The Winning Mindset: For Writers and Life

I recently read an article about “the winning mindset” for writers.

Much of it focused on practical exercises: exposure to rejection, uncomfortable writing, learning to tolerate criticism. Useful, perhaps. Yet I found myself thinking something deeper: resilience for writers cannot be built only through writing.

We are told that talent matters. Craft matters. Networking matters.

They do.

Yet I have met talented people who disappeared after two rejections, and ordinary people who quietly built extraordinary lives simply because they kept going.

I once had an agent, and my book was meant to be published by one of the leading publishing houses in Moscow in 2022. Then the war changed everything, and I refused to work with a publisher in an aggressor country.

What looked like failure became redirection.

That decision led me in another direction: I began writing in English, graduated with Merit from the New Zealand Institute of Business Studies in Mystery & Thriller Writing, published a nonfiction book on Amazon, and started placing work in magazines and anthologies.

I’ve received more than 30 rejections from traditional publishers for my historical mystery novel written in English so far, and yet I keep revising, submitting, and writing new work. Workshops and professional editors can help to a degree, though I’ve learned that people often project their own vision onto a text.

Readers can help. Editors can help.

Yet people often unconsciously rewrite us into themselves.

Advice is useful only when it helps us become more ourselves.

For me, the deeper work has been psychological: learning how to keep going, withstand disappointment, and continue believing in the work.

I believe the “winning mindset” is something we build from the inside out. It goes beyond writing itself — it is something we develop for life.

The winning mindset is not confidence.

It is the decision to continue even when confidence disappears.

Writers do not only need the mindset of a writer.

We need the mindset of someone who can survive disappointment and still remain open to wonder.

Perhaps the real winning mindset has little to do with winning at all.

Perhaps it is simply this:

to keep creating, keep learning, keep hoping, and continue walking toward the life we once only imagined.

At some point, I realised that resilience could not remain just an idea. I needed a way to practise it.

So I deliberately wrote a book, The Lighter Side of Personal Growth: A Wishcraft Guide to Everyday Alchemy. That book became, in many ways, a guide for myself.

When people ask why I do not actively promote it or try to turn it into commercial success, I often say that the purpose of this book was different. It was never only about sales, visibility, or recognition. It became a tool for building resilience, trust, and inner steadiness — qualities I needed not only as a writer, but as a human being.

In many ways, this book played an important role in my becoming a writer. It helped me develop the very mindset I needed to withstand rejection, uncertainty, and long periods without visible results.

Perhaps this is also why I started my Substack and created my website, New DesireLand — not simply as an author platform, but as a space to share rituals, reflections, and practices that have helped me along the way.

I believe that the more we give, the more life quietly gives back.