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Yes, that confidence is important. If there's one thing all children deserve, it's being called great.

The Terrible Truth:

Encouragement ... is awful? Yes, but there's something of a caveat here: Some kinds of encouragement are good, because painting that fence pure black or pure white is idiotic. Still, other kinds of encouragement will reduce you to some kind of lumbering dummy dum-dum. So how do you tell the difference?

It's simple: Praising someone for doing a whole bunch of work or putting a ton of effort into something will help them succeed. Praising them for being "a natural" or "gifted" doesn't. It's pretty easy to see why: When someone tells you "Good job for working hard!" your mind connects the praise to the hard work, which makes you want to work harder. Being praised for being a perfect little slab of brilliance that burps symphonies and sweats champagne makes you feel like your very existence is an accomplishment, and that you'll just naturally keep creating greatness no matter what. And that's how supertwats are made.

Warner Bros.

"My job experiences are: fisherman, hobo, and bar back. But, I believe I can be

a reporter for a Pulitzer-winning newspaper. How hard can it be?"

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People are born with natural abilities, sure, but mastering something takes a metric fuckton of effort in virtually every instance, ever. Telling people they're naturally good at something perpetuates the illusion that success can just spontaneously appear in an effort vacuum. Telling people that they're gifted or a "genius" makes them feel good, but hell, so does heroin.