Fear Your Strengths

The Inner Game: Working on Your Mindset

As important as the “outer work” is, however, it is not enough. Though many subscribe to the adage that says it is “better to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting,” that is patently one-sided and simply untrue. It is better to do both. Your best chance of actually making an improvement is to come at it simultaneously from the outside in and from the inside out.

Despite what you may think, your mental tendencies can be reformed, or at least managed better, to reinforce your actions. The brain’s plasticity makes that possible. It is “a structure weak enough to yield to an influence but strong enough not to yield all at once,” wrote William James, who in 1890 ...