The Writer

The myths of you

For the last few months, I’ve been studying The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias, a book by social psychologist Dolly Chugh. It details how to move from believing you are good to actually building a better world. My urge to build better communities is persistent lately, so I’ve been using this book to examine what I always thought I knew about myself and the systems around me. And, further, how those two go together.

Understandably, these observations have played a part in my life as a volunteer in the humanitarian sector, and they’ve also bolstered my resolve to be a better advocate for diversity and accessibility in literature.

But one underpinning observation in Chugh’s book has changed the way I write.

She suggests that we should adopt a growth mindset. In other words, don’t

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