The Psychology of a Winning Mindset Simplified Into One Word
My desire to simplify the psychology of a winning mindset stems from my background of working as a software engineer for the first 15 years of my career. Software engineers typically want to understand the relationship between things. Then figure out if it’s possible to model that relationship using a pattern or routine. In this case the relationship is between winning and mindset.
For the last 2+ years I have devoted countless hours studying the psychology of a winning mindset in sports. I’ve read hundreds of articles, research reports, and books on this topic. I’ve listened to podcast after podcast, and watched video after video of lectures and interviews with the top minds in the industry.
In spite of all this research, up until recently I still was struggling with how to best break down the psychology of a winning mindset into a simple pattern or routine. Fortunately, a few months back I came across the work of Trevor Moawad and his philosophy of neutral thinking.
Moawad is best known for his role as Russell Wilson’s mental conditioning coach. He is also the author of the new sports psychology book It Takes What It Takes. I’m about 75% through the book. I’ve also watched nearly every YouTube video featuring Moawad over the last 2 months.
At this point, my view is that Moawad has the simplest explanation of what it takes to have a winning mindset. In short, you can simplify it into one word: behavior.
Why ‘Behavior’ Is The Simplest Way to Explain a Winning Mindset
First of all, you can easily define the behavior patterns of winners in general. You can also easily define the behavior routines that specific winners in specific industries or sports consistently follow. The reason why this is important in both the software world (where I come from), and in the real world is that when you can identify patterns and routines you can also identify repeatable behaviors to model.
To put it another way, a winning mindset comes down to repeating the behaviors that help you win. It’s really not that complex. What’s more, the behaviors that help you win can be found by studying the behavior of winners.
The challenge is that winners are willing to do things that losers aren’t willing to do. So those who have the mindset to behave like a winner understand that their behaviors are the only thing that separates them from everyone else. It’s not talent, it’s not luck, it’s not meditating or deep breathing or some complex visualization technique either. All of these things can help. However, none of this matters if you don’t consistently repeat the behaviors that help you win.
Simply stated, a winning mindset is one that focuses the vast majority of brain cycles on repeating winning behaviors. That’s it.