Page 125 - The Power to Change Anything

114 INFLUENCER

In fact, many of the stories Henry has been carrying in his
head since he was a young man may be equally wrong. When
his mother once told him that he wasn’t exactly a gifted speaker
and later when his father suggested that leadership “wasn’t his
thing,” Henry believed that he hadn’t been born with “the right
stuff.” He wasn’t born to be an elite athlete; that’s for certain.
Later he learned that music wasn’t his thing, and his interper-
sonal skills weren’t all that strong. Later still he discovered that
spending in excess, getting hooked on video games, and gorg-
ing on Swiss chocolate were his thing. But none of this is going
to change because Henry, like all humans, can’t fight genetics.
Fortunately, Henry is dead wrong. Henry is trapped in what
Carol Dweck, a researcher at Stanford, calls a “fixed mindset.”
If he believes he can’t improve, then he won’t even try, and
he’ll create a self-fulfilling prophecy. But Henry is in luck.
Genes don’t play the fatalistic role scholars once assumed they
played in determining physical prowess, mental agility, and yes,
even self-discipline. Characteristics that had long been de-
scribed by scholars and philosophers alike as genetic gifts or
lifelong personality traits appear to be learned, much the same
way one learns to walk, talk, or whistle. That means that Henry
doesn’t need to accept his current status. He can adopt what
Dweck refers to as a “growth mindset.” Henry simply needs to
learn how to develop a set of high-level learning skills and tech-
niques that influence masters use all the time. He needs to
learn how to learn. Henry, like most of us, was actually born
with the right stuff; he just hasn’t figured out how to get it to
work for him yet.
To illustrate, let’s consider the lengthy hunt researchers
conducted in a quest to find the all-important trait of self-
discipline. Here was a personality trait worth studying. If the
ability to withstand the alluring smell of chocolate or the siren
call of buying shiny new products before you have the cash to
pay for them—the ability to delay gratification—isn’t a reflec-
tion of one’s underlying character, then what is?