Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Clearly, Faulk himself sees his skills as the product of his insatiable curiosity and study.

How do players and coaches see it? As a gift. “Marshall has the highest football IQ of any position player I’ve ever played with,” says a veteran teammate. Other teammates describe his ability to recognize defensive alignments flawlessly as a “savant’s gift.” In awe of his array of skills, one coach explained: “It takes a very innate football intelligence to do all that.”

“CHARACTER”

But aren’t there some naturals, athletes who really seem to have “it” from the start? Yes, and as it was for Billy Beane and John McEnroe, sometimes it’s a curse. With all the praise for their talent and with how little they’ve needed to work or stretch themselves, they can easily fall into a fixed mindset. Bruce Jenner, 1976 Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon, says, “If I wasn’t dyslexic, I probably wouldn’t have won the Games. If I had been a better reader, then that would have come easily, sports would have come easily … and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work.”

The naturals, carried away with their superiority, don’t learn how to work hard or how to cope with setbacks. This is the story of Pedro Martinez, the brilliant pitcher then with the Boston Red Sox, who self-destructed when they needed him most. But it’s an even larger story too, a story about character.

A group of sportswriters from The New York Times and The Boston Globe were on the Delta shuttle to Boston. So was I. They were headed to Game 3 of the 2003 American League play-off series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. They were talking about character, and they all agreed—the Boston writers reluctantly—that the Yankees had it.

Among other things, they remembered what the Yankees had done for New York two years before. It was October 2001, and New Yorkers had just lived through September 11. I was there and we were devastated. We needed some hope. The city needed the Yankees to go for it—to go for the World Series. But the Yankees had lived through it, too, and they were injured and exhausted. They seemed to have nothing left. I don’t know where they got it from, but they dug down deep and they polished off one team after another, each win bringing us a little bit back to life, each one giving us a little more hope for the future. Fueled by our need, they became the American League East champs, then the American League champs, and then they were in the World Series, where they made a valiant run and almost pulled it off. Everyone hates the Yankees. It’s the team the whole country roots against. I grew up hating the Yankees, too, but after that I had to love them. This is what the sportswriters meant by character.

Character, the sportswriters said. They know it when they see it—it’s the ability to dig down and find the strength even when things are going against you.

The very next day, Pedro Martinez, the dazzling but over-pampered Boston pitcher, showed what character meant. By showing what it isn’t.

No one could have wanted this American League Championship more than the Boston Red Sox. They hadn’t won a World Series in eighty-five years, ever since the curse of the Bambino—that is, ever since Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for money to finance a Broadway show. It was bad enough that he was selling the best left-handed pitcher in baseball (which Ruth was at the time), but he was selling him to the despised enemy.

The Yankees went on to dominate baseball, winning, it seemed, endless World Series. Meanwhile Boston made it to four World Series and several play-offs, but they always lost. And they always lost in the most tragic way possible. By coming achingly near to victory and then having a meltdown. Here, finally, was another chance to fight off the curse and defeat their archrivals. If they won, they would make that trip to the World Series and the Yankees would stay home. Pedro Martinez was their hope. In fact, earlier in the season, he had cursed the curse.

Yet after pitching a beautiful game, Martinez was losing his lead and falling behind. What did he do then? He hit a batter with the ball (Karim Garcia), threatened to bean another (Jorge Posada), and hurled a seventy-two- year-old man to the ground (Yankee coach Don Zimmer).

As New York Times writer Jack Curry wrote: “We knew we were going to have Pedro vs. Roger [Clemens] on a memorable afternoon at Fenway Park.… But no one expected to watch Pedro against Garcia, Pedro against Posada, Pedro against Zimmer.”

Even the Boston writers were aghast. Dan Shaughnessy, of the Globe, asked: “Which one would you rather have now, Red Sox fans? Roger Clemens, who kept his composure and behaved like a professional Saturday night, winning the game for his team despite his obvious anger? Or Martinez, the baby who hits a guy after he blows the lead, then points at his head and at Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, threatening, ‘You’re next’? … Red Sox fans don’t like to hear this, but Martinez was an embarrassment Saturday, and a disgrace to baseball. He gets away with it because he’s Pedro. And the Sox front office enables him. Could Martinez one time stand up and admit he’s wrong?”

Like Billy Beane, Pedro Martinez did not know how to tolerate frustration, did not know how to dig down and turn an important setback into an important win. Nor, like Billy Beane, could he admit his faults and learn from them. Because he threw his tantrum instead of doing the job, the Yankees won the game and went on to win the play-off by one game.

The sportswriters on the plane agreed that character is all. But they confessed that they didn’t understand where it comes from. Yet I think by now we’re getting the idea that character grows out of mindset.

We now know that there is a mindset in which people are enmeshed in the idea of their own talent and specialness. When things go wrong, they lose their focus and their ability, putting everything they want—and in this case, everything the team and the fans so desperately want—in jeopardy.

We also know that there is a mindset that helps people cope well with setbacks, points them to good strategies, and leads them to act in their best interest.

Wait. The story’s not over. One year later, the Sox and the er J went head-to-head again. Whoever won four games out of the seven would be the American League Champions and would take that trip to the World Series. The Yankees won the first three games, and Boston’s humiliating fate seemed sealed once again.

But that year Boston had put their prima donnas on notice. They traded one, tried to trade another (no one wanted him), and sent out the message: This is a team, not a bunch of stars. We work hard for each other.

Four games later, the Boston Red Sox were the American League Champions. And then the World Champions. It was the first time since 1904 that Boston had beaten the Yankees in a championship series, showing two things. First, that the curse was over. And second, that character can be learned.

More About Character

Let’s take it from the top with Pete Sampras and the growth mindset. In 2000, Sampras was at Wimbledon, trying for his thirteenth Grand Slam tennis victory. If he won, he would break Roy Emerson’s record of twelve wins in top tournaments. Although Sampras managed to make it to the finals, he had not played that well in the tournament and was not optimistic about his chances against the young, powerful Patrick Rafter.

Sampras lost the first set, and was about to lose the second set. He was down 4–1 in the tiebreaker. Even he said, “I really felt like it was slipping away.” What would McEnroe have done? What would Pedro Martinez have done? What did Sampras do?

As William Rhoden puts it, “He … searched for a frame of reference that could carry him through.” Sampras says, “When you’re sitting on the changeover you think of past matches that you’ve lost the first set … came back and won the next three. There’s time. You reflect on your past experiences, being able to get through it.”

Suddenly, Sampras had a five-point run. Then two more. He had won the second set and he was alive.

“Last night,” Rhoden says, “Sampras displayed all the qualities of the hero: the loss in the first set, vulnerability near defeat, then a comeback and a final triumph.”

Jackie Joyner-Kersee talked herself through an asthma attack during her last world championship. She was in the 800-meter race, the last event of the heptathlon, when she felt the attack coming on. “Just keep pumping your arms,” she instructed herself. “It’s not that bad, so keep going. You can make it. You’re not going to have a full- blown attack. You have enough air. You’ve got this thing won.… Just run as hard as you can in this last 200 meters, Jackie.” She instructed herself all the way to victory. “I have to say this is my greatest triumph, considering the competition and the ups and downs I was going through.… If I really wanted it, I had to pull it together.”

In her last Olympics, the dreaded thing happened. A serious hamstring injury forced her to drop out of the