Truth: It’s rarely that simple. And your thinking pattern matters a lot.
In sport and performance psychology, where you place credit and blame for your successes and your failures is a huge topic. It’s called attribution.
It’s not that there is a recipe for how to place credit and blame. It’s about spotting the patterns that might be quietly squishing your motivation.
Here’s an example. One person graduates with a PhD and says it was entirely because of their own brilliance. Another person graduates and says it was entirely because of their professors. Neither extreme is probably accurate, and neither one is particularly helpful for motivation in the future.
The same goes for failure. Attributing everything to yourself can send you into a doom spiral. Attributing everything to others can cause you to miss what you could actually control next time.
Your attributional style, meaning how you tend to frame your wins and losses, shapes how motivated you feel to keep going. And the good news is, once you spot the patterns, you can start to shift your mindset.
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