1 . We often talk about ourselves as if we have permanent genetic defects(缺陷) that can never be changed. “I’m impatient.” “I’m always behind.” “I always put things_______!” You’ve surely heard them. Maybe you’ve used them to describe_______.

These comments may come from stories about us that have been________for years—often from_____ childhood. These stories may have no _____in fact. But they can set low expectations for us. As a child, my mother said to me, “Marshall, you have no mechanical （操作机械的） skills, and you will never have any mechanical skills for the rest of your life. ” How did these expectations________my development? I was never     _____to work on cars or be around_______. When I was 18, I took the US Army’s Mechanical Aptitude Test. My scores were in the bottom for the entire nation!

Six years later,______, I was at California University, working on my doctor’s degree. One of my professors, Dr. Bob Tannbaum, asked me to write down things I did well and things I couldn’t do. For my strong points, I________down, “research, writing, analysis, and speaking. ” For the________, I wrote, “I have no mechanical skills. ”

Bob asked me how I knew I had no mechanical skills. I explained my life_______ and told him about my_______ performance on the Army test. Bob then asked, “_______is it that you can solve_______   mathematical problems, but you can’t solve easy mechanical problems?”

Suddenly I realized that I didn’t_______ from some sort of genetic defect. I was just living out expectations that I had chosen to_______. At that point, it wasn’t just my family and friends who had been     _____my belief that I was mechanically hopeless. And it wasn’t just the Army test, either. I was the one who kept telling myself, “You can’t do this!” I realized that as long as I kept saying that, it was going to remain true.     ____, if we don’t treat ourselves as if we have genetic defects that we can never get over, we can do well in almost________we choose.