January 2, 2026
In this era of social media, superficiality, and life coaches, we constantly hear about "mindset." Courses promising life transformation repeat that your mentality defines your success; you just need to believe. Want to be more confident? Believe you're more confident! Repeat it in front of the mirror 30 times every morning and it will become reality.
It's a common strategy: they take a half-truth and push it to the extreme. Meanwhile, the opposite extreme emerges with the message that "mindset is nonsense, coach talk." Extremes attract each other, and common sense gets lost between them.
Does your mentality matter? The answer lies exactly in the middle ground. Mentality isn't everything. The way you see the world is just one variable among many that define your "success." However, it's perhaps the most important one. Because it defines how you will face life and its challenges.
There are two ways of facing life: finding someone to blame or taking responsibility. The easier and more natural path for humans is to find someone to blame. In others, of course. When things go wrong, it's very difficult to look at yourself. Much easier to blame politics, your parents, or lack of money. Because often the fault really isn't yours. But here's a hard truth to accept: it doesn't matter whose fault it is.
Imagine this situation: you're leaving the grocery store on your bike. You haven't even reached the street when a car jumps the curb and hits you. The driver was drunk. You wake up in the hospital with both legs, your pelvis, and spine fractured. The doctor tells you that you'll walk again, but it will take years of recovery and physical therapy.
At that moment you have two options. The first is to focus on who's to blame and how unfair life is. Following that path, you'll spend the rest of your life in bed, complaining and resenting, until you die. The second option is to take responsibility for your situation, look at the doctor and ask: doctor, what do I need to do?
Look, it wasn't your fault, but that doesn't matter. The drunk driver can't get you out of that bed; only you can do that. Is it unfair? Absolutely, but life isn't fair, never has been and never will be.
I speak with authority on this subject because I've had both worldviews at different periods of my life. When I was younger, I commonly made excuses when things went wrong. "If" was always present in my mind: if I had money; if the country were different. If...
The problem with finding someone to blame is that you never look at yourself. In your head, you've already done your part. The problem is everyone else. You never seek to improve and, consequently, your life deteriorates. Luckily for me, at some point I looked around and realized that the problem was me and that I needed to take responsibility for my future.
Instead of looking at others, I started focusing on myself and the things that were under my control. When something went wrong, I thought about what I could have done better and how I could learn from that situation. And that's when my life started to improve. Because I began solving problems instead of finding people to blame.
I'm not a fan of Sartre, but his phrase is true: "what matters is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us." Focus on what is under your control.
Taking responsibility isn't a single dramatic decision. It's a series of small daily choices that shape who you become. When you lose a client, instead of blaming the economy, ask: what could I have done differently in the proposal? When a project is delayed, instead of listing the team's problems, question: where did I fail in communication?
This way of facing life sets you free. You stop being hostage to the world around you. Because as long as you believe your problems are someone else's fault, you'll forever be dependent on them for things to improve.
This doesn't mean denying that injustices exist or that external factors don't matter. Nor is it a guarantee that things will work out. It's simply recognizing that it's impossible to have a fulfilling life blaming others for your problems. As I said above, the way you see the world says a lot about how you will face life's challenges.
When facing obstacles, ask yourself "what can I do about this?" instead of "why did this happen to me?" The first question opens paths; the second only opens arguments.
#life