The psychology of success: how to adopt the mentality of the winner

As long as you adopt a flexible attitude towards your features, you can change your personality. It all depends on your belief system.

With the right attitude you can go far. This is the mentality of the winner who eventually gets what he wants. At least that’s what psychologist Carol S. Dweck says.

In his book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck insists that in order to contribute to the development of certain traits, whether or not they belong to your personality, you need to be careful about the concepts you form in terms of your ability to progress.

Take responsibility for your beliefs

Every belief related to a certain aspect of your life can influence the way you perceive reality. In other words, you choose the ideas you believe in that make you mentally represent your world to them. This way you have the power to limit your potential or to achieve the much desired success.

What you need to remember is that all your actions depend on these beliefs. Your thoughts are not passive. They are dynamic because they cause you to act in a certain way and the results in turn have an impact on these beliefs.

The connection between beliefs and personality

According to Dweck’s theories, personality can be defined by your traits, behaviors, and values, being stimulated and shaped by the beliefs you form over time. The perspective you take on your personality may or may not make you the person you want to be.

Fixed mindset vs. flexible mindset

Dweck has identified two key mentalities that influence our personality. Your qualities cannot be changed, according to the fixed mentality, which makes you always try to prove that you are good enough.

Thus, instead of focusing on the learning process after which you can develop your personality traits, your main goal is to show how smart, creative, optimistic you are; seek confirmation of these qualities in the opinion of others about you. As a result, you are in a state of constant stagnation; considering that you were born with certain traits that can no longer be changed and that you have no control over your personality, you will not try to change them.

The flexible mindset or mindset of evolution, as Dweck called it, allows you to always look for new development opportunities. This way of thinking is much more flexible because it means believing that your potential is infinite and not limited by the traits you were born with; they can be changed so that you can evolve according to how you want.

Studies conducted by this psychologist show that in general your beliefs about success come from the way you are evaluated by those around you. Dweck found that when students are praised for their traits and not for their efforts, they will favor the fixed mindset more as they will not take advantage of opportunities to avoid changing the minds of those who initially gave them feedback. positive.

How the mindset of evolution helps you

People who have a flexible mindset will not set “performance goals” to highlight their talent because they are aware that such goals stand in the way of their personal and professional development.

These performance goals are specific to those who have fixed beliefs and will avoid certain learning opportunities due to the fact that they could highlight their weaknesses. The fear that they might fail, that the image that others have made of them might be affected prevents them from taking action. However, for those who believe in the flexible mindset and who set “learning goals”, mistakes do not define their personality.

The mentality of evolution also encourages you not to waste your time waiting for the people around you to confirm that you are in a certain way.

“Why hide your weaknesses when you can try to overcome them?”

“Why look for friends and partners who only build your confidence instead of those who challenge you to grow?”

These two questions in Carol Dweck’s book actually urge you to venture into unfamiliar territory, to take risks in the hope that this step will help you learn and gain experience from which to draw conclusions that will change your beliefs and later your personality.

The bottom line is that you can become what you really want if you channel your energy to achieve this. Your personality traits can be changed, you just have to believe.