The Missing Piece in Every Mindset Book
Most mindset frameworks from Dweck, Duckworth, and Clear, all the ones you’ve likely read, locate the problem inside you, and the solution inside you, too.
Change your thoughts. Rewire your beliefs. Build better habits.
This is not wrong. It is radically incomplete.
Here is what they leave out: your mindset was never built alone.
It was built in relationships.
And this is why it is so difficult for millions of people to change, even when they put in the hard work.
When you are trying to dismantle something alone that was built with others, while still living inside a social environment that keeps regenerating the old pattern, change becomes an obstacle.
When I did my field research in a South African maximum-security prison years ago, I witnessed this in its most extreme form. These were not weak men. They were intelligent human beings operating inside a collective belief system so powerful that individual willpower was simply irrelevant.
What changed the ones who changed was not an internal decision. It was a new relationship and a new community that held a different story about who they could become.
Working on my book Be In Sync has been incredibly rewarding because of the many stories underlying my data and the work I have been doing in the past years.
I am still far from done. But I am back, and so is this newsletter.
See you soon,
II. 2 PRACTICAL TOOLS
Think of a belief that limits you, about your leadership, your potential, your worth.
Then ask, “Who taught me this?” Which environment made this feel like a fact?
You don’t need to answer it fully. Just notice that it has an origin. And that you can change which story becomes true for you.
Question 2: For your team
What does the environment around your team make them believe is possible?
Not what they say they believe. What does the daily reality of working in this organization, the meetings, the feedback, the reactions to mistakes, actually teach them about who they are and what they’re capable of?
3. Additional Resources:
Book: How Emotions Are Made — Lisa Feldman Barrett. The science behind why your emotions (and mindset) are built by the social world, not discovered inside you.
Podcast: The Ezra Klein Show: The social psychology of belief change. Why context shapes conviction more than argument ever does.
Journal prompt: Write about one belief you inherited from your environment. Not good or bad. Just: where did this come from? And what shifts for you when you through understanding it.
Feel free to email me back or comment on LinkedIn. I am curious to hear your feedback and reaction to the idea of leadership roles emerging from collective stories.
Are you enjoying the newsletter? If so, I would love to hear from you what you think about it and what has been helpful so far.
Thanks for your support and ‘see you’ in two weeks!
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