Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

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 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.

Shyness harmed the social interactions of people with the fixed mindset but did not harm the social relations of people with the growth mindset. The observers’ ratings showed that, although both fixed- and growth-minded shy people looked very nervous for the first five minutes of the interaction, after that the shy growth-minded people showed greater social skills, were more likable, and created a more enjoyable interaction. In fact, they began to look just like non-shy people.

This happened for good reasons. For one thing, the shy growth-minded people looked on social situations as challenges. Even though they felt anxious, they actively welcomed the chance to meet someone new. The shy fixed people, instead, wanted to avoid meeting someone who might be more socially skilled than they were. They said they were more worried about making mistakes. So the fixed- and growth-mindset people confronted the situation with different attitudes. One embraced the challenge and the other feared the risk.