Beliefs Are the Key to Happiness (and to Misery)
In the 1960s, psychiatrist Aaron Beck was working with his clients when he suddenly
realized it was their beliefs that were causing their problems. Just before they felt a wave of
anxiety or depression, something quickly flashed through their minds. It could be: “Dr. Beck
thinks I’m incompetent.” Or “This therapy will never work. I’ll never feel better.” These kinds of
beliefs caused their negative feelings not only in the therapy session, but in their lives, too.
They weren’t beliefs people were usually conscious of. Yet Beck found he could teach
people to pay attention and hear them. And then he discovered he could teach them how to work
with and change these beliefs. This is how cognitive therapy was born, one of the most effective
therapies ever developed.
Whether they’re aware of it or not, all people keep a running account of what’s
happening to them, what it means, and what they should do. In other words, our minds are
constantly monitoring and interpreting. That’s just how we stay on track. But sometimes the
interpretation process goes awry. Some people put more extreme interpretations on things that
happen—and then react with exaggerated feelings of anxiety, depression, or anger. Or
superiority.
Mindsets Go Further
Mindsets frame the running account that’s taking place in people’s heads. They guide the
whole interpretation process. The fixed mindset creates an internal monologue that is focused on
judging: “This means I’m a loser.” “This means I’m a better person than they are.” “This means
I’m a bad husband.” “This means my partner is selfish.”
In several studies, we probed the way people with a fixed mindset dealt with information
they were receiving. We found that they put a very strong evaluation on each and every piece of
information. Something good led to a very strong positive label and something bad led to a very
strong negative label.
People with a growth mindset are also constantly monitoring what’s going on, but their
internal monologue is not about judging themselves and others in this way. Certainly they’re
sensitive to positive and negative information, but they’re attuned to its implications for learning
and constructive action: What can I learn from this? How can I improve? How can I help my
partner do this better?
Now, cognitive therapy basically teaches people to rein in their extreme judgments and
make them more reasonable. For example, suppose Alana does poorly on a test and draws the
conclusion, “I’m stupid.” Cognitive therapy would teach her to look more closely at the facts by
asking: What is the evidence for and against your conclusion? Alana may, after prodding, come
up with a long list of ways in which she has been competent in the past, and may then confess, “I
guess I’m not as incompetent as I thought.”
She may also be encouraged to think of reasons she did poorly on the test other than
stupidity, and these may further temper her negative judgment. Alana is then taught how to do
this for herself, so that when she judges herself negatively in the future, she can refute the
judgment and feel better.
In this way, cognitive therapy helps people make more realistic and optimistic judgments.
But it does not take them out of the fixed mindset and its world of judgment. It does not confront
the basic assumption—the idea that traits are fixed—that is causing them to constantly measure
themselves. In other words, it does not escort them out of the framework of judgment and into
the framework of growth.
This chapter is about changing the internal monologue from a judging one to a
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(Wang)
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