Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead and Live without Barriers

by Jo Boaler

When we learn, we change what we believe and how we interact with the world. This changes who we are as people and what we can achieve.

Many people grow up being told they are 'not a maths person' or perhaps 'not smart'. They come to believe their potential is limited.

Now, however, the latest science has revealed that our identities are constantly in flux; when we learn new things, we can change our identities, increase our potential and broaden our capacity to receive new information.

Drawing from the latest research, Professor Boaler followed thousands of school students, studied their learning practices and examined the most effective ways to transform pupils from low to high achievers. Throughout her study, Boaler has collaborated with Stanford University neuroscience experts, harnessing their expertise to reinforce her advanced understanding of learning and educational development.

In Limitless Mind, Boaler presents original groundbreaking research that proves that limiting beliefs really do hold us back from fulfilling our potential and that with a few careful life hacks we can transform our potential for good.

• ISBN13: 9780008305673
• Publish Date: 15 October 2020 (first published 3 September 2019)
• Publish Status: Cancelled
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Thorsons
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[Joséphine]

Initial thoughts: I wish I had known more about learning capacities when I was still in school. As much as I believed that intellectual aptitude was not gender-specific, I did nearly fall through the cracks in mathematics because I didn't think I had the talent to do well in it.

I enjoyed solving proofs for various theorems and formulae in ninth and tenth grades and consistently outdid my classmates but when it came to working out these problems. Yet, when it came to exams, I also was always at the bottom. I didn't do well in timed tests that required us to merely memorise stuff to solve questions. Didn't see much of a point, but also felt pretty stupid compared to the rest.

Going from doing Math Olympiad as a kid to just about scraping by A Level Math made me pretty anxious about statistics in university as well because I nearly thought it was too late for me to catch up. I still figured things out in the end, but that was partly because compared to my course mates then, I was better at math, which gave me a bit of a confidence boost.

At the end of the day though, it doesn't matter where you are right now. What matters is that that you give yourself the time to sit down, figure things out, find methods that work better for you, and then progress from there. It's okay not to know all the answers, to ask questions, and to struggle. That's precisely how new connections in the brain are formed to enable further learning, regardless of age.