Mindset _ The New Psychology of Success - Carol S. Dweck [21]
For her, politics did not provide the personal creative effort she valued most, and looking back she couldn’t forgive herself for not pursuing her passion for theater. “I often thought,” she said, “that if I were to write an autobiography, my title would be The Autobiography of a Failure.”
Billie Jean King says it’s all about what you want to look back and say. I agree with her. You can look back and say, “I could have been . . . ,” polishing your unused endowments like trophies. Or you can look back and say, “I gave my all for the things I valued.” Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset.
Turning Knowledge into Action
Sure, people with the fixed mindset have read the books that say: Success is about being your best self, not about being better than others; failure is an opportunity, not a condemnation; effort is the key to success. But they can’t put this into practice because their basic mindset—their belief in fixed traits—is telling them something entirely different: that success is about being more gifted than others, that failure does measure you, and that effort is for those who can’t make it on talent.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
At this point, you probably have questions. Let me see if I can answer some of them.
Question: If people believe their qualities are fixed, and they have shown themselves to be smart or talented, why do they have to keep proving it? After all, when the prince proved his bravery, he and the princess lived happily ever after. He didn’t have to go out and slay a dragon every day. Why don’t people with the fixed mindset prove themselves and then live happily ever after?
Because every day new and larger dragons come along and, as things get harder, maybe the ability they proved yesterday is not up to today’s task. Maybe they were smart enough for algebra but not calculus. Maybe they were a good enough pitcher for the minor leagues but not the majors. Maybe they were a good enough writer for their school newspaper but not The New York Times.
So they’re racing to prove themselves over and over, but where are they going? To me they’re often running in place, amassing countless affirmations, but not necessarily ending up where they want to be.
You know those movies where the main character wakes up one day and sees that his life has not been worthwhile—he has always been besting people, not growing, learning, or caring. My favorite is Groundhog Day, which I didn’t see for a long time because I couldn’t get past the name. At any rate, in Groundhog Day, Bill Murray doesn’t just wake up one day and get the message; he has to repeat the same day over and over until he gets the message.
Phil Connors (Murray) is a weatherman for a local station in Pittsburgh who is dispatched to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the Groundhog Day ceremony. On February 2, a groundhog is taken out of his little house; if he is judged to have seen his shadow, there will be another six weeks of winter. If not, there will be an early spring.
Phil, considering himself to be a superior being, has complete contempt for the ceremony, the town, and the people (“hicks” and “morons”), and after making that perfectly clear, he plans to get out of Punxsutawney as quickly as possible. But this is not to be. A blizzard hits the town, he is forced to remain, and when he wakes up the next morning, it’s Groundhog Day again. The same Sonny and Cher song, “I Got You Babe,” wakes him up on the clock radio and the same groundhog festival is gearing up once again. And again. And again.
At first, he uses the knowledge to further his typical agenda, making fools out of other people. Since he is the only one reliving the day, he can talk to a woman on one day, and then