Medina Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Medina. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Take care not to listen to anyone who tells you what you can and can't be in life.
Meg Medina (The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind)
El amor no necesita se perfecto, sólo necesita ser verdadero. Y eso era lo que yo estaba buscando
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Alex said. “This is Medina Station under occupation by a bunch of splinter Martian military expats. It’s not Baltimore.” Amos’ smile was as placid as always. “Everywhere’s Baltimore.
James S.A. Corey (Persepolis Rising (The Expanse, #7))
The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation.
Josef Pieper (Happiness and Contemplation)
No me considero una chica normal, con aspiraciones comunes y pensamientos convencionales. Me ha sido difícil encajar en la sociedad, la gente me mira como si fuera de otro planeta...tal vez tengan razón.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
No trates de buscarme en los sueños, porque yo dejaré de invitarte a los míos.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Each time we use our cell phones, snap pictures with a camera, or use a search engine’s algorithms, we benefit from the legacy of Muhammad’s modern mindset. His mindset is not tied to Mecca or Medina, for as the Golden Age political philosopher Al-Farabi observed, “Medina is not a location but the manner in which a community comes together.” Indeed, people of any culture or race can establish a “place of flowing change.” As Muhammad declared in the final days of his life, “My progeny are those who uphold my legacy!
Mohamad Jebara (Muhammad, the World-Changer: An Intimate Portrait)
You never forget the books you loved as a kid. You never forget the poems you memorized, the first book you read until the cover fell off, the book you read hidden from your mother. What an honor to hold hands with a child's imagination in this way.
Meg Medina
Sometimes it's hard to wait for good things to happen. - Tia Isa
Meg Medina
Children have never been good at listening to their parents, but they have never failed to imitate them.
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
Es importante tener un cómplice. No es indispensable, pero parece buena idea contar con alguien que también provenga de aquel lugar. Ojos que conocieron la misma guerra, que perdieron la misma patria.
Alaíde Ventura (Entre los rotos (Spanish Edition))
Buena suerte: que nadie tenga que cuidarte. Mala suerte: que nadie te cuide.
Alaíde Ventura (Entre los rotos (Spanish Edition))
All she really wanted to do was sleep, but it seemed her awareness level was operating at peak efficiency, for some reason.
Jason Medina (The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel)
We are bound to expire Even metal which is sturdiest, Rusts. Even oxygen, the breath of life, Soon transpires. 8/6/11 -Luis Medina
luigi komrad
If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. If you wanted to create a business environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a cubicle. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to tear down both and start over.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Book & DVD))
Moría de miedo, pero me sentía más valiente que nunca
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
She gazed at him alluringly and grinned. No further words were necessary.
Jason Medina (A Ghost In New Orleans)
siempre intentábamos ver esa chispa o magia en las cosas que generalmente las personas ven como algo común. Algo así como admirar las cosas como un niño lo haría, sin perder esa inocencia y capacidad de asombro.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
The ‘Islamic State’, that strange miscegenation of Medina with Westphalia, is always in mortal danger of linking the moral austerity of monotheism with the repressive and supervisor powers of the modern nation state.
Abdal Hakim Murad (Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions)
We must do a better job of encouraging lifelong curiosity.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Book & DVD))
No sé su nombre y ella no sabe que existo, lo cuál confirma mi pensamiento...soy patético.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
De pronto él llegó con las estrellas, materializándose a mi lado, como una especie de fantasma.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Sus brillantes ojos estaban llenos de bondad y esperanza, sus labios que nunca habían encontrado los míos sonreían ante la ilusión de encontrarme...
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Dadas las circunstancias hice lo que cualquier otro simple mortal haría en mi lugar...toqué el timbre.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Si no supiera la verdad pensaría que despertarla sería un crimen.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
What you do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like—it literally rewires it.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
My confessor? ... Neither he, nor anyone else, God is my confessor.
Lucila Gamero de Medina (Blanca Olmedo)
...but I realized now that love was more than a feeling. Love was something you did for another person...
Sherry Jones (The Jewel of Medina)
Sai bene che quando l’amore si spegne è più freddo della morte. Il problema è che le due parti in causa non si spengono contemporaneamente e quando sei la parte ancora accesa, preferiresti essere morto.
