Unfear by Gaurav Bhatnagar

Author:Gaurav Bhatnagar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2022-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Clearing the Unnecessary Stone

The second aspect of transformational learning that we need to unlock performance and well-being requires us to shift two mindsets:

• From victim to mastery

• From knower to learner

Transforming these mindsets is fundamental to spurring individual learning—to prioritizing growth in how we are being and in what we are doing.

From Victim to Mastery

To demonstrate the victim mindset, we do a simple exercise with our clients. We hold up a pen and then let it go. When we ask, “Why did the pen fall?,” most people respond, “Gravity.”

We then promise to do some magic that will make gravity disappear. With much theatrics, we hold up the pen again. This time we don’t drop it. The pen (obviously) doesn’t fall, and we ask, “Why didn’t the pen fall?”

People answer, “Because you did not let it go.”

We push back and say that if the pen fell because of gravity, then we must have made gravity disappear.

The way that most people respond to the first question is representative of the victim mindset. They claim that something negative (the pen falling) happened because of an external force (gravity) rather than because of a choice that we made (to let go). When we operate in the victim mindset, we believe that we are at the mercy of our circumstances. In the victim mindset, we believe ourselves powerless against some big, bad they (e.g., management, another department, direct reports, shareholders, customers, etc.) that has profound control over us. We always blame someone or something else when things go wrong. This is one of the mindsets that hardens like marble, imprisoning the angel within.

Even though this mindset blocks us from our source of energy, it can be very difficult to escape. It offers our egos (the way that we view ourselves) a false sense of security—we can continue to believe that we are exceptionally talented/creative/hardworking even in the face of failure if we blame all those failures on something other than ourselves. We can also weaponize this mindset to garner sympathy. We use the victim mindset to absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our emotions and actions. It makes us feel innocent, even when we are in the wrong or have made a mistake.

Yet, when we eschew responsibility, we disempower ourselves. Just think about the word responsible and its component parts: response and able. When you deny responsibility, you deny your ability to respond to your situation. You give up your power and hand it over to other people, which leaves you trapped in a web of reaction.

We acquire this mindset at a very young age. When a child spills milk, he usually says, “It fell,” not “I dropped it.” When the child becomes an adult and arrives late for an early-morning meeting, he says that the traffic was bad. In this case, the bad traffic, like gravity, exists. But when the adult points to it as the reason for being late, he also fails to mention that he didn’t plan for it properly. If you listen carefully, you will hear victim statements everywhere in your organization.

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