The Power of Your Mindset

We spend a number of minutes each day picking out what we are going to wear, but there is a far more important accessory we choose each day. It's called our mindset. It influences everything we do. It can hurt us or help us. We can start by identifying our mindset and being aware of how it is influencing our behaviors.

Stanford University psychologist and researcher, Carol Dweck, wrote a classic book on understanding your mindset which includes some elegantly simple ideas that are useful for our daily lives at work and at home. Our mindset may be the most critical factor in creating achievement and success in our lives. The book is called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, How to Learn to Fulfill Our Potential (Ballantine Books, 2006).

There are two essential types of mindsets, fixed and growth. They are the equivalent of entering different worlds. Mindsets are belief systems. Mindsets can be changed if you choose to. You can  have a different mindset on different issues or in different areas of your life.

In a fixed mind-set, your own personal narrative is limited. You judge yourself harshly, with a mistake meaning failure. A fixed mindset make disappointments or rejection seem like all is lost. You can be upset with either mindset, but in the fixed one you can't see hope or the possibility of learning lessons and going on to later success. This mindset tells you there are limits to your intelligence, your career, your relationships and your life. One can operate with confidence from either mindset, but the fixed one makes that confidence brittle and fragile if something doesn't work out.

In contrast, the growth mindset makes a huge difference in how you process disappointment failure and rejection. It believes you can change, grow and learn all your life if you are open to it. A growth-oriented mindset allow you to focus on learning rather than ego investment in being smart.

In parenting children towards a growth mindset, we would want to honor effort and learning new things rather than achievement, grades or awards our children get. A growth mindset doesn't believe you have to easily master new skills without effort, or that you are simply born talented or not. It focuses on learning new things about yourself, others and the world each day. This mindset makes it okay to work diligently at things, experience failure and go forward.

In your romantic partnership a fixed mindset could be thinking that the relationship either makes you happy or it doesn't, and then you will need to break up or divorce. A growth mindset helps you see that your closest relationship gives you the opportunity everyday to learn to become a better communicator, a stronger listener and more loving.

In your business, a growth mindset tells you to learn from everything that happens, and readjust your sails if you're not headed towards the results you want. The fixed mindset will tell you to give up if you run into obstacles.

You can demonstrate either the fixed or growth mindset towards:

• Your marriage
• Your business
• Learning new skills and tasks
• Parenting
• School
• Loss
• Life
• Friendships
• Activities
• Sports
• Hobbies

You will tend to get very different results with one mindset or the other. Change is difficult for most people. A growth mindset won't solve everything, but it will contribute to helping you develop a richer life where you don't live a life that is too small and limiting. Dweck's book is a great introduction to the idea of mindsets, and might be a great starting point for constructive conversations at work and at home. You just might want to challenge yourself and those you care about to shift to the growing side of mindset. For now, consider that mindset as an accessory to be chosen every day, and choose wisely.

Seymour: An Introduction (Film Review)

A few years ago, actor Ethan Hawke attended a dinner party with friends and was introduced to virtuoso pianist and composer Seymour Bernstein. They had a wonderful evening with conversation about stage fright, career success vs. success in life as a whole, developing and sharing your creative gifts, hard work and craft. Hawke was so intrigued with the 88 year-old Goldstein that he made him the subject of his first documentary film. I'm glad he did, because the sensitively constructed portrait and interviews with Bernstein and his current and former piano students of different ages has many valuable life lessons in it that don't require any knowledge of music.

Seymour: An Introduction (2014) is out in limited release in theatres now. It debuted at the Telluride Film Festival last summer and won an award at the Toronto International Film Festival. It's noteworthy that Seymour is a classical pianist who toured internationally as a younger man, and then abandoned his rising career at age 50 to retreat to a quieter life where he teaches piano from his one-room apartment in New York city.

In the film, we can see the mentoring relationship that Seymour develops with his students and former students, as well as with Hawke. Bernstein has wisdom, and he has his own ideas about creative gifts and talent.

Bernstein says in the film that he believes music is an important part of becoming a complete person. He suggests having children take piano lessons and having them practice while you supervise. Practicing a musical instrument is a great metaphor for others things in life which necessitate our continued effort, patience and tenacity. One of Bernstein's former students who is now a professional concert pianist himself laughs about how often people will comment after his concerts that they wish they could just sit down and play the beautiful classical pieces that he does. He reminds them that every song takes uncountable hours of practice. The craft is part of the art of music. It takes focus and discipline, which builds character.

Bernstein and Hawke engage in an interesting dialogue about professional success. Both agree that you don't always earn money for the things you most need to create, but you need to create them anyway. Hawke shares about making far more money on big films he doesn't care as much for, while some of his smaller projects (like this documentary film) mean much more. They both reflect on how the ego can get in the way of great art, music, film or theatre.

I especially liked the part of the film where Bernstein shares how he deals with questions about why he chose to stop performing publically after age 50. He says he feels he had done it, and proved he could do it. Since then, for the last 38 years, "he pours all of that out" in what he gives to his students.