Efraim Medina Reyes (Érase una vez el amor pero tuve que matarlo. Música de Sex Pistols y Nirvana)
One of the greatest predictors of successful aging, they found, is the presence or absence of a sedentary lifestyle. Put
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
El silencio es glorioso, ya que no escuchar nada, quiere decir que todo marcha bien.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Por un lado tengo miedo de equivocarme, de creer que él es quien he estado buscando pero que sea sólo un obstáculo entre lo que debería ser.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Trate de concentrarme y dejar de psicoanalizar a mi psicoanalista
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
...no tener que esperar a dormir para comenzar a vivir.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Así como tu me llamas a tus sueños, yo te llamaré a la realidad
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Growing up is like walking through glass doors that only open one way--you can see where you came from but can't go back.
Meg Medina (Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass)
Tengo el alma en su sitio, quiero ir más allá.
Efraim Medina Reyes (Érase una vez el amor pero tuve que matarlo. Música de Sex Pistols y Nirvana)
Un día me resigné y decidí dejarlo vivir en paz. Él no me molesta a mi, yo no lo molesto a él con ridículas diademas, moñitos o ligas.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Tal vez ella tiene razón...tal vez apareció en mi vida para que la salvara
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
...podría estar con una chica más linda, más atractiva y femenina, sobretodo...alguien que estuviera consciente, que pudiera disfrutar del mundo real a su lado.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Studies show that a person who is interrupted takes 50 percent longer to accomplish a task. Not only that, he or she makes up to 50 percent more errors.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
You may think that grown-ups create children. The reality is that children create grown-ups. They become their own person, and so do you. Children give so much more than they take.
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
What are words if you really don't mean them when you say them?
Chris Medina
There is nothing wrong with being weird. Anyone who tells you different is only trying to be normal, which is too weird for me.
Jason Medina
Having a first child is like swallowing an intoxicating drink made of equal parts joy and terror, chased with a bucketful of transitions nobody ever tells you about.
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
The unknown scares man, but those who confront it, will cease to fear it" (Rodolfo Rios Medina)
Rodolfo Rios Medina (BEYOND OBSCURITY)
Muhammad adhered meticulously to the charter he forged for Medina, which - grounded as it was in the Quranic injunction, "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256) - is arguably the first mandate for religious tolerance in human history.
Huston Smith
...¡Querer que yo no la vea!¡Querer que no me le acerque, es pedir al pájaro que no cante, al sol que no alumbre, a la mariposa que no busque la luz, a los ojos que no vean, al corazón que no ame, al alma que no sienta, a mí, que no sea humano!
Lucila Gamero de Medina (Blanca Olmedo)
We know Jesus taught that if someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to the left. We know that Mohammed was sacked from his village and stoned at Ta'if, but he quietly left for Medina. If both of these men, beaten, and bloodied—the incarnations of their respective faiths—asked God to forgive their aggressors, then who were today's religious leaders to advocate holy war?
Eliza Griswold
You know where this Yaqui girl is going to be in a few years if she doesn't change? She'll still be there, same as always in her old neighborhood--a nobody with nothing. And guess what? That's her worst fear.
Meg Medina (Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass)
Prefiero estar bajo la supervisión de Dios, y ser moldeada aunque duela; que estar bajo el pie del enemigo y sentir que no valgo nada
Theiska Castillo Medina (Se Fijó en mí)
¿Para qué quieres soñar con algo que no es real? ¡Vive tu vida y ya! Necesitas olvidarte de Leila, pero necesitas olvidarla conscientemente, no mientras duermes.
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
No es que no quiera olvidar a Leila, es que quiero conocer a Sarah
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Sin haberse dado cuenta, el exchimuelo me había proporcionado información valiosa
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
Emotionally charged events are better remembered—for longer, and with more accuracy—than neutral events.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
The most common communication mistakes? Relating too much information, with not enough time devoted to connecting the dots.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
It happened so fast. No one had time to do anything, but watch.
Jason Medina (The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel)
No temas, mi amor; primero dejaré de existir antes de amarte.
Lucila Gamero de Medina (Blanca Olmedo)
Your soul will find me.. and when it does, I will make love to it in a way that no one will understand.
