Mindset : The New Psychology of Success pdfdrive com

partner’s development and have them encourage yours.”
By  that  I  didn’t  mean  a  My  Fair  Lady  kind  of  thing  where  you  attempt  an

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extreme  makeover  on  partners,  who  then  feel  they  aren’t  good  enough  as  they
are. I mean helping partners, within the relationship, to reach their own goals and
fulfill their own potential. This is the growth mindset in action.
FRIENDSHIP
Friendships,  like  partnerships,  are  places  where  we  have  a  chance  to  enhance
each  other’s  development,  and  to  validate  each  other.  Both  are  important.
Friends can give each other the wisdom and courage to make growth-enhancing
decisions, and friends can reassure each other of their fine qualities. Despite the
dangers  of  praising  traits,  there  are  times  when  we  need  reassurance  about
ourselves:  “Tell  me  I’m  not  a  bad  person  for  breaking  up  with  my  boyfriend.”
“Tell me I’m not stupid even though I bombed on the exam.”
In fact, these occasions give us a chance to provide support and give a growth
message: “You gave that relationship everything you had for three years and he
made  no  effort  to  improve  things.  I  think  you’re  right  to  move  on.”  Or  “What
happened  on  that  exam?  Do  you  understand  the  material?  Did  you  study
enough? Do you think you need a tutor? Let’s talk about it.”
But  as  in  all  relationships,  people’s  need  to  prove  themselves  can  tilt  the
balance  in  the  wrong  direction.  Sheri  Levy  did  a  study  that  was  not  about
friendship, but makes an important and relevant point.
Levy measured adolescent boys’ self-esteem and then asked them how much
they  believed  in  negative  stereotypes  about  girls.  For  example,  how  much  did
they  believe  that  girls  were  worse  in  math  or  that  girls  were  less  rational  than
boys? She then measured their self-esteem again.
Boys who believed in the fixed mindset showed a boost in self-esteem when
they  endorsed  the  stereotypes.  Thinking  that  girls  were  dumber  and  more
scatterbrained  made  them  feel  better  about  themselves.  (Boys  with  the  growth
mindset were less likely to agree with the stereotypes, but even when they did, it
did not give them an ego boost.)
This mentality can intrude on friendships. The lower you are, the better I feel
is the idea.
One day I was talking to a dear, wise friend. I was puzzled about why she put
up with the behavior of some of her friends. Actually, I was puzzled about why
she  even  had  these  friends.  One  often  acted  irresponsibly;  another  flirted

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shamelessly  with  her  husband.  Her  answer  was  that  everyone  has  virtues  and
foibles, and that, really, if you looked only for perfect people, your social circle
would  be  impoverished.  There  was,  however,  one  thing  she  would  not  put  up
with: people who made her feel bad about herself.
We all know these people. They can be brilliant, charming, and fun, but after
being with them, you feel diminished. You may ask: “Am I just doing a number
on  myself?”  But  it  is  often  them,  trying  to  build  themselves  up  by  establishing
their superiority and your inferiority. It could be by actively putting you down,
or it could be by the careless way they treat you. Either way, you are a vehicle
for (and a casualty of) confirming their worth.
I  was  at  a  friend’s  fiftieth-birthday  party  and  her  sister  gave  a  speech,
supposedly  in  her  honor.  Her  sister  talked  about  my  friend’s  insatiable  sexual
appetite  and  how  lucky  it  was  she  found  a  younger  man  to  marry  who  could
handle  it.  “All  in  good  fun,”  she  took  care  of  my  friend’s  looks,  brains,  and
mothering skills. After this tribute, I suddenly recalled the saying “With friends
like this, you don’t need enemies.”
It’s difficult to realize when friends don’t wish you well. One night I had the
most vivid dream. Someone, someone I knew well, came into my house and one
by  one  took  all  my  prized  possessions.  In  the  dream  I  could  see  what  was
happening,  but  I  couldn’t  see  who  it  was.  At  one  point,  I  asked  the  intruder:
“Couldn’t  you  please  leave  that  one,  it  means  a  lot  to  me.”  But  the  person  just
kept  taking  everything  of  value.  The  next  morning  I  realized  who  it  was  and
what  it  meant.  For  the  past  year  a  close  friend  had  been  calling  upon  me
constantly  to  help  him  with  his  work.  I  obliged.  He  was  under  a  great  deal  of
stress, and I was at first happy to use whatever skills I had for his benefit. But it
was  endless,  it  was  not  reciprocal,  and  on  top  of  that  he  punished  me  for  it:
“Don’t  think  you  could  ever  do  work  this  good.  You  can  help  me  polish  my
work,  but  you  could  never  be  this  creative.”  He  needed  to  reduce  me  so  he
wouldn’t feel one down. My dream told me it was time to draw the line.
I’m  afraid  that  in  the  fixed  mindset,  I  was  also  a  culprit.  I  don’t  think  I  put
people  down,  but  when  you  need  validation,  you  use  people  for  it.  One  time,
when I was a graduate student, I was taking the train to New York and sat next
to a very nice businessman. In my opinion, we chatted back and forth pleasantly
through  the  hour-and-a-half  journey,  but  at  the  end  he  said  to  me,  “Thank  you
for  telling  me  about  yourself.”  It  really  hit  me.  He  was  the  dream  validator—
handsome,  intelligent,  successful.  And  that’s  what  I  had  used  him  for.  I  had

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shown no interest in him as a person, only in him as a mirror of my excellence.
Luckily for me, what he mirrored back was a far more valuable lesson.
Conventional wisdom says that you know who your friends are in your times
of need. And of course this view has merit. Who will stand by you day after day
when you’re in trouble? However, sometimes an even tougher question is: Who
can you turn to when good things happen? When you find a wonderful partner.
When you get a great job offer or promotion. When your child does well. Who
would be glad to hear it?
Your failures and misfortunes don’t threaten other people’s self-esteem. Ego-
wise,  it’s  easy  to  be  sympathetic  to  someone  in  need.  It’s  your  assets  and  your
successes that are problems for people who derive their self-esteem from being
superior.
SHYNESS
In some ways, shyness is the flip side of what we’ve been talking about. We’ve
been examining people who use others to buoy themselves up. Shy people worry
that  others  will  bring  them  down.  They  often  worry  about  being  judged  or
embarrassed in social situations.
People’s  shyness  can  hold  them  back  from  making  friends  and  developing
relationships.  When  they’re  with  new  people,  shy  people  report  that  they  feel
anxious, their hearts race, they blush, they avoid eye contact, and they may try to
end  the  interaction  as  soon  as  possible.  Underneath  it  all,  shy  people  may  be
wonderful and interesting, but they often can’t show it with someone new. And
they know it.
What can mindsets teach us about shyness? Jennifer Beer studied hundreds of
people to find out. She measured people’s mindsets, she assessed their shyness,
and then she brought them together two at a time to get acquainted. The whole
thing was filmed, and, later on, trained raters watched the film and evaluated the
interactions.
Beer  found,  first,  that  people  with  the  fixed  mindset  were  more  likely  to  be
shy. This makes sense. The fixed mindset makes you concerned about judgment,
and this can make you more self-conscious and anxious. But there were plenty of
shy people with both mindsets, and when she looked at them more closely, she
found something even more interesting.

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