“Wanted to Be Somebody”
The Ironic Side Effect
For more than half a decade, I felt stuck. I was paralyzed by worry and longing for a more action-biased way of living. In that search, I turned to Immunity to Change framework to understand why I couldn’t move. Through that work, I uncovered some hidden assumptions: that having problems meant I was fundamentally flawed; that if my performance wasn’t better than others, I was not special and therefore unworthy of validation; that without validation, my existence itself had no meaning. Being seen as inadequate filled me with shame. This is an emotion that felt intolerable, something I feared that could crush me into paralysis or depression. I was terrified of being a loser. Growing up, I subconsciously built an identity around being an extraordinary performer. For a long time, that image sustained my self-esteem. Only later did I see its hidden cost: the very identity that once held me up had begun to hold me still.
Now it was time to test and deliberately invalidate those assumptions, as I had learned to do in Immunity to Change.
In searching for a deeper understanding of where these assumptions came from, and how they might be overturned, I came across Carol Dweck’s book called Mindset. Early in the book, she describes what she jokingly calls “aliens,” children who respond to difficulty with visible excitement. One boy, in particular, stands up in the face of a challenge and shouts, “I love a challenge!” As I read, I could not help but picture him in my head, celebrating difficulty the way the legendary soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo celebrates a goal. Arms out, chest lifted, energetic and alive.
My reaction surprised me. Instead of skepticism, I felt a sudden pull. “I want that too!” I wanted that orientation toward difficulty, not the dread and self-judgment that had governed me for years. That boy became an unexpected hero, an anchor image that instantly brings back the lessons and the sense of liberation I felt during this learning process.
Then I went on to study Dweck’s work more deeply. Here is to share what I found.
Outline
Section1: Findings
Proving yourself. Where does it come from?
“They must be right, I must be wrong” syndrome
Just knowing already helps. Self distancing.
The Ironic Side Effect
Section2: What can we do?
Acceptance. Accurate self diagnosis.
Name it, and know its triggers.
Educate it
Message
Section1
Proving yourself. Where does it come from?
Before starting this research, I already knew I had this trait. It took a long time to notice it, accept it, and finally find words for it. Even then, knowing it existed did not mean that I understood where it came from or what to do with it.
When I began to suspect that this urge to prove myself might be one of the reasons I remained stuck, I felt compelled to look at it more closely.
Carol Dweck argues that this pattern grows out of a belief that our basic qualities are fixed. That talent and ability are predetermined, and largely unchangeable. If you believe your qualities are innate and fixed, it makes sense that you would feel a constant urge to prove what you were given is both good and correct.
Dweck calls this a fixed mindset.
I imagine this urge to prove oneself may begin as a call for attention, perhaps even a need for care and safety in early childhood. Framing it this way feels dignifying. It reminds me that this pattern once served a real need.
The opposite orientation is what Dweck calls a growth mindset, where one believes that our basic qualities are not fixed, but can be developed through effort. From this perspective, challenges are embraced and setbacks are treated as opportunities to learn. The “alien” boy clearly embodied this mindset.
People with a growth mindset tend to show greater resilience in pursuing their interests. They gather information through action and experimentation, not just through thinking. They are less overwhelmed by failure, shame, or embarrassment. They continue to act.
This shift was exactly what I had been looking for.
It gave me hope. I could finally see where my urge to prove myself came from. Beneath it was a fundamental belief that my basic qualities were fixed. That some people succeed simply because they were talented from the start. This belief had been well hidden in me, only becoming visible after careful observation and reflection.
For a much richer explanation of these mindsets and how they shape the way we see the world, I would strongly recommend the book itself. What stayed with me most was this hope: if we change how we perceive our innate talent and qualities, we may find ourselves far less busy trying to prove our worth.
“They must be right, I must be wrong” syndrome
Among the many descriptions in the book of how each mindset shapes our view of the world, one stood out to me in particular. It is talked about less often, yet I found it quietly drives a great deal of unnecessary self-criticism.
When your priority is to be validated by others, there is little separation between your own cognition and the reactions of people around you. There is no filter, no protective boundary. Even the slightest hint of negativity or harshness reaches you directly and immediately. You become hypersensitive.
In that state, it is easy to fall into a familiar conclusion. You are too easy to be convinced that “They must be right, and I must be wrong.”
There is often a real possibility that you are holding an original idea or a valid perspective. But you are overly attuned to how others respond. A small sign of disapproval is enough to make you retreat. Your thinking does not push back.