Carlos Medina
How People Learn. If you want people to be able to pay attention, don’t start with details. Start with the key ideas and, in a hierarchical fashion, form the details around these larger notions. Meaning before details.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
The problem in today’s economy is that people are typically starting a family at the very time they are also supposed to be doing their best work. They are trying to be productive at some of the most stressful times of their lives. What if companies took this unhappy collision of life events seriously? They could offer Gottman’s intervention as a benefit for every newly married, or newly pregnant, employee.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School (Book & DVD))
He looked upwards at the brilliant blue sky. It was high noon because the sun was right overhead. The clouds danced around slowly, while drifting across the sky. He closed his eyes and felt the warmth of the sun glowing orange on his eyelids. It was a wonderful feeling.
Jason Medina (A Ghost In New Orleans)
Trying to forge my own destiny had nearly destroyed me, but his love held the power to heal.
Sherry Jones (The Jewel of Medina)
When I write now, I pretend I'm holding hands with the old me. I try to make sense of all those questions for her...
Meg Medina
We are never alone God will always be with us.
Edwin Medina
Cuando visito a un doctor de la vista mi carta de presentación es: "¡Hola! Y no...no tengo glaucoma. Mi nervio óptico mide el doble de lo normal
Carla Medina
He began to feel overwhelmingly guilty for still being alive, while others continued to die around him.
Jason Medina (The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel)
Whatever happens, I’m glad we met. You’ve made the past few days more bearable for me. Thank you.
Jason Medina (The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel)
We are trained fighting machines. Peace is not an option for us. We’re jarheads. What the hell do we know about peace?
Jason Medina (No Hope For The Hopeless At Kings Park)
(preschoolers demand some form of attention 180 times per hour, behavioral psychologists say),
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
Cruz has never been my favorite person, I'll give you that. But an enemy? There's no sense i having those if we can help it" -Papi
Meg Medina (Merci Suárez Changes Gears)
People view their own behaviors as originating from amendable, situational constraints,but they view other people's behavior as originating from inherent, immutable personality traits.
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
The Prophet once said to his Companions, “Do you want to see a man of Paradise?” A man then passed by, and the Prophet said, “That man is of the people of Paradise.” One of Companion of the Prophet wanted to find out what it was about this man that earned him such a commendation from the Messenger of God , so he decided to spend some time with this man and observe him closely. He noticed that this man did not perform the night prayer vigil (tahajjud) or do anything extraordinary. He appeared to be an average man of Medina. The Companion finally told the man what the Prophet had said about him and asked if he did anything special. The man replied, “The only thing that I can think of, other than what everybody else does, is that I make sure that I never sleep with any rancor in my heart towards another.” That was his secret.
Hamza Yusuf (Purification of the Heart: Signs, Symptoms and Cures of the Spiritual Diseases of the Heart)
There are four nutrients you will want in your behavioral formula, adjusting them as your baby gets older: breast-feeding, talking to your baby, guided play, and praising effort rather than accomplishment. Brain research tells us there are also several toxins: pushing your child to perform tasks his brain is not developmentally ready to take on; stressing your child to the point of a psychological state termed “learned helplessness”; and, for the under-2 set, television.
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
I don't know what is going to happen next year, no one does. But that's OK. I can handle it, I decide. It's just a harder gear, and I am ready. All I have to do is take a deep breath and ride.
Meg Medina (Merci Suárez Changes Gears)
He could have been invisible and it wouldn’t have made a difference to them. He didn’t care, so long as he felt at ease, which was his original intention. He wasn’t there to make friends, nor did he want to.
Jason Medina (A Ghost In New Orleans)
The brain appears to be designed to (1) solve problems (2) related to surviving (3) in an unstable outdoor environment, and (4) to do so in nearly constant motion. I call this the brain’s performance envelope.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
How can you say bad things about someone you don’t know?” I shout. “How can you hate a stranger? Why do you have to pick on people?” she’s not better than Yaqui. It’s like everywhere there’s a bully in my face.
Meg Medina (Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass)
Medina is shorter and not as physically gifted as Susan, but she has this intangible something that drives men crazy. Her tangible isn’t bad either- she’s five feet five inches of brown skin and killer curves, and those brown eyes of hers could charm cash from a miser. Help me, Jesus. Nate Carter in Long Term, from The Soul Of A Man
Maurice M. Gray Jr.
