Mindset : The New Psychology of Success pdfdrive com

The Growth Mindset and Self-Control
Some  people  think  about  losing  weight  or  controlling  their  anger  in  a  growth-
mindset  way.  They  realize  that  to  succeed,  they’ll  need  to  learn  and  practice
strategies that work for them.
It’s  like  the  growth-mindset  chemistry  students.  They  used  better  study
techniques,  carefully  planned  their  study  time,  and  kept  up  their  motivation.  In
other words, they used every strategy possible to make sure they succeeded.
Just  like  them,  people  in  a  growth  mindset  don’t  merely  make  New  Year’s
resolutions  and  wait  to  see  if  they  stick  to  them.  They  understand  that  to  diet,
they need to plan. They may need to keep desserts out of the house. Or think in
advance about what to order in restaurants. Or schedule a once-a-week splurge.
Or consider exercising more.
They  think  actively  about  maintenance.  What  habits  must  they  develop  to
continue the gains they’ve achieved?
Then there are the setbacks. They know that setbacks will happen. So instead
of beating themselves up, they ask: “What can I learn from this? What will I do
next  time  when  I’m  in  this  situation?”  It’s  a  learning  process—not  a  battle
between the bad you and the good you.
In  that  last  episode,  what  could  you  have  done  with  your  anger?  First,  think
about why you got so worked up. You may have felt devalued and disrespected
when  your  spouse  shirked  the  tasks  or  broke  your  rules—as  though  they  were

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saying  to  you,  “You’re  not  important.  Your  needs  are  trivial.  I  can’t  be
bothered.”
Your first reaction was to angrily remind them of their duty. But on the heels
of  that  was  your  retaliation,  sort  of  “Okay  big  shot,  if  you  think  you’re  so
important, try this on for size.”
Your spouse, rather than reassuring you of your importance, simply braced for
the  onslaught.  Meanwhile,  you  took  the  silence  as  evidence  that  they  felt
superior, and it fueled your escalation.
What  can  be  done?  Several  things.  First,  spouses  can’t  read  your  mind,  so
when an anger-provoking situation arises, you have to matter-of-factly tell them
how  it  makes  you  feel.  “I’m  not  sure  why,  but  when  you  do  that,  it  makes  me
feel unimportant. Like you can’t be bothered to do things that matter to me.”
They, in turn, can reassure you that they care about how you feel and will try
to be more watchful. (“Are you kidding?” you say. “My spouse would never do
that.” Well, you can request it directly, as I’ve sometimes done: “Please tell me
that you care how I feel and you’ll try to be more watchful.”)
When  you  feel  yourself  losing  it,  you  can  learn  to  leave  the  room  and  write
down  your  ugliest  thoughts,  followed  by  what  is  probably  really  happening
(“She doesn’t understand this is important to me,” “He doesn’t know what to do
when  I  start  to  blow”).  When  you  feel  calm  enough,  you  can  return  to  the
situation.
You can also learn to loosen up on some of your rules, now that each one is
not  a  test  of  your  partner’s  respect  for  you.  With  time,  you  might  even  gain  a
sense  of  humor  about  them.  For  example,  if  your  spouse  leaves  some  socks  in
the living room or puts the wrong things in the recycling bins, you might point at
the offending items and ask sternly, “What is the meaning of this?” You might
even have a good laugh.
When people drop the good–bad, strong–weak thinking that grows out of the
fixed  mindset,  they’re  better  able  to  learn  useful  strategies  that  help  with  self-
control.  Every  lapse  doesn’t  spell  doom.  It’s  like  anything  else  in  the  growth
mindset.  It’s  a  reminder  that  you’re  an  unfinished  human  being  and  a  clue  to
how to do it better next time.
MAINTAINING CHANGE

