In one of my master's classes (education) I was reading a chapter and the author, Marzano was essentially talking about how people behave when learning.
There was a sentence that has stuck with me as an "Ah Ha!!" sentence.
He said that there are two kinds of people. You are either success oriented or failure avoidant .
He went on to explain that success oriented people either work to be successful- that is what drives them; not only the success in the final product bt also the road there. They get their "high" from the striving toward success. THey don't worry much about failure because they know it's just a step in the road and something to work from.
Failure avoidant people have the different perspective. The drive in them is to work toward goals so they don't fail. They aren't focused on the success aspect- most times they don't even worry about not succeeding, they just don't want to fail. They will either avoid situations and work (Passing on experiences and projects) so they don't have the chance to fail, or they will do just enough to get by without failing.
I'm very obviously success oriented, and after reading that, my H is very definetly failure avoidant. He will do just enough to keep from "upseting me" in his words, he won't do things that I want, he has a totally different outlook on most things than I do. I was raised to voice my opinion, to strive for change where I see the need, to make a difference. His opinion is there's not much you can do, so why bother getting worked up over it.
I can't change him, but I think seeing him in this light helps me to not push him so much toward what I consider success.