In music, like in life, Bernstein says, we need harmony, conflict, and resolution.

Great music, like great art of all kinds, evokes deeply felt emotion that touches us at a very deep level. This thought resonated with me, as I reflected on hospice work with terminally ill patients years ago, and a gifted music therapist who could draw out emotion and responsiveness with her
harpsichord at the bedside. Music can transport us to another place, time or emotional state.

Hawke had confided in Bernstein about the stage fright he had developed in his 40's, and Bernstein reassures him that is normal in good performances. He had experienced it, too. Bernstein quips that maybe a few more (overly-confident artists) should feel some trepidation as well.

Seymour: An Introduction is a charming little independent film you will enjoy. It's chock full of his sage advice and reflections about living with passion and speaking honestly from your heart rather than saying what others expect. It is refreshing to have films that question what creative success really is and challenge the popular notion of easy success without sustained work at your craft. (Think The Voice or American Idol) Seymour has a lot to say about not only music, but about living life your own way. Now that's a life well lived.

Teach Your Children Well

We need to raise children that are strong, resilient, and have good coping skills—just in case Plan A doesn't work out. For these reasons, I enjoyed Madeline Levine’s new book, Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success, or Why Values and Coping Strategies Matter More Than Grades, Trophies, or Fat Envelopes (Harper Collins, 2012). In this succinct book, Levine digs deeper than the tiger parent vs. overprotective parent debate, and helps us take a long-term perspective on parenting, and what type of adults we are hoping to launch.

Helping our children find authentic success means assisting them in learning to love learning, develop their own strengths and interests, find productive and meaningful work to support themselves, become capable, resourceful, and resilient, create loving relationships with family and friends, and contribute to our world in some way. That’s more valuable than awards, trophies, honor rolls, or admission to a prestigious college.

Levine reminds us that there is more than one definition to building a successful life. Sometimes it takes us way into adulthood to figure that out. This book gives us encouragement to define our own version of success, and parent with that end in mind. I have wanted for my own children to grow into responsible, kind, capable adults who contribute to the world in their own unique way. I wanted them to be able to cope with not only successes, but also with loss, disappointment, waiting, and developing enough inner resources to create a Plan B,C or D as needed.

Levine has some interesting views on how an over-focus on self-esteem in parenting has left some young adults unprepared for the rejection and frustrations of real life. Authentic self-esteem really comes from feeling capable, not from awards, recognition, or compliments (while those are nice to receive). By being too child-centered, we can add to a narcissistic trait that can develop in our children. It's important for our children to know what they think/feel/want is important, but so are those of others. Ultimately, we are reminded that as parents, teaching our children and teens life skills to increase their independence and ability to function in the world, and how to relate compassionately to others, are among the best gifts we can give them.

In Teach Your Children Well, Levine does an excellent job of defining some of the developmental tasks children need our help with in the elementary school years, the middle school years, and the high school years.

Parenting isn't, as Levine writes, one job. It's really more like different jobs at different developmental points, and we need to make intentional shifts as parents in order to help our children and teens move along on their own path to an authentically successful life of their own. We don't want to become so child-centered, overprotective, over-scheduled, or allowing of dependency on us that we fail to help our children prepare to launch. Taking a long-term perspective helps. Our long-term goal in parenting should be to work ourselves out of a job, and launch a well-balanced, strong young adult who can live, love, work, play, and cope well. Teach Your Children Well has some great ideas for the journey.

Success, Defined By You

Today's Sunday New York Times has a fun article by Jan Hoffman about modern culture titled "The Good Wife and It's Women".It ponders the cultural relevance of the female characters on the CBS show, and how they cope with their careers,husbands,and families.Ultimately, the show's co-creator,Michelle King, says she likes to consider "at the end of these women's lives,what will success mean to each of them?" The shows lead female characters have all been through loss,disappointment,set-backs and betrayals,personally and/or professionally in their law careers. Sometimes we get to witness the characters lives changing,and the character having to redefine success in new terms.

Real life can cause us to reshuffle the deck,and redefine our personal version of success.Many of us change our ideas about success as we grow older.I always encourage the people I counsel and coach to redefine success for themselves.Clearly, money doen't buy happiness. As we age,we realize that time with the people we care about means a great deal.Having the opportunity to pursue things we are passionate about keeps us young and full of life. Even Freud knew that we need two things in life that we pursue with vigor: love and work.

Success may mean living life with honesty,character,a sense of humor,and faith. Many people decide that being the top person in your office has its' limitations. If you spend too much time chasing career success, your children grow up and depart without really knowing you. Knowing how to have work being a meaningful part of your life,but knowing when to set limits with it, is a great skill. Time and sacred space for your partner,your parents,your children,and yourself is essential.

What is your personal definition of success? Take a moment this week to reflect on how your personal definition of success may have evolved over time.Having your own authorship over how you define success gives you clarity to make decisions about how you spend your life,and acceptance that it is ok for you to have your own, independent view of the world on the topic of success.You can do it your way. Now,wouldn't Frank Sinatra be proud?