The Ultimate Mindset of the Strong: Making You Fearless of Anyone and Anything
On the day Xiao Lan lost her job, she made her last cup of coffee in the break room. A few months later, her videos had garnered over ten thousand views, and she had accumulated more than ten thousand precise followers on the platform. When I met her later, she was impeccably dressed, well-groomed, with determined eyes and radiant spirit.
She told me that people don’t suddenly become strong; they become strong through repeated trial and error, through extreme repetition of specific tasks.
There’s a term in psychology called “growth mindset.” Carol Dweck says in “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”: What determines the difference between people is not talent, but how they view failure.
Xiao Lan’s experience is a footnote to this statement—there is no failure, only feedback.
1. Switch Life to “Experimental Mode”
Just like when you first learn to rollerblade, falling isn’t the end—it’s your body saying “lower your center of gravity by five more centimeters.” Strong people treat experiences as data collectors. Elon Musk launches rockets, fails multiple times, restarts multiple times, treating each failure as debugging a program, with every error being an upgrade prompt.
My friend Xiao Jing created an Excel spreadsheet when making short videos. She continuously analyzed what characteristics videos with high completion rates, high play rates, and large recommendation volumes had.
What topics are trending on the platform? What kind of thumbnails attract more clicks? What fonts look better? What video editing software to use? How to set up scenes, how to light them? What angles look best? What color clothes and accessories to wear? How to handle video endings? … Then continuously optimize and upgrade through data feedback.
Neuroscientists have discovered that continuous learning and iteration constantly stimulate the growth of brain neural synapses.
2. Remove the “Judge’s Bench” from Your Mind
You’ve definitely seen this type of person: when their proposal gets rejected, they think they’re worthless; when criticized a few times, they ruminate emotionally and can’t sleep. Brain imaging research shows that repeatedly dwelling on “why me” activates the default mode network, and excessive activity in this area is highly correlated with depression.
The weak treat the world as a courtroom; the strong treat the world as a laboratory.
Boxing champion Muhammad Ali would hit the “pause button” in his mind every time he took a punch—not because of pain, but because his opponent was reminding him that “there’s a gap in left shoulder defense.” This mental shift is a form of “cognitive restructuring”: changing “I’m getting beaten” to “I’m collecting data, collecting feedback.”
Coach Wang at the gym used to be a programmer. When facing a baldness crisis, he switched careers to become a trainer. Colleagues found it surprising, but only he understood his physical condition and hoped to restart his life through fitness.
Sometimes, he would lift his T-shirt to show the scar on his abs: left from gallbladder surgery years ago. Now every time he does crunches, it seems to remind him, “We won again.”
His students say: Coach Wang standing there without saying anything is more motivating than protein powder advertisements.
Viktor Frankl emphasized in “Man’s Search for Meaning”: Man’s ultimate freedom is the freedom to choose his response. A little-known fact: the brain uses different regions to process “failure” and “feedback.” The former activates the amygdala making people want to flee, while the latter activates the prefrontal cortex prompting people to think.
3. Three Strategies for Building a Feedback System
1. The Specificity Principle
Don’t say “I want to become strong”; change it to “three specific goals to achieve each week” or “three specific problems to improve each week.” I heard of a case where a Silicon Valley investor writes a “stupidity list” every day, recording his mistakes. This habit, maintained for decades, has significantly improved his investment success rate.
2. Physical Anchor Strategy
When anxious, immediately do something that can be completed in a few minutes: like changing bed sheets, organizing your desk, or mopping the floor.
Psychology has found that physical actions can interrupt emotional rumination, like restarting a stuck computer. Simply put, use concrete actions to redirect attention and break anxiety.
When are people most anxious? From my own experience, when they’re doing nothing.
3. Progress Bar Thinking
Game designers have taught us: visible progress stimulates dopamine release.
I put daily must-do tasks in a check-off device, like writing an article, reading, exercising for half an hour.
Every time I complete a task and switch the device to “completed,” there’s a special sense of ritual and achievement.
Bill Gates said: Everyone needs a coach, not because they know more than you, but because they can give you mirror-like feedback.
If there’s no expert guidance or noble person to show the way, then we become our own noble person.
Those things that keep you awake at night, when broken down, are nothing more than sets of data waiting to be optimized:
Conflicts with your loved one remind you to upgrade communication strategies; Low article readership reminds you that topic selection and writing methods need improvement; Delayed promotion reminds you about work methods and whether you’ve made your work visible to leadership.
There’s a saying: “I came to this world to play.” This certainly doesn’t mean you should be indifferent about everything, but rather, coming to this world for a journey, we’re here to experience—no emotional internal friction, only continuous iteration.
When you can say “thank you for the reminder” to the worst circumstances, when you truly possess the mindset that “everything that happens benefits me,” there will be no sword in this world that can hurt you.
As Edison said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Let’s encourage each other.