What is Mindset? The assumptions that shape your world
I've been wrestling with a question recently.
What actually is mindset?
We talk about positive mindsets. Growth mindsets. Winning mindsets. Resilient mindsets. The Big Bold Mindset.
The word mindset runs the risk of becoming meaningless if it gets applied to everything without really examining what we mean by it.
As I’ve turned this over in my head, the best place I’ve landed is this:
Mindset is our individual collection of assumptions we use to interpret reality and decide how to respond.
As I’ve grappled with that definition, the importance of our underlying assumptions has been pulled into sharp focus.
Our baseline assumptions set the tone.
They determine what we notice in the first place.
Two people can hear the same conversation, read the same book, attend the same event or experience the same challenge and leave with completely different conclusions.
Not because one person is right and the other is wrong.
It’s because we each see reality through our own set of assumptions.
It reminded me of a mentor who used to say:
“We only hear what we understand.”
That thought was reinforced for me this week.
I attended a live lecture at the Barbican in London, listening to the enduringly impressive Richard Dawkins in conversation with mathematician Marcus du Sautoy.
At one point, they discussed periodical cicadas.
Every 13 or 17 years, millions of them emerge from underground.
Every 13 or 17.
Prime numbers.
Because they operate on prime-number cycles, it’s much harder for predators to synchronise with them. Over millions of years, those that emerged on these cycles were simply more likely to survive.
It’s a fascinating example of evolution.
But here’s what struck me.
As we heard a story about biology and mathematics, I found myself reflecting on leadership.
Why?
My brain wasn’t really hearing a story about insects.
It was looking for patterns.
Patterns about adaptation.
About resilience.
About systems.
About how small changes, repeated over long periods of time, can fundamentally alter outcomes.
The story was the same. What changed was the lens I brought to it.
Which brings me back to mindset.
Our mindset—our current assumptions and our default way of seeing the world—sets everything up.
It determines the questions we ask.
The patterns we notice.
The meaning we attach to what we experience.
In other words, our assumptions shape our reality.
It’s one of the reasons I deliberately try to spend time outside the world of leadership.
I read science.
History.
Psychology.
Economics.
I listen to mathematicians.
Explorers.
Entrepreneurs.
It’s not that I want to become an expert in all those fields.
It’s because I like to study patterns and ideas that I quite simply wouldn’t have found if I’d stayed inside my own lane.
I like to take different ideas and reflect on them.
And perhaps that’s why reflection is so important.
It’s in our moments of reflection that we challenge our assumptions.
It’s where we connect ideas that previously seemed unrelated.
It’s where we begin to see the world a little differently.
So here’s the question I’ve ended up on this week:
What assumptions are shaping the way you interpret your world today?
Because if mindset is the collection of assumptions we use to interpret reality and decide how to respond…
…then changing just one assumption might change everything.
Here are three experiments to play with around this idea:
Two Minute Experiment
Find an idea you disagree with.
Ask: “What is it about this that I find challenging?”
Five Minute Experiment
Write down the assumption that idea challenges.
Ask: “Where did that assumption come from?”
Fifteen Minute Experiment
Have a conversation with someone whose view challenges yours.
Don’t try to win the debate.
Get more curious than you’ve been in a while.
Reflect on what would have to happen for you to change one of your assumptions
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