Mindset : The New Psychology of Success pdfdrive com

CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED?
Aaron  Beck  tells  couples  in  counseling  never  to  think  these  fixed-mindset
thoughts:  My  partner  is  incapable  of  change.  Nothing  can  improve  our
relationship. These ideas, he says, are almost always wrong.
Sometimes  it’s  hard  not  to  think  those  thoughts—as  in  the  case  of  Bill  and
Hillary  Clinton.  When  he  was  president,  Clinton  lied  to  the  nation  and  to  his
wife  about  his  relationship  with  Monica  Lewinsky.  Hillary  defended  him:  “My
husband may have his faults, but he has never lied to me.”
The  truth  came  out,  as  it  has  a  way  of  doing,  especially  when  helped  by  a

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special prosecutor. Hillary, betrayed and furious, now had to decide whether Bill
was a permanently bad and untrustworthy husband or a man who needed a lot of
help.
This  is  a  good  time  to  bring  up  an  important  point:  The  belief  that  partners
have  the  potential  for  change  should  not  be  confused  with  the  belief  that  the
partner  will  change.  The  partner  has  to  want  to  change,  commit  to  change,  and
take concrete actions toward change.
The Clintons went into counseling, spending one full day a week for a year in
the  process.  Through  counseling,  Bill  came  to  understand  how,  as  the  child  of
alcoholic  parents,  he  had  learned  to  lead  a  dual  life.  On  the  one  hand,  he’d
learned  to  shoulder  excessive  responsibility  at  an  early  age—for  example,  as  a
boy sternly forbidding his stepfather to strike his mother. On the other hand, he
had  another  part  of  his  life  where  he  took  little  responsibility,  where  he  made
believe everything was okay no matter what was going on. That’s how he could
appear  on  TV  and  earnestly  vow  that  he  was  not  involved  with  Lewinsky.  He
was in that no-responsibility and high-denial space.
People  were  urging  Hillary  to  forgive  him.  One  evening,  Stevie  Wonder
called the White House to ask if he could come over. He had written a song for
her on the power of forgiveness, and he played it to her that night.
Yet Hillary could not have forgiven a person she saw as a liar and a cheat. She
could only forgive a man she thought was earnestly struggling with his problems
and trying to grow.
THE PARTNER AS ENEMY
With  the  fixed  mindset,  one  moment  your  partner  is  the  light  of  your  life,  the
next they’re your adversary. Why would people want to transform the loved one
into an enemy?
When  you  fail  at  other  tasks,  it’s  hard  to  keep  blaming  someone  else.  But
when something goes wrong in a relationship, it’s easy to blame someone else.
In fact, in the fixed mindset you have a limited set of choices. One is to blame
your own permanent qualities. And one is to blame your partner’s. You can see
how tempting it is to foist the blame onto the other guy.
As  a  legacy  of  my  fixed  mindset,  I  still  have  an  irresistible  urge  to  defend
myself and assign blame when something in a relationship goes wrong. “It’s not

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my fault!” To deal with this bad habit, my husband and I invented a third party,
an  imaginary  man  named  Maurice.  Whenever  I  start  in  on  who’s  to  blame,  we
invoke poor Maurice and pin it on him.
Remember how hard it is for people with the fixed mindset to forgive? Part of
it is that they feel branded by a rejection or breakup. But another part is that if
they forgive the partner, if they see him or her as a decent person, then they have
to  shoulder  more  of  the  blame  themselves:  If  my  partner’s  a  good  guy,  then  I
must be a bad guy. I must be the person who was at fault.
The  same  thing  can  happen  with  parents.  If  you  have  a  troubled  relationship
with  a  parent,  whose  fault  is  it?  If  your  parents  didn’t  love  you  enough,  were
they bad parents or were you unlovable? These are the ugly questions that haunt
us within a fixed mindset. Is there a way out?
I had this very dilemma. My mother didn’t love me. Most of my life I’d coped
with  this  by  blaming  her  and  feeling  bitter.  But  I  was  no  longer  satisfied  just
protecting myself. I longed for a loving relationship with my mother. Yet the last
thing  I  wanted  to  be  was  one  of  those  kids  who  begged  for  approval  from  a
withholding  parent.  Then  I  realized  something.  I  controlled  half  of  the
relationship, my half. I could have my half of the relationship. At least I could be
the  loving  daughter  I  wanted  to  be.  In  a  sense,  it  didn’t  matter  what  she  did.  I
would still be ahead of where I was.
How did it turn out? I experienced a tremendous sense of growth letting go of
my bitterness and stepping forward to have the relationship. The rest is not really
relevant  since  I  wasn’t  seeking  validation,  but  I’ll  tell  you  anyway.  Something
unexpected happened. Three years later, my mother said to me: “If anyone had
told me I didn’t love my children, I would have been insulted. But now I realize
it was true. Whether it was because my parents didn’t love us or because I was
too  involved  in  myself  or  because  I  didn’t  know  what  love  was,  I  don’t  know.
But now I know what it is.”
From that time until her death twenty-five years later, we became closer and
closer.  As  lively  as  each  of  us  was,  we  came  even  more  to  life  in  each  other’s
presence. Once, a few years ago, after she’d had a stroke, the doctors warned me
she  couldn’t  speak  and  might  never  speak  again.  I  walked  into  her  room,  she
looked at me and said, “Carol, I love your outfit.”
What allowed me to take that first step, to choose growth and risk rejection?
In  the  fixed  mindset,  I  had  needed  my  blame  and  bitterness.  It  made  me  feel
more  righteous,  powerful,  and  whole  than  thinking  I  was  at  fault.  The  growth