La vida tiene varias dimensiones pero estamos condenados a elegir e ignorar las demás. Estamos condenados a sentir que, por bien que estemos, nuestra elección fue incorrecta. Estamos condenados a vivir con alguien mientras deseamos día tras día a otros. Estamos condenados a mentir, a dar besos fríos, a seguir dando golpes en la oscuridad fingiendo una pasión que se fue hace años. ¿Por qué lo hacemos? El miedo a aceptar el fracaso podría ser una de las razones.
Efraim Medina Reyes (Sexualidad de la Pantera Rosa)
The more parents talk to their children, even in the earliest moments of life, the better their kids’ linguistic abilities become
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
- Darío - El protector
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
¿qué pasaría con la fortuna del padre de Leila, en caso de que ella no estuviera ni viva ni muerta?
Carla Medina (Soñando Despierta)
I wish I were a bird. I’d fly all the way up to the clouds and look down on this place, and then I’d go far away and never come back.
Jason Medina (No Hope For The Hopeless At Kings Park)
Being the Novelist-in-Residence at a riad hotel in the kasbah of an Arabic North African city is a lot like trying to write one’s memoirs on shreds of napkins in a nuthouse.
Roman Payne
The more you exercise, the more tissues you can feed and the more toxic waste you can remove.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
After years of investigating aging populations, researchers’ answer to the question of how much is not much. If all you do is walk several times a week, your brain will benefit. Even
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
I have identified five precepts central to the faith that have made it resistant to historical change and adaptation. Only when these five things are recognized as inherently harmful and when they are repudiated and nullified will a true Muslim Reformation have been achieved. The five things to be reformed are: 1. Muhammad’s semi-divine and infallible status along with the literalist reading of the Qur’an, particularly those parts that were revealed in Medina; 2. The investment in life after death instead of life before death; 3. Sharia, the body of legislation derived from the Qur’an, the hadith, and the rest of Islamic jurisprudence; 4. The practice of empowering individuals to enforce Islamic law by commanding right and forbidding wrong; 5. The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now)
In early 2002, as part of a new personal ritual, he took time after the holidays to think and read. (In this respect, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who also took such annual think weeks, served as a positive example.) Returning to the company after a few weeks, Bezos presented his next big idea to the S Team in the basement of his Medina, Washington, home. The entire company, he said, would restructure itself around what he called “two-pizza teams.” Employees would be organized into autonomous groups of fewer than ten people—small enough that, when working late, the team members could be fed with two pizza pies. These teams would be independently set loose on Amazon’s biggest problems.
Brad Stone (The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon)
As I stood in front of the mirror in the beautiful little black dress, I knew that I was looking at a woman whom I would never see again. I wished I had never seen her in the first place, but the truth is she had always been there. I was being dishonest to myself by pretending that she hadn't.
Jane L. Rosen (Nine Women, One Dress)
I can tell within a glance if someone hates me. Sometimes it only takes one word. Other times, it’s those subtle nonverbal cues – a shift of the eyes or arms folded over a chest in an attempt to hide all of that hate inside that’s dying to bore through their chest and grip mine until I choke or die. Nico Medina is subtle about it. It’s the way he doesn’t look at me, and how he breathes when I speak – the sound of air filling his chest so heavy I think it may just turn into fire and come back at me in flames.
Ginger Scott (The Hard Count)
Over the long term, however, too much adrenaline produces scarring on the insides of your blood vessels. These scars become magnets for molecules to accumulate, creating lumps called plaques. These can grow large enough to block the blood vessels. If it happens in the blood vessels of your heart, you get a heart attack; in your brain, you get a stroke.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
The number of his wives is uncertain. Abulfeda, who writes with more caution than other of the Arabian historians, limits it to fifteen, though some make it as much as twenty-five. At the time of his death he had nine, each in her separate dwelling, and all in the vicinity of the mosque at Medina. The plea alleged for his indulging in a greater number of wives than he permitted to his followers, was a desire to beget a race of prophets for his people. If such indeed were his desire, it was disappointed. Of all his children, Fatima the wife of Ali alone survived him, and she died within a short time after his death. Of her descendants, none excepting her eldest son Hassan ever sat on the throne of the Caliphs.
