Mastery and Success

Seems that I have some readers who want to keep me on task. I’m basing this conclusion on the suggestions of books and Ted talks that come through my inbox. I appreciate them all! Diverting! And I get to watch things on a screen and consider it “work.”

One thing I watched was this Ted talk by someone called Sarah Lewis on the benefits of the “near win,” a.k.a. failure. Inevitably, the topic sailed right out at me, it being so salient to my situation. I am so very, very familiar with failure. My entire career has been a “near win.” That’s okay, according to Sarah Lewis, because failure is what we experience on the way to mastery. And mastery is ultimately more important than success.

Easy for Sarah Lewis to say. She’s the one giving the TED talk. She is an art historian and critic, and apparently has a book about failure and creativity. This isn’t about sour grapes, though. It’s about learning to cope with who I am.

Sarah Lewis defines success as a “moment.” That is a way of looking at it. I agree, I think. Success is a byproduct of effort. However, what she calls “mastery” I might call mastering; that is, engaging in working towards something. Or having a system for continuing to set and reach for goals. As I’ve mentioned before being engaged in that system, or in mastering a new goal, makes me feel successful. Purposeful effort makes life juicy and interesting.

This TED talk reminded me of something I read in Matthew Seyd’s Bounce, which focused on techniques for improving athletic performance. Most of practice is failing. For example, an ice skater spends every practice trying to refine upon and improve technique to accomplish the next challenge, the next turn, inevitably more complicated than the previous one. She spends most of that time trying and falling, trying and falling, until she manages her triple lutz. Then it’s on to the quadruple. When you think about it, most of the time, she’s experiencing the near win. But in context, it doesn’t feel like failure.

This also reminds me of certain teenaged ballet dancers I know. To hear them talk about their efforts after class, you'd think they would have quit years ago. They're almost never satisfied. They are always mastering, and so very rarely feeling successful. Yet they go on. And on. And on. The effort keeps them engaged, and they learn from their mistakes. They are always refining.

Well, I also feel that I have been more involved in the near win than I’d like to remain; yet I see the value of near-wins. Also, I feel that although success may be just a moment, it’s a moment I’d like to experience, and to memorialize, if possible with an attractive photo. Or an award. An award would be nice. But an attractive photo of myself would also be good. Or money. Yes, some money would also suffice.

Anyway, the point is that one has to be involved in mastering or mastery. One must be striving, according to Sarah Lewis, for more than one can possibly achieve. To do this, to keep reaching for the out of reach goal, one must have a functioning system of effort. One must have those habits, that routine, those goals, and that willpower. Otherwise, there will be no moments of success as byproduct. And Readers, I want a couple of those byproducts before I die.

Self-Control Can Be Contagious

Frog knows about self-control

Here's a  topic about which I know almost nothing from personal experience: self-control.

A short story, readers, if I may. Once upon a 1970s school fair, there was a young girl in a potato sack race. This young girl hopped her way towards the finish line in her burlap sack. She was feeling pretty good. She was feeling all right. She was doing fine. Until other hoppers started passing her. Until all the other hoppers had hopped on by. The little girl was near the finish line, but everyone else had crossed it. What did she do? Did she double-down and hop her way over the line to show her grit? Did she think to herself, "I am of the growth mindset and even though I won't win this race, I will do my very best anyway, so that I can improve my time?" Or did she quit?

Readers, she quat.

Look, I already admitted I know almost nothing about self-control. Also known as Willpower. Or Strength of Character.

Which is why I'm turning you over to the experts. Frog and Toad, for one. Or two. As Frog tells Toad in "Cookies," a chapter in Frog and Toad Together (Newberry Honor, by Arnold Lobel, published 1971,) regarding a batch of same, "Will power is trying hard not to do something you really want to do." Like trying not to eat the cookies.

Personally, I think the flip side of Frog's definition is also true. Willpower is also trying hard to do something you really don't want, or are afraid, to do-- but don't take it from me. I am too busy eating chocolate-covered almonds to think it through thoroughly.

Luckily, others have. Around about the time Frog was speaking, maybe a few years earlier, a psychologist at Stanford named Walter Mischel did an experiment with kids and marshmallows. You've probably heard about this. He took 4-year-olds one at a time into a small room, and sat them at a table. Then he gave them a marshmallow. He told them they could eat that marshmallow, BUT that if they waited until he came back, they could have TWO marshmallows to eat. Then he left the room and watched them behind a two way mirror.  This is a clip of the experiment, but it's a little hard to tell if it's the original participants, or participants in a repeat experiment. When did color film make it to psych labs? Anyone?