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mindset  allowed  me  to  give  up  the  blame  and  move  on.  The  growth  mindset
gave me a mother.
I  remember  when  we  were  kids  and  did  something  dumb,  like  drop  our  ice-
cream cone on our foot, we’d turn to our friend and say, “Look what you made
me do.” Blame may make you feel less foolish, but you still have a shoe full of
ice  cream—and  a  friend  who’s  on  the  defensive.  In  a  relationship,  the  growth
mindset  lets  you  rise  above  blame,  understand  the  problem,  and  try  to  fix  it—
together.
COMPETITION: WHO’S THE GREATEST?
In  the  fixed  mindset,  where  you’ve  got  to  keep  proving  your  competence,  it’s
easy  to  get  into  a  competition  with  your  partner.  Who’s  the  smarter,  more
talented, more likable one?
Susan had a boyfriend who worried that she would be the center of attention
and  he  would  be  the  tagalong.  If  she  were  someone,  he  would  be  no  one.  But
Martin was far from no one. He was very successful, even revered, in his field.
He was handsome and well liked, too. So at first Susan pooh-poohed the whole
thing. Then they attended a conference together. They’d arrived separately and,
in checking in, Susan had chatted with the friendly hotel staff in the lobby. That
evening when the couple walked through the lobby, the whole staff greeted her
warmly. Martin grunted. Next, they took a taxi to dinner. Toward the end of the
ride, the driver started singing her praises: “You better hold on to her. Yes, sir,
she’s  a  good  one.”  Martin  winced.  The  whole  weekend  continued  in  this  vein,
and by the time they got home from the conference their relationship was very
strained.
Martin  wasn’t  actively  competitive.  He  didn’t  try  to  outdo  Susan,  he  just
lamented  her  seemingly  greater  popularity.  But  some  partners  throw  their  hats
right into the ring.
Cynthia,  a  scientist,  was  amazing  at  almost  everything  she  did—so  much  so
that she left her partners in the dust. That might have been all right if she didn’t
always venture into their territory. She married an actor, and then started writing
plays and acting in them—superbly. She said she was just trying to share his life
and his interests, but her part-time hobby outshone his career. He felt he had to
escape from the relationship to find himself again. Next, she married a musician

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who  was  a  great  cook,  and  in  no  time  flat  she  was  tickling  the  ivories  and
inventing  unbelievable  recipes.  Once  again,  the  depressed  husband  eventually
fled.  Cynthia  left  her  partners  no  room  for  their  own  identity;  she  needed  to
equal or surpass them in every skill they arrived with.
There  are  many  good  ways  to  support  our  partners  or  show  interest  in  their
lives. This is not one of them.
DEVELOPING IN RELATIONSHIPS
When people embark on a relationship, they encounter a partner who is different
from them, and they haven’t learned how to deal with the differences. In a good
relationship, people develop these skills and, as they do, both partners grow and
the  relationship  deepens.  But  for  this  to  happen,  people  need  to  feel  they’re  on
the same side.
Laura was lucky. She could be self-centered and defensive. She could yell and
pout. But James never took it personally and always felt that she was there  for
him when he needed her. So when she lashed out, he calmed her down and made
her talk things through with him. Over time, she learned to skip the yelling and
pouting.
As  an  atmosphere  of  trust  developed,  they  became  vitally  interested  in  each
other’s  development.  James  was  forming  a  corporation,  and  Laura  spent  hours
with  him  discussing  his  plans  and  some  of  the  problems  he  was  encountering.
Laura  had  always  dreamed  of  writing  children’s  books.  James  got  her  to  spell
out her ideas and write a first draft. He urged her to contact someone they knew
who  was  an  illustrator.  In  the  context  of  this  relationship,  each  partner  was
helping the other to do the things they wanted to do and become the person they
wanted to be.
Not  long  ago,  I  was  talking  to  a  friend  about  the  view  some  people  hold  of
childrearing—that  parents  make  little  difference.  In  explaining  that  view,  she
likened  it  to  a  marriage  relationship:  “It’s  like  partners  in  a  marriage.  Each
comes  to  the  relationship  fully  formed,  and  you  don’t  expect  to  influence  who
the partner is.”
“Oh no,” I replied. “To me the whole point of marriage is to encourage your