Washington Irving (Life of Mohammed)
It was Ma who first noticed my body changing, but she wasn't exactly tactful about my getting cuerpo. "Put on a bra already, Piddy," she said after she noticed a man on the bus gawking at my chest one day. "You can't go around with two loose onions in your shirt for all the boys to stare at," she snapped, like it was my fault that the man had helped himself to the show.
Meg Medina (Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass)
Jill was born into an inner-city home. Her father began having sex with Jill and her sister during their preschool years. Her mother was institutionalized twice because of what used to be termed “nervous breakdowns.” When Jill was 7 years old, her agitated dad called a family meeting in the living room. In front of the whole clan, he put a handgun to his head, said, “You drove me to this,” and then blew his brains out. The mother’s mental condition continued to deteriorate, and she revolved in and out of mental hospitals for years. When Mom was home, she would beat Jill. Beginning in her early teens, Jill was forced to work outside the home to help make ends meet. As Jill got older, we would have expected to see deep psychiatric scars, severe emotional damage, drugs, maybe even a pregnancy or two. Instead, Jill developed into a charming and quite popular young woman at school. She became a talented singer, an honor student, and president of her high-school class. By every measure, she was emotionally well-adjusted and seemingly unscathed by the awful circumstances of her childhood. Her story, published in a leading psychiatric journal, illustrates the unevenness of the human response to stress. Psychiatrists long have observed that some people are more tolerant of stress than others.
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
First, it is a commitment to particularism, to giving priority to the specificity of particulars, not to abstractions and generalities that divert our attention away from concrete realities. Idealizations tend to be partial and distorting, obscuring the heterogeneity and complexity of actual experiences and concrete practices, which is why they do not provide an adequate standpoint for the diagnosis of social problems and injustices.
José Medina (The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations (Studies in Feminist Philosophy))
Alas! We really do not choose the ending of a journey, especially journeys that transforn1 our lives. For women, security would never return to the city. No more than dreams, can a journey back in time change the fact that the Medina of women would be forever frozen in its violent posture. From then on, women would have to walk the streets of uncaring, unsafe cities, ever watchful, wrapped in their hijab. The veil, which was intended to protect them from violence in the street, would accompany them for centuries, whatever the security situation of the city. For them, peace would never return. Muslim women were to display their hijab everywhere, the vestige of a civil war that would never come to an end.
Fatema Mernissi (The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam)
Today, Medina is simultaneously the archetype of Islamic democracy and the impetus for Islamic militancy. Islamic Modernists like the Egyptian writer and political philosopher Ali Abd ar-Raziq (d. 1966) pointed to Muhammad’s community in Medina as proof that Islam advocated the separation of religious and temporal power, while Muslim extremists in Afghanistan and Iran have used the same community to fashion various models of Islamic theocracy. In their struggle for equal rights, Muslim feminists have consistently drawn inspiration from the legal reforms Muhammad instituted in Medina, while at the same time, Muslim traditionalists have construed those same legal reforms as grounds for maintaining the subjugation of women in Islamic society. For some, Muhammad’s actions in Medina serve as the model for Muslim-Jewish relations; for others, they demonstrate the insurmountable conflict that has always existed, and will always exist, between the two sons of Abraham. Yet regardless of whether one is labeled a Modernist or a Traditionalist, a reformist or a fundamentalist, a feminist or a chauvinist, all Muslims regard Medina as the model of Islamic perfection. Simply put, Medina is what Islam was meant to be.
Reza Aslan (No God But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam)
Many families actively discourage the expression of tough emotions like fear and anger. Happiness and tranquility, meanwhile, make it to the top of the list of “approved” emotions. There is no such thing as a bad emotion. There is no such thing as a good emotion. An emotion is either there—or it is not. These parents seem to know that emotions don’t make people weak and they don’t make people strong. They only make people human. The result is a savvy let-the-children-be-who-they-are attitude. -They do not judge emotions. -They acknowledge the reflexive nature of emotions. -They know that behavior is a choice, even though an emotion is not. -They see a crisis as a teachable moment.
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)
Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic.   Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed. What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’   Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen:   First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort.   Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.)   Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure.       What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’   What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.
John Medina (Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five)