Verified by 
Leadership
Activate Your Chosen Mindset by Staying “in the Circle”
Focus on attitude, effort, and behavior, and ignore everything else.
Posted February 15, 2024 Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
Key points
- Top performers choose their mindset; they don’t just accept their default.
- Define your mindset by listing up to five characteristics.
- Activate your mindset by manifesting it through attitude, effort, and behavior.
The world’s best performers aren’t born that way. They may have innate, superior physical and intellectual traits, but that’s not what makes them champions. The difference between good and great, between doing well and achieving excellence, isn’t physical. It is entirely mental. The world’s best performers learn excellence. And if they can do it, so can everyone else.
Mindset traits
We frequently hear about the importance of mindset. There’s a growth mindset, a grit mindset, a warrior mindset, and so on. Having the right mindset is critical to achieving excellence, but many of us just go with the mindset we wake up with, the one we have developed based on our personality, upbringing, family, and other factors. We may tweak it around the edges, but that’s about it. After all, it’s gotten us this far.
The best performers see mindset differently. To them, mindset is not a default, it’s a choice. They don’t accept and tweak their mindset; rather, they define the best mindset for each of their roles in life and activate that mindset through their attitude, effort, and behavior.
To choose your mindset, write down the top traits you think are required for success: “To be a successful _____, I need to be (more) _____.” These may be things you have observed first-hand from watching others, or picked up in articles, blogs, or books by and about the best performers in your field. Your list should have no more than five characteristics, so it may take some time and thought to winnow it down. Once you have the list, you have your desired mindset. Which is great, but now what?
Stay in the circle
Imagine you are standing in a circle. Also in the circle are the things you control: your attitude, effort, and behavior. Everything else is outside the circle. For example, you can’t control whether or not it's going to rain, but you can control whether or not you bring an umbrella. The umbrella is in the circle, the rain is not.
Activating your chosen mindset is all about staying in the circle. Focusing on the things you can control — attitude, effort, behavior — and ignore everything else. Turn your chosen mindset into habit by manifesting it through what’s in the circle.
For example, attitude is often manifested via self-talk. As you go through your day and encounter its normal minor challenges and setbacks, notice what you say to yourself. When adversity happens, do you blame yourself? Or do you play the victim, blaming others? Either way, when this negative self-talk kicks in, interrupt and change it. Speak the mindset you want to see in yourself into existence. Literally!
Next, effort. Let’s say you have a setback or failure. Your (or anyone’s) natural inclination may be to sulk, cast blame, or stare at your social feed until your mind is numb. Does this match the characteristics of your chosen mindset? Probably not. Most top performers see setbacks as just another challenge; they are energized by them, not enervated. This is a choice you can make too. Double down on the work, but ensure that it’s not just doing the same work again. Remember the definition of insanity.
Which brings us to behavior. Adopting an I’ll get them next time attitude and doubling down on effort is meaningless without learning and adjusting. Once the emotional dust has settled from a setback, review what happened and why, and adjust your process accordingly. If the setback is team-based, get the team together to objectively assess the outcome and the process that got you there. Quell the finger pointing and get to the root causes of failure. Then adjust processes and tactics to address them.
Ignore stuff outside the circle
While focusing on the stuff in the circle, don’t get distracted by stuff outside of it. Ignore what other people are saying. (The exception to this is if the feedback comes from a trusted source and is based on evidence and expertise.) Ignore external factors. And while you should always learn from competition, you need to ignore it as well. All of these things are outside your control. Ignoring them frees your mind and spirit to concentrate instead on the stuff you can do to get better.
The mindset habit
Mindset must be activated through attitude, effort, and behavior simultaneously; two out of three won’t cut it. When stress grows or setbacks happen, first tell yourself to stay in the circle, and then take a short inventory. What is my attitude? What effort am I prepared to make? And how will I behave? If the answers don’t match your desired mindset, address that right now.
Make this a habit, and you are on your way to excellence.
Our book, Learned Excellence, is based on our insights gleaned from our careers working with thousands of top performers, including the Navy SEALs, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the US Women’s National Soccer Team, and top business leaders, athletes, and first responders. In this series, we share key insights from the book with you.