So do you want the good news or the bad news?

The bad news is, if you were one of those kids who ate the marshmallow before Mischel returned, you were doomed. That's right. Mischel followed up on these subjects later in life and discovered that the ones who had enough willpower or self-control to wait for that second marshmallow tended to reap the metaphorical second marshmallows throughout life. They were more successful, in other words, than the poor cuties who gave in to temptation. Those kids, I am sorry to say, were much more likely to use drugs and do poorly in school, and basically lump along, than the ones who delayed their gratification.

Mischel's studies of the marshmallow effect have yielded a whole field of research on self-control. Also known as willpower. Or Strength of Character. What they've proven, over and over and over again is, according to Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, is that self-control is a better predictor of success than academic achievement or IQ tests.

So was that the bad news or the good news? Depends on how you feel about marshmallows. Or, in my case, about chocolate covered almonds. (Not good news.)

Here's some definite good news. Self-control is like a muscle. Like a muscle, it gets weak from underuse, it can fatigue from overuse, but you can work it and build it and bulk it up with practice.

So, how can you build your self-control? There are, thank goodness, many ways to build it up. Today I'm focusing on one. Or one-ish.

Remember goal contagion? Triggers? Things to get you motivated? Goal contagion works to develop willpower, too. Apparently, just watching someone do something you'd like to do can get you going. That's why motivational posters and photos of people or things that remind you of your goals can truly help motivate you. People picking up habits you want to pick up can also inspire you.

Another short story.  A few weeks ago, a full-grown woman with a penchant for chocolate-covered almonds and an expanding waist that I know, visited her friend at her friend's bucolic vacation spot in the mountains. Her friend, a woman with outstanding self-control, who doesn't even eat chocolate, had begun a running regime. This woman, I mean, talk about willpower. I mean, not only did she hold out for that second marshmallow at four, she held out for quadruple-or nothing when the psychologist came back into the room. Life has been upward ever since.

The almond-eater had been sporadically adding a bit of jogging to her workout for months with no real progress. Are you surprised? I am not. Lack of willpower. Also known as Strength of Character. However, the almond-eater did have the goal of running, no matter how pitiful her attempts might have been, to date. So when she got to the bucolic mountain retreat, her friend, let's call her Jane, urged her to run with her. The almond-eater--alright, it's me, for God's sake--I-- resisted at first. Fear. Jane had been running for a while now, and I had not. There were mountains. It was hot. I declined, and so my first day, Jane set off for her run without me. She persisted, however. The next day, when Jane urged me to join, I agreed. Feeling dubious, I set out on the mountainous route Jane chose. And do you know what? While it is true that Jane had to maintain a continuous conversational patter to distract me, and to literally take me by the wrist and urge me on at a couple of key hills, I, the almond-eater, did indeed succeed in running more than fifty yards at a time. The next day we went out again, and I ran further. And the next day.

Since then, I, the almond-eater, have continued to run, much longer than I've run since I developed shin splints in college. So that the other day, when I went out to run, I set myself the goal of running all the way to a particular fence, and instead of stopping short of the fence, as I have been wont to do since the burlap potato sack race days, I did. (Yes, that was me, the quitter in the burlap sack.) Now, running has become a habit (maybe), and when I hit a rough spot, I picture my running friend Jane just a couple of steps ahead of me, taking my wrist, and urging me on.

Goal contagion in action. And the reason why I say I know *almost* nothing about willpower, also known as self-control. Inch by inch, etc.

The End.

Success and the Bruised Ego

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3124/2906234391_49fcd2c55b.jpg

I've been thinking hard about this whole fixed/entity or growth/incremental mindset theory, which I've been talking about in my last few posts. It’s got to be one of the most significant theories of succes I’ve read so far. For me, anyway, it’s been a revelation.

Embracing the growth mindset seems to me the only possible way for me to leap off that asymptote of striving to the axis of arriving. Striving to arriving. What a great (accidental) rhyme. Before I began this investigation of success, I felt as if there was this Thing, maybe a gulf, maybe an invisible and unbreakable plexiglass wall, between me and successful people. I felt like they were They. Other. Maybe they had some kind of birthmark that earmarked them for success. Maybe they were born with some innate knowledge of their special specialness. I scoured my body, but only came up with the same kite-shaped birthmark I’ve always had--currently obscured by sun damage, by the way. I scoured my history, hoping to find somewhere some indication that I was Meant to realize my dreams. Alas.

