said, ‘Good luck to him and good luck to me.’ ”
Because of their growth mindset, they did not feel permanently branded. Because of it,
they tried to learn something useful about themselves and relationships, something they could
use toward having a better experience in the future. And they knew how to move on and embrace
that future.
My cousin Cathy embodies the growth mindset. Several years ago, after twenty-three
years of marriage, her husband left her. Then, to add insult to injury, she was in an accident and
hurt her leg. There she sat, home alone one Saturday night, when she said to herself, “I’ll be
damned if I’m going to sit here and feel sorry for myself!” (Perhaps this phrase should be the
mantra of the growth mindset.) Out she went to a dance (leg and all) where she met her future
husband.
The Contos family had pulled out all the stops. Nicole Contos, in her exquisite wedding
dress, arrived at the church in a Rolls-Royce. The archbishop was inside waiting to perform the
ceremony, and hundreds of friends and relatives from all over the world were in attendance.
Everything was perfect until the best man went over to Nicole and told her the news. The groom
would not be coming. Can you imagine the shock, the pain?
The family, thinking of the hundreds of guests, decided to go through with the reception
and dinner. Then, rallying around Nicole, they asked her what she wanted to do. In an act of
great courage, she changed into a little black dress, went to the party, and danced solo to “I Will
Survive.” It was not the dance she had anticipated, but it was one that made her an icon of
gutsiness in the national press the next day. Nicole was like the football player who ran the
wrong way. Here was an event that could have defined and diminished her. Instead it was one
that enlarged her.
It’s interesting. Nicole spoke repeatedly about the pain and trauma of being stood up at
her wedding, but she never used the word humiliated. If she had judged herself, felt flawed and
unworthy—humiliated—she would have run and hidden. Instead, her good clean pain made her
able to surround herself with the love of her friends and relatives and begin the healing process.
What, by the way, had happened to the groom? As it turned out, he had gone on the
honeymoon, flying off to Tahiti on his own. What happened to Nicole? A couple of years later,
in the same wedding dress and the same church, she married a great guy. Was she scared? No,
she says: “I knew he was going to be there.”
When you think about how rejection wounds and inflames people with the fixed mindset,
it will come as no surprise that kids with the fixed mindset are the ones who react to taunting and
bullying with thoughts of violent retaliation. I’ll return to this later.
RELATIONSHIPS ARE DIFFERENT
In his study of gifted people, Benjamin Bloom included concert pianists, sculptors,
Olympic swimmers, tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists. But not people
who were gifted in interpersonal relationships. He planned to. After all, there are so many
professions in which interpersonal skills play a key role—teachers, psychologists, administrators,
diplomats. But no matter how hard Bloom tried, he couldn’t find any agreed-upon way of
measuring social ability.
Sometimes we’re not even sure it’s an ability. When we see people with outstanding
interpersonal skills, we don’t really think of them as gifted. We think of them as cool people or
charming people. When we see a great marriage relationship, we don’t say these people are
brilliant relationship makers. We say they’re fine people. Or they have chemistry. Meaning
what?
wang
(Wang)
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