notch leader when it comes to politics.

Why would such a political genius open the door for another referendum for Scotland to leave the UK, financial companies to relocate their headquarters and a huge volume of transactions to move out of the UK, especially at a time when “special status” has already been granted from the EU, thanks to Prime Minister David Cameron?

It is simply another well acted piece of theatre.

All the best from Singapore.

Sukru Haskan
Twitter: @sukru_haskan