Commentary
It’s Wednesday, Nov. 6, and you wake up to find your candidate has lost the race for president.
What now?
In the past few months, I’ve read numerous online commentators from across the political spectrum who assert that if so-and-so wins the election, it will be the end of our republic as we know it. Friends and family members have said the same, and I myself have at times echoed that sentiment.
Then came my wake-up call as to how misguided that attitude is.
In a recent phone conversation I had with Greg Roper, dean of students at the University of Dallas, he mentioned that Carol Dweck’s “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” had lately guided his approach to students and teaching. In this book, Roper explained, Dweck contended that we all exercise one of two fundamental mindsets in our approach to success and to life.
Those who live by the fixed mindset believe that our gifts and talents are deep-seated, that we are either smart or we aren’t, that success and failure depend more on our innate abilities and less on effort and self-improvement. According to Dweck, this mindset breeds stagnation and failure. The child who is repeatedly told by her parents and coaches that she has a gift for gymnastics may indeed possess talent, but without practice and constant work, her talent will likely wilt in the face of stiff competition. The husband and wife who believe that a happy marriage can be achieved without effort will probably end up unhappy.
Those with a growth mindset, however, see difficulties as springboards for improvement, obstacles to be overcome by dint of hard work, grit, and creative thinking. If they possess a certain talent, they understand that developing it to its fullest potential requires constantly honing one’s skills.
Intrigued, I checked the book out of our library and read it in two days, by which time my enthusiasm matched that of Roper’s. “Mindset” was just the sort of book I enjoy, filled with anecdotes and real-life examples, in this case from sports, business, school, and marriage. Writing about people ranging from basketball great Michael Jordan to college students facing a tough exam, Dweck again and again demonstrates how important it is “to dig down and turn an important setback into an important win.”
A couple of days after finishing “Mindset,” it occurred to me that Dweck’s proposition of a fixed versus growth mindset might also apply to our political beliefs, hopes, and loyalties.
The fixed mindset folks are those who equate the failure of their candidate to the death of hope and possibilities. They see this single defeat at the polls as final. What was the end of a battle they view as the end of the war.
On the other hand, the growth mindset crew will ask questions following such a loss. Presuming the election was fair, might they have done more to assist their candidate? Should they have donated to his or her campaign? Did they use gentle persuasion to convince those on the fence to vote for that candidate? Presuming as well that they agree with their candidate’s ideas, what might they now do in the wake of defeat to keep those ideas in play in the political arena?
Growth-minded people will take the punch, but they’re not staying down for the count. Like the protagonist in William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus,” they are “bloody, but unbowed.”
When importing Dweck’s ideas into the political sphere, however, one caveat is very much in order.
The growth-minded students, athletes, entrepreneurs, and couples in “Mindset” are all seeking to better themselves and their performance. Growth-minded citizens supporting a political candidate focus on a much larger project, seeking to bring sunshine and nutrients to American ideals such as “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Any other motivation or agenda runs counter to that goal. A Marxist supporting a like-minded candidate, for instance, isn’t looking to help the United States grow but instead intends its destruction. An ideologue who wants to fundamentally transform the United States is more interested in eradication than in growth.
This election year, let’s adopt the growth mindset. Let’s vote for candidates for office, from president to our town officials, who want our country to become the best it can be. And if in November some of these elections don’t go our way, then let’s remember that we may have lost the round, but we’re still in the fight.
Here, George Washington might serve as our model for emulation. As commander of the Continental Army fighting the British, Washington lost more battles than he won, yet he was always seeking improvement, both in his own performance and in that of his troops. He knew as well, as do all growth-minded individuals, that a never-say-die attitude is essential for turning failures into triumphs.
Win or lose, as growth-minded citizens committed to the health and prosperity of our country, let us never give way, as do the fixed-minded, to defeat and despair. No matter the odds, as Shakespeare’s “Henry V” says on the battlefield of Agincourt, “All things are ready if our minds be so.”