Instead, the internal dialogue turns against you. It becomes a harsh inner critic, echoing judgments before you have a chance to examine them for yourself.
Just knowing helps. Self distancing.
Studies have suggested, again and again, that simply learning about the two opposing mindsets can already be helpful, even without intensive training. Surprisingly, just knowing helps.
At first, this puzzled me. It felt too easy. I was skeptical. Why should awareness alone make any difference?
After a few months of studying this topic, something clicked. It might have something to do with self-distancing.
Learning how people with different mindsets respond to challenges gives you a reference point. It allows you to notice your own behavior through pattern matching. You catch yourself mid-reaction. “Oh. I just did that.”
I suspect this creates a tiny moment of pause in the internal dialogue, which used to run entirely on autopilot. A brief interruption in the stream of self-talk. That pause may be the handle we can grab, one that later becomes a lever for cognitive course correction.
It is a shift from something that simply has you to something you can name. Almost like stepping off the stage and seeing yourself from a distance.
This reminded me of Ethan Kross’s book called Chatter, where he suggests adopting the perspective of a “bug on the wall.” That, essentially, is self-distancing.
Understanding this gave me even more hope. Just knowing already helps.
The Ironic Side Effect
Fame. Success. Validation. Extraordinary status. Being different.
The more you crave validation, the further it seems to move away. In contrast, when you act from genuine curiosity rather than the need to be approved, validation often arrives as a by-product.
I have come to think of this as The Ironic Side Effect. It reflects the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset.
When your goal becomes proving yourself, something subtle but damaging happens. You stop doing things that carry the risk of ruining your status. Your attention shifts from the work itself to how it will be received.
At that point, you are no longer acting from curiosity or love. You are striving for positive recognition from others. And once that becomes the priority, every action starts to feel dangerous. What if you make a mistake? What if you offend someone? What if you fail in public?
Because the cost feels so high, you stop taking risks. It feels safer to live in possibility rather than action. “I could do that if I wanted to.” “I will try it when I’m ready.” The door stays open, but you never notice it to walk through it.
We have all seen this pattern. Someone works on a project for years and never releases it. Someone longs for a career change but never makes the leap. A graduate school application stays on your desk.
The irony is that when recognition becomes the goal, the harder you wish for it, the further away it moves. It is like trying to float by thrashing in the water. The more you struggle, the deeper you sink, and the fear only grows.
I was reminded of this when I listened to an interview with Scottie Scheffler, one of the best professional golfers in the world. I appreciated his honesty about how he experiences success.
He said something like this. If you play professionally, you lose far more often than you win. Losing is painful. But at the same time, the feeling of winning does not last long either, maybe a couple of minutes. Winning championships, he said, is not what truly satisfies him.
So why come back?
“I just love playing golf.”
That was it. No grand justification. Just the love of doing the thing itself.
Section2
With this in mind, let us turn our attention to what it might take to move toward a growth mindset. Carol Dweck suggests the following steps (with some of my own interpretations).
Acceptance. Accurate self diagnosis.
Everybody carries fixed-mindset selves within them, even if they may not always be visible. It sucks. Do not expect this to be a comfortable ride. Your fixed-mindset self will visit you again and again, offering the critiques you dislike the most. It knows you well. It has been with you for a long time. It knows exactly how to paralyze you and distort your thinking.
This happens repeatedly. When it does, try not to judge yourself. That part matters. It is okay. The goal is not instant mastery, but staying inside a learning loop. A self-improvement feedback cycle. As long as you stay in it, you will improve.
You were not given perfect qualities. But you are not frozen either. You can change. You can improve. Run experiments. Observe yourself. Plan the next realistic action. Only after active self-acceptance does any of this become possible.
I find certain people deeply attractive in this regard. When they sense a mistake or a fault, they do not become defensive. Instead, they accept and become sincere. There may be a trace of embarrassment in their response, but it does not dominate their thinking. They are genuinely eager to learn and improve.
I am fortunate to know and work with someone like this. He has become a new role model for me. He feels grounded and steady. He does not give in easily. It feels like he is simply being himself, for lack of better words.
Avoidance and denial only postpone the problem, because they prevent accurate diagnosis. Acceptance is the shorter path. It is not defeat. It is the start.
With an inaccurate diagnosis, you will choose the wrong solution, and it will never address the real issue. You never want to come home from a dentist appointment still having the same problem, only with one less healthy tooth.
Name it, and know its trigger.
Once you are ready to begin self diagnosis, be prepared to take notes each day when your fixed-mindset self shows up. This practice helