though I were in ancient Peru.”) You are taught to talk to her this way too.
Finally, the counselor strongly urges that your daughter attend a high school that is less
pressured than the one you have your eye on. There are other fine schools that focus more on
learning and less on grades and test scores. You take your daughter around and spend time in
each of the schools. Then she discusses with you and the counselor which ones she was most
excited about and felt most at ease in.
Slowly, you learn to separate your needs and desires from hers. You may have needed a
daughter who was number one in everything, but your daughter needed something else:
acceptance from her parents and freedom to grow. As you let go, your daughter becomes much
more genuinely involved in the things she does. She does them for interest and learning, and she
does them very well indeed.
Is your child trying to tell you something you don’t want to hear? You know the ad that
asks, “Do you know where your child is now?” If you can’t hear what your child is trying to tell
you—in words or actions—then you don’t know where your child is. Enter the growth mindset
and listen harder.
MINDSET AND WILLPOWER
Sometimes we don’t want to change ourselves very much. We just want to be able to
drop some pounds and keep them off. Or stop smoking. Or control our anger.
Some people think about this in a fixed-mindset way. If you’re strong and have
willpower, you can do it. But if you’re weak and don’t have willpower, you can’t. People who
think this way may firmly resolve to do something, but they’ll take no special measures to make
sure they succeed. These are the people who end up saying, “Quitting is easy. I’ve done it a
hundred times.”
It’s just like the chemistry students we talked about before. The ones with the
fixed-mindset thought: “If I have ability, I’ll do well; if I don’t, I won’t.” As a result, they didn’t
use sophisticated strategies to help themselves. They just studied in an earnest but superficial
way and hoped for the best.
When people with a fixed mindset fail their test—in chemistry, dieting, smoking, or
anger—they beat themselves up. They’re incompetent, weak, or bad people. Where do you go
from there?
My friend Nathan’s twenty-fifth high school reunion was coming up, and when he
thought about how his ex-girlfriend would be there, he decided to lose the paunch. He’d been
handsome and fit in high school and he didn’t want to show up as a fat middle-aged man.
Nathan had always made fun of women and their diets. What’s the big fuss? You just
need some self-control. To lose the weight, he decided he would just eat part of what was on his
plate. But each time he got into a meal, the food on the plate disappeared. “I blew it!” he’d say,
feeling like a failure and ordering dessert—either to seal the failure or to lift his mood.
I’d say, “Nathan, this isn’t working. You need a better system. Why not put some of the
meal aside at the beginning or have the restaurant wrap it up to take home? Why not fill your
plate with extra vegetables, so it’ll look like more food? There are lots of things you can do.” To
this he would say, “No, I have to be strong.”
Nathan ended up going on one of those liquid crash diets, losing weight for the reunion,
and putting back more than he lost afterward. I wasn’t sure how this was being strong, and how
using some simple strategies was being weak.
Next time you try to diet, think of Nathan and remember that willpower is not just a thing
you have or don’t have. Willpower needs help. I’ll come back to this point.
wang
(Wang)
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