Do you focus on results, or rather on the challenge itself and the development process involved in completing a task? How you answer this question reveals a mindset that has significant implications for all areas of your life.
Our culture worships success and ridicules failure, believe paediatricians Kenneth Ginsburg and Sara Kinsman, explaining that the focus on our society’s “heroes”—those who seem to have achieved perfection in sports, entertainment or other visible fields—gives young people the idea that they must reach the top at all costs. In fact, there has been a trend of increasing perfectionism over the last 30 years.
Perfectionism can be very dangerous for athletes or people who exercise regularly, because they tend to push their bodies beyond their limits precisely because they cannot easily deal with failure, writes psychologist Gordon Flett. The reality is that perfectionism isn’t just bad for athletes: a number of studies have shown a link between this way of thinking and a predisposition to suicidal thoughts, major psychopathological disorders and a range of physical ailments (see the ST Network article ‘My child, a perfectionist’).
The bad news is that perfectionists aren’t just obsessed with failure in one area of their lives; they hate mistakes of any kind and have an all-or-nothing mindset, Flett explains.
An obsession with perfection is the enemy of efficiency
The perfectionist is a person who “strives for flawlessness, for a perfect creation, outcome or performance.” They “find it difficult to delegate, even if that means neglecting their health, relationships, and wellbeing in pursuit of a ‘perfect’ outcome,” explains psychologist Linda Blair.
More than an attitude or a way of thinking, perfectionism is a lifestyle, says Paul Hewitt, a professor at the University of British Columbia. As Hewitt explains, behind a perfectionist’s obsession with the flawless execution of every task lies an attempt to perfect his or her identity.
Iskra Fileva, a professor at the University of Colorado, describes two of the unhealthy characteristics of perfectionism. First, the perfectionist’s focus is not so much on the task at hand, but on how a possible failure would reflect on him or her. Obviously, this reduces their effectiveness, as their energy is invested in a concern that for people who do not suffer from perfectionism is rather peripheral.
Secondly, perfectionists are driven by the desire to make the project they are working on the most successful they have ever worked on, hoping to outdo themselves every time they start a new project.
Fileva examines one of the more famous cases of perfectionists who have sabotaged their own success in this way: the writer Elizabeth Tallent, who made her debut before the age of 30 with a collection of short stories released by a prestigious publisher and well received by literary critics. Tallent went on to publish two more collections over the next decade, but did not write again for more than 20 years. The writer described her ambition to surpass the success of her debut with the image of Zeno’s arrow—always on the move, never reaching its destination because it always has to cover the remaining half of the distance from each point to the final point. What was a sophism in the case of the Greek philosopher is a reality in the case of perfectionism: it is eternally in search of an elusive perfection.
According to Reverend William Lynch, to focus on oneself rather than the task at hand is to waste time on self-criticism and self-flagellation, which is why he believes that moving away from what he categorises as “our own executioner” is the way to go.
Embracing failure
“Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It’s not optional,” says American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, explaining that he believes in failing early and regularly until successful results are achieved.
The problem is that we stubbornly avoid failure; we have a real aversion to failure, as psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky have shown in their studies that the effect of a loss on us is twice as strong as the effect of a win.
Entrepreneur Jia Jiang has turned his fear of rejection into a thriving business. Having just left a Fortune 500 company, he was about to start a business on his own when one of his potential investors backed out, leaving him questioning the wisdom of his decisions. Jiang decided to challenge himself when he discovered the “rejection therapy” game, in which he spent 100 days imagining and rehearsing scenarios in which he would make requests to others that would predictably be met with a negative response. By the end of the game, Jiang had not only won the sympathy of several million people who watched his YouTube videos, but also an enviable resilience to rejection. “The fear of rejection is far worse than rejection itself, because it stops us from trying things,” says Jiang.
In fact, no one can reject us more brutally than ourselves, but we must remember that the people who have changed the world have often been those who didn’t let fear of failure and rejection dictate their reactions, Jiang concludes.
Learning to deal with failure is a skill like any other, one that develops with practice, writes Rachel Simmons, director of the Phoebe Lewis Leadership Program at Smith College. Simmons encourages her students to ask themselves a series of questions when they’re reluctant to commit to a project because of the risk of failure: What’s the worst thing that could happen? What resources do I have to deal with failure? What benefits could I gain from an undesirable outcome?
You shouldn’t pretend that a failure is anything other than that, but always remind yourself that you are more than the defeat you have suffered, says Simmons. A good strategy for getting over failure is to learn to treat yourself with compassion, she says. You wouldn’t be so critical of a friend who has just failed, but would try to help them learn from the experience and look confidently to the future; you can do the same for yourself, because “self-compassion is the practice of offering yourself the same grace you’d give to others.”
Two ways of looking at the world
How we relate to success or failure, or any other area of our lives, depends on how we think about our potential, says Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck. There’s a fixed mindset that intelligence and the skills we are born with are set in stone, so its adherents will try to prove themselves whenever they can. Those with a flexible mindset, on the other hand, believe that they can improve any skill they have through effort and practice.
Dweck suggests an imaginative exercise in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. You’re a student, and in an important course that you’re really passionate about, you get a 6 on your midterm, which is really disappointing. You go to the car park, where a fine awaits you for parking your car in a restricted area. Finally, weighed down by the day’s events, you call a friend to tell him what has happened, but he shows no sign of being moved by your grief and tries to dismiss you. How do you feel at the end of the day?