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Whether people change their mindset in order to further their career, heal from a
loss, help their children thrive, lose weight, or control their anger, change needs
to  be  maintained.  It’s  amazing—once  a  problem  improves,  people  often  stop
doing  what  caused  it  to  improve.  Once  you  feel  better,  you  stop  taking  your
medicine.
But change doesn’t work that way. When you’ve lost weight, the issue doesn’t
go  away.  Or  when  your  child  starts  to  love  learning,  the  problem  isn’t  solved
forever. Or when you and your partner start communicating better, that’s not the
end  of  it.  These  changes  have  to  be  supported  or  they  can  go  away  faster  than
they appeared.
Maybe  that’s  why  Alcoholics  Anonymous  tells  people  they  will  always  be
alcoholics—so they won’t become complacent and stop doing what they need to
do to stay sober. It’s a way of saying, “You’ll always be vulnerable.”
This  is  why  mindset  change  is  not  about  picking  up  a  few  tricks.  In  fact,  if
someone  stays  inside  a  fixed  mindset  and  uses  the  growth  strategies,  it  can
backfire.
Wes,  a  dad  with  a  fixed  mindset,  was  at  his  wit’s  end.  He’d  come  home
exhausted  from  work  every  evening  and  his  son,  Mickey,  would  refuse  to
cooperate. Wes wanted quiet, but Mickey was noisy. Wes would warn him, but
Mickey  would  continue  what  he  was  doing.  Wes  found  him  stubborn,  unruly,
and  not  respectful  of  Wes’s  rights  as  a  father.  The  whole  scene  would
disintegrate into a shouting match and Mickey would end up being punished.
Finally, feeling he had nothing to lose, Wes tried some of the growth-oriented
strategies.  He  showed  respect  for  Mickey’s  efforts  and  praised  his  strategies
when  he  was  empathic  or  helpful.  The  turnaround  in  Mickey’s  behavior  was
dramatic.
But as soon as the turnaround took place, Wes stopped using the strategies. He
had  what  he  wanted  and  he  expected  it  to  just  continue.  When  it  didn’t,  he
became even angrier and more punitive than before. Mickey had shown he could
behave and now refused to.
The  same  thing  often  happens  with  fixed-mindset  couples  who  start
communicating better. Marlene and Scott were what my husband and I call the
Bickersons.  All  they  did  was  bicker:  “Why  don’t  you  ever  pick  up  after
yourself?” “I might if you weren’t such a nag.” “I wouldn’t have to nag if you
did  what  you  were  supposed  to  do.”  “Who  made  you  the  judge  of  what  I’m
supposed to do?”

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With counseling, Marlene and Scott stopped jumping on the negatives. More
and more, they started rewarding the thoughtful things their partner did and the
efforts  their  partner  made.  The  love  and  tenderness  they  thought  were  dead
returned.  But  once  it  returned,  they  reverted.  In  the  fixed  mindset,  things
shouldn’t  need  such  effort.  Good  people  should  just  act  good  and  good
relationships should just unfold in a good way.
When the bickering resumed, it was fiercer than ever because it reflected all of
their disappointed hopes.
Mindset  change  is  not  about  picking  up  a  few  pointers  here  and  there.  It’s
about seeing things in a new way. When people—couples, coaches and athletes,
managers and workers, parents and children, teachers and students—change to a
growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-
and-help-learn  framework.  Their  commitment  is  to  growth,  and  growth  takes
plenty of time, effort, and mutual support to achieve and maintain.
THE JOURNEY TO A (TRUE) GROWTH MINDSET
In  chapter  7,  I  talked  about  the  “false  growth  mindset.”  If  you  remember,  my
colleague Susan Mackie was encountering people who claimed to have a growth
mindset but who, upon closer inspection, did not. Once alerted, I started seeing
false  growth  mindset  everywhere  and  I  understood  why  it  was  happening.
Everyone wants to seem enlightened, in the know. Maybe as a parent, educator,
coach,  or  business  professional,  having  a  growth  mindset  was  expected  or
admired.
Or maybe it was my fault. Did I make the change to a growth mindset seem
too  easy,  so  that  people  didn’t  realize  that  a  journey  was  required?  Or  maybe
people  didn’t  know  how  to  take  the  journey.  So  let’s  talk  more  about  that
journey.