But no, not alas. For here comes Carol Dweck and her protégé Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D, and they’re telling me that I can succeed, if I’m motivated, if I believe I can changegrowadaptimprovelearn, and if I persevere. Which means those Theys, those Others, those “real” successes, are just regular people who figured it out before me.

This is really good news, this theory. You can get your growth mindset in place (by buying Carol Dweck's book and doing her helpful exercises--cha-ching) and you can roll. Right? I mean, then anyone can do it. Right? And that’s great and good and fair, right? I mean, we want anyone to be able to succeed, right?

We do. Really, we do. Except, embracing this theory does bruise the ego just a little. The mindset theory is another notch in the belt of the success scientists who have started this whole vogue for the  10,000 hours of practice to become an expert, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers. They claim that the right kind of effort matters more than intelligence. 

Which really does hurt just a little. Ouch. I mean, hello, I’ve already admitted that I spent part of my twenties trying to prove to myself that I was smart. Was that all wasted time?

Uh, yeah. Apparently.

And what about those marvelous extensions of ourselves, our children? What about their successes in school? That score in the top quadrant of the 99th percentile of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test?   Do these things not mean glory for us? Does not our child’s intelligence, demonstrated by report cards and awards, confer glory upon us by default?

Does Carol Dweck wish to deprive us off this stuff? Does Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D, like kicking us when we're down?

Are we only allowed to kvell over our children’s ability to work hard and persevere? Yes, as any good parenting book will tell you. Now Carol Dweck comes along with Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D, to prove it. Are we not allowed to take their grades and awards as proof of our own worth as well as of theirs?  No?

No.

How the hell are we supposed to rank ourselves and others if everything comes down to who can hang in there the longest? Who's the hardest worker is just much less sexy than who is effortlessly brilliant.

Okay, breathe.

Despite the efforts of the success scientists, no one is saying there's no such thing as native intelligence (or talent).  Dweck and Halvorson skirt this issue, but they don’t totally ignore it. They point out that yes, intelligence has a genetic component. However, environment plays a huge role. An enriched environment will produce an enriched child. Regardless of environment, however, a child who’s not encouraged to work hard will eventually fall behind the kid who is praised not only for being smart, but for effort, and who is taught how to analyse mistakes and improve her performance. Does this sound familiar? Tiger mom-ish? Indeed, HGH Ph.D and Carol Dweck posit that it’s mindset that accounts for the so-called superiority of Asian students. That joke in “Glee” about an A-minus equaling an “Asian F?” That’s because the emphasis is on improving improving improving. And the only way to improve is to face your problem areas and hone them.

Yet I find it significant that both Carol Dweck and Heidi Grant Halvorsen “confess” to possessing very fixed (entity) mindsets all the way until they were in graduate school. Coincidence? I do not think so. Consider for a moment that the fixed mindset is the perfect mindset to drive you to achieve good grades. With the fixed mindset, every A, every improvement, every award is yet another proof of your worth. And of course that sort of work, getting As and winning awards is just the thing you need to compete for those spots in top colleges and graduate programs. Sadly, traditional education is not about taking risks, so the downside of that mindset doesn’t become apparent until later on, after getting As gets you into the college and grad school of your choice. Then, out in the real world, you need a more flexible, creative, motivation-based approach to make a real difference in the world. Innovation requires risk, and the fixed mindset is risk-averse.

Let me also mention that in Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham and the Science of Success, Matthew Seyd argues that practice and the right kind of coaching are more important than talent in reaching the top in athletics. Howevs, he glosses over one eensy fact in writing about his own experience becoming a world champion table tennis player. He casually mentions that every year, the coach in his school had everyone who had any interest in table tennis try out, and he picked the ones he wanted to work with.

Do you think he picked them because they were so bad that he thought he could make a real difference in their playing? Neither do I.

So let’s not throw out all those awards just yet. The fact is, there is some sort of inborn talent factor that does set you on a course towards achievement. The fact is, there is a strong correlation between IQ and academic achievement. I can’t remember which scientist guy said so, becuz apparently my IQ isn’t that high, but trust me, he did say so. And there is also a strong correlation between academic achievement and income level. (Okay you professors, don’t laugh ironically and say, yeah, the more degrees you get, the less you get paid. That’s only true in academia.)  So IQ does predict some kinds of success. What it most definitely does not predict, is whether you’ll feel successful or happy or content or peaceful, whether you’ll create a masterpiece of art, whether you’ll have successful personal relationships, or any of the most important things in life. 


Those things require the growth mindset.