Dweck says she has noticed that people with a fixed mindset feel rejected, incapable, unlovable, unloved, even pitiful, and they exaggerate the importance of unpleasant but far from unbearable events.
After all, it’s just an exam (a partial one too), a low but passing grade, a trivial fine, and a friend who may be in a bad mood for reasons we don’t yet know. In contrast, people with a flexible mindset do not attach negative labels, nor do they treat the series of unpleasant events as a catastrophe, but are anxious to face challenges. Their responses indicate a decision to study more for the exam and discuss with the teacher what they did not do well in the test, to park better in the future and/or to challenge the fine, and to have a discussion with the friend.
How you think has a huge impact on your life, Dweck writes. When it comes to correctly assessing one’s limits and abilities, people with a fixed mindset risk being the most inaccurate, while people with a flexible mindset seem to have a special ability to identify their strengths and weaknesses. It’s only natural: if you believe you can develop, you’re more likely to accept your weaknesses.
The way the two categories relate to success, failure or effort is very different. “When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world—the world of fixed traits—success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other—the world of changing qualities—it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new,” she explains.
While one category sees failure as a setback, a sign that they are not smart or talented, the other equates failure with not growing, not fulfilling their potential. Some seize every opportunity to improve, while others shy away from challenges, preferring not to show their shortcomings.
Likewise, drawing (and therefore artistic talent) is not a magical ability that we are born with or not, says teacher Betty Edwards. People can learn to draw, but they need to learn to see “edges, spaces, relationships, lights and shadows, and the whole.” Self-portraits drawn by people with varying degrees of drawing talent five days before and after a short drawing course (and published in her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain) prove that even in this area, considered to be the preserve of the chosen few, skills can improve remarkably. In fact, this exercise clearly proves that “just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training,” writes Carol Dweck. This is not to say that we could all be Picasso or Mozart, for example, but that we are capable of amazing growth if we are not too blinded by the brilliance of talent to realise the importance of effort.
The way we think also affects our most important relationships, says Dweck. Those with a fixed mindset believe that their ideal partner should put them on a pedestal and make them feel perfect, while those with a flexible mindset want a relationship that helps them grow, a partner who helps them correct their mistakes and encourages them to learn new things. The way people react to difficulties in a marriage also depends on their view of the relationship, say psychologists Eva Wunderer and Klaus Schneewind: while some believe that the relationship is fated and that partners should be compatible from the start, others believe in development, so they more easily overcome the differences that arise.
A study published in August 2020 showed that people with a growth mindset are more likely to believe that climate change can be mitigated and are more likely to take environmental action, precisely because they see the world as an entity that can be shaped rather than a reality that cannot be changed.
How our mindset helps us in times of crisis
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof,” writes economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith.
Mindsets are made up of beliefs, so they can be changed, even if the process is not necessarily easy, says Carol Dweck, who explains that watching people change is the most rewarding part of her job. Just the fact that people learn that there is a flexible mindset, which has many benefits, can change their outlook on life, she says.
Our minds are constantly monitoring and interpreting what is happening to us, and it is our mindset that guides this interpretive process. The shift from a fixed to a flexible mindset is reflected in a change in the inner monologue, from harsh self-criticism to the use of negative and positive feedback for learning and constructive action.
As the results of Dweck’s research have become known internationally, some criticism has emerged regarding the rapid spread of the growth mindset theory, the promises that have been seen as exaggerated, but also some failures to replicate the results of the researcher’s studies.
In an interview with the journalist Alina Tugend, Dweck said that these criticisms had made her want to explore mindsets at an even deeper level. When we move from theory to practice, things take on all sorts of nuances, she explained. In the case of students, for example, the school environment “has to support the belief change and the behaviours that come with it.” Moreover, focusing solely on the importance of effort can be a losing game, especially in cultures that believe that gifted individuals don’t need to work hard to achieve; effort is only one of the tools the flexible mindset works with, and support from those around you is just as important. In itself, effort is “not just a consolation prize”; its role is to foster learning, Dweck explains.
Dweck also touched on a very topical issue—whether the flexible mindset had something to offer in the midst of the pandemic. The researcher explained that she constantly turned down requests to talk about the crisis we were in because she’s not a public health expert and didn’t want to sound like one talking about flexible thinking amidst the losses the nation was suffering.
However, Dweck and other researchers followed the work of teachers who had studied in flexible mindset development programmes, and the conclusion was that open-mindedness facilitated adaptation to online learning. These teachers also focused on creating an environment where students could open up about the problems they were facing in this crisis, and this willingness to share personal fears and struggles is part of the process of developing a flexible mindset.
Perhaps the pandemic was also one of the best opportunities to let go of false values, a reluctance to learn new things, or excessive focus on success or failure. Perhaps it was an opportunity to realise that we cannot control everything that happens to us, but also an opportunity to celebrate life in all its forms, its achievements, its losses and its ages, to learn to protect it and to let it flow through the winding realities hitherto unknown.
Above all, it was an opportunity to grow in circumstances seemingly hostile to progress, because (at least for Christians) the fulfilment of potential has never been an end in itself, but rather an opportunity to demonstrate that growth is the fruit of an unearthly union; that between a weak branch and a vine of the most exquisite variety there is no limit to growth, as long as the process takes place under the loving supervision of the Vine Grower.
Carmen Lăiu is an editor at Signs of the Times Romania and ST Network.
