Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

because he was always a guy with a lot going for him.

But then something would happen. It was over for one of them when he got her a tacky birthday present. Another put ketchup on his food and sometimes wore white shoes. Another had bad electronic habits: His cell phone etiquette was poor and he watched too much TV. And this is only a partial list.

Assuming traits were fixed, Penelope would decide that she couldn’t live with these flaws. But most of these were not deep or serious character problems that couldn’t be addressed with a little communication.

My husband and I had been together almost a year and, as my birthday approached, I sent a clear message: “I’m not mercenary, but I like a good present.” He said, “Isn’t it the thought that counts?” I replied, “That’s what people say when they don’t want to put thought into it.

“Once a year,” I continued, “we each have our day. I love you and I plan to put time and effort into choosing a present for you. I would like you to do that for me, too.” He’s never let me down.

Penelope assumed that somewhere out there was someone who was already perfect. Relationship expert Daniel Wile says that choosing a partner is choosing a set of problems. There are no problem-free candidates. The trick is to acknowledge each other’s limitations, and build from there.

THE FLAWS FLY

Brenda and Jack were clients of Daniel Wile, and he tells this tale. Brenda came home from work and told Jack a long, detailed story with no apparent point. Jack was bored to tears but tried to hide it to be polite. Brenda, however, could sense his true feelings, so, hoping to be more amusing, she launched into another endless story, also about a project at work. Jack was ready to burst. They were both mentally hurling traits right and left. According to Wile, they were both thinking: Brenda is boring, Jack is selfish, and our relationship is no good.

In fact, both meant well. Brenda was afraid to say outright that she did some great work at the office that day. She didn’t want to be boastful. So instead she talked about the tiny details of her project. Jack didn’t want to be impolite, so instead of asking Brenda questions or expressing his puzzlement, he steeled himself and waited for her story to end.

Jack just needed to say, “You know, honey, when you get into so many details, I lose your point and get frustrated. Why don’t you tell me why you’re excited about this project? I’d really love to hear that.”

It was a problem of communication, not a problem of personality or character. Yet in the fixed mindset, the blame came fast and furious.

By the way, I love these stories. When I was a kid, Reader’s Digest used to have a feature in each issue called “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” Usually, the answer was yes. I ate up those stories, fascinated by all the ways a marriage could go wrong and even more fascinated by how it could be repaired.

The story of Ted and Karen, told by Aaron Beck, is a story of how two people with the fixed mindset went from all good traits to all bad ones in each other’s eyes.

When Ted and Karen met, they were opposites attracting. Karen radiated spontaneity and lightness. Ted, a serious guy with the weight of the world on his shoulders, felt that her carefree presence transformed his life. “Everything she says and does is charming,” he effused. In turn, Ted represented the rock-like “father figure” she had never had. He was just the kind of stable, reliable guy who could give her a sense of security.

But a few short years later, Ted saw Karen as an irresponsible airhead. “She never takes anything seriously … I can’t depend on her.” And Karen saw Ted as a judgmental tyrant, dissecting her every move.

In the end, this marriage was saved—only because the couple learned to respond to each other not with angry labels, but with helpful actions. One day, when Karen was swamped with work, Ted came home to a messy house. He was angry and wanted to scold her, but, drawing on what he’d learned from Beck, he instead said to himself, “What is the mature thing to do?” He answered his own question by starting to clean things up. He was offering Karen support rather than judgment.

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 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 i 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 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 whee 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