Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANT TO CHANGE

Entitlement: The World Owes You

Many people with the fixed mindset think the

world

needs to change, not them. They feel entitled to something better—a better job, house, or spouse. The world should recognize their special qualities and treat them accordingly. Let’s move to the next dilemma and imagine yourself in this situation.

The Next Dilemma. “Here I am,” you think, “in this low-level job. It’s demeaning. With my talent I shouldn’t have to work like this. I should be up there with the big boys, enjoying the good life.” Your boss thinks you have a bad attitude. When she needs someone to take on more responsibilities, she doesn’t turn to you. When it’s time to give out promotions, she doesn’t include you.

The Fixed-Mindset Reaction. “She’s threatened by me,” you say bitterly. Your fixed mindset is telling you that, because of who you are, you should automatically be thrust into the upper levels of the business. In your mind, people should see your talents and reward you. When they don’t, it’s not fair. Why should you change? You just want your due.

But putting yourself in a growth mindset, what are some new ways you could think and some steps you could take? For example, what are some new ways you could think about effort? About learning? And how could you act on this new thinking in your work?

Well, you could consider working harder and being more helpful to people at work. You could use your time to learn more about the business you’re in instead of bellyaching about your low status. Let’s see how this might look.

The Growth-Mindset Step. But first, let’s be clear. For a long time, it’s frightening to think of giving up the idea of being superior. An ordinary, run-of-the-mill human being isn’t what you want to be. How could you feel good about yourself if you’re no more valuable than the people you look down on?

You begin to consider the idea that some people stand out because of their commitment and effort. Little by little you try putting more effort into things and seeing if you get more of the rewards you wanted. You do.

Although you can slowly accept the idea that effort might be necessary, you still can’t accept that it’s no guarantee. It’s enough of an indignity to have to work at things, but to work and still not have them turn out the way you want—now, that’s really not fair. That means you could work hard and somebody else could still get the promotion. Outrageous.

It’s a long time before you begin to enjoy putting in effort and a long time before you begin to think in terms of learning. Instead of seeing your time at the bottom of the corporate ladder as an insult, you slowly see that you can learn a lot at the bottom that could help you greatly on your rise to the top. Learning the nuts and bolts of the company could later give you a big advantage. All of our top growth-mindset CEOs knew their companies from top to bottom, inside out, and upside down.

Instead of seeing your discussions with your colleagues as time spent getting what you want, you begin to grasp the idea of building relationships or even helping your colleagues develop in ways they value. This can become a new source of satisfaction. You might say you were following in the footsteps of Bill Murray and his Groundhog Day experience.

As you become a more growth-minded person, you’re amazed at how people start to help you, support youe cey no longer seem like adversaries out to deny you what you deserve. They’re more and more often collaborators toward a common goal. It’s interesting, you started out wanting to change other people’s behavior—and you did.

In the end, many people with the fixed mindset understand that their cloak of specialness was really a suit of armor they built to feel safe, strong, and worthy. While it may have protected them early on, later it constricted their growth, sent them into self-defeating battles, and cut them off from satisfying, mutual relationships.

Denial: My Life Is Perfect

People in a fixed mindset often run away from their problems. If their life is flawed, then they’re flawed. It’s easier to make believe everything’s all right. Try this dilemma.

The Dilemma. You seem to have everything. You have a fulfilling career, a loving marriage, wonderful children, and devoted friends. But one of those things isn’t true. Unbeknownst to you, your marriage is ending. It’s not that there haven’t been signs, but you chose to misinterpret them. You were fulfilling your idea of the “man’s role” or the “woman’s role,” and couldn’t hear your partner’s desire for more communication and more sharing of your lives. By the time you wake up and take notice, it’s too late. Your spouse has disengaged emotionally from the relationship.

The Fixed-Mindset Reaction. You’ve always felt sorry for divorced people, abandoned people. And now you’re one of them. You lose all sense of worth. Your partner, who knew you intimately, doesn’t want you anymore.

For months, you don’t feel like going on, convinced that even your children would be better off without you. It takes you a while to get to the point where you feel at all useful or competent. Or hopeful. Now comes the hard part because, even though you now feel a little better about yourself, you’re still in the fixed mindset. You’re embarking on a lifetime of judging. With everything good that happens, your internal voice says, Maybe I’m okay after all. But with everything bad that happens, the voice says, My spouse was right. Every new person you meet is judged too—as a potential betrayer.

How could you rethink your marriage, yourself, and your life from a growth-mindset perspective? Why were you afraid to listen to your spouse? What could you have done? What should you do now?

The Growth-Mindset Step. First, it’s not that the marriage, which you used to think of as inherently good, suddenly turned out to have been all bad or always bad. It was an evolving thing that had stopped developing for lack of nourishment. You need to think about how both you and your spouse contributed to this, and especially about why you weren’t able to hear the request for greater closeness and sharing.

As you probe, you realize that, in your fixed mindset, you saw your partner’s request as a criticism of you that you didn’t want to hear. You also realize that at some level, you were afraid you weren’t capable of the intimacy your partner was requesting. So instead of exploring these issues with your spouse, you turned a deaf ear, hoping they would go away.

When a relationship goes sour, these are the issues we all need to explore in depth, not to judge ourselves for what went wrong, but to overcome our fears and learn the communication skills we’ll need to build and maintain better relationships in the future. Ultimately, a growth mindset allows people to carry forth not judgments and bitterness, but new understanding and new skills.

Is someone in your life trying to tell you something you’re refusing to hear? Step into the growth mindset and listen again.

CHANGING YOUR CHILD’S MINDSET

Many of our children, our most precious resource, are stuck in a fixed mindset. You can give them a personal Brainology workshop. Let’s look at some ways to do this.

The Precocious Fixed Mindsetter

Most kids who adopt a fixed mindset don’t become truly passionate believers until later in childhood. But some kids take to it much earlier.

The Dilemma. Imagine your young son comes home from