Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

What was that about the course of true love never running smooth? Well, the course to true love isn’t so smooth, either. That path is often strewn with disappointments and heartbreaks. Some people let these experiences scar them and prevent them from forming satisfying relationships in the future. Others are able to heal and move on. What separates them? To find out, we recruited more than a hundred people and asked them to tell us about a terrible rejection.

When I first got to New York I was incredibly lonely. I didn’t know a soul and I totally felt like I didn’t belong here. After about a year of misery I met Jack. It’s almost an understatement to say that we clicked instantly, we felt like we had known each other forever. It wasn’t long before we were living together and doing everything together. I thought I would spend my whole life with him and he said he felt the same way. Two really happy years passed. Then one day I came home and found a note. He said he had to leave, don’t try to find him. He didn’t even sign it love. I never heard from him again. Sometimes when the phone rings I still think maybe it’s him.

We heard a variation of that story over and over again. People with both mindsets told stories like this. Almost everyone, at one time or another, had been in love and had been hurt. What differed—and differed dramatically—was how they dealt with it.

After they told their stories, we asked them follow-up questions: What did this mean to you? How did you handle it? What were you hoping for?

When people had the fixed mindset, they felt judged and labeled by the rejection. Permanently labeled. It was as though a verdict had been handed down and branded on their foreheads: UNLOVABLE! And they lashed out.

Because the fixed mindset gives them no recipe for healing their wound, all they could do was hope to wound the person who inflicted it. Lydia, the woman in the story above, told us that she had lasting, intense feelings of bitterness: “I would get back at him, hurt him any way I could if I got the chance. He deserves it.”

In fact, for people with the fixed mindset, their number one goal came through loud and clear. Revenge. As one man put it, “She took my worth with her when she left. Not a day goes by I don’t think about how to make her pay." aDuring the study, I asked one of my fixed-mindset friends about her divorce. I’ll never forget what she said. “If I had to choose between me being happy and him being miserable, I would definitely want him to be miserable.”

It had to be a person with the fixed mindset who coined the phrase “Revenge is sweet”—the idea that with revenge comes your redemption—because people with the growth mindset have little taste for it. The stories they told were every bit as wrenching, but their reactions couldn’t have been more different.

For them, it was about understanding, forgiving, and moving on. Although they were often deeply hurt by what happened, they wanted to learn from it: “That relationship and how it ended really taught me the importance of communicating. I used to think love conquers all, but now I know it needs a lot of help.” This same man went on to say, “I also learned something about who’s right for me. I guess every relationship teaches you more about who’s right for you.”

There is a French expression: “Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.”

To understand all is to forgive all. Of course, this can be carried too far, but it’s a good place to start. For people with the growth mindset, the number one goal was forgiveness. As one woman said: “I’m no saint, but I knew for my own peace of mind that I had to forgive and forget. He hurt me but I had a whole life waiting for me and I’ll be damned if I was going to live it in the past. One day I just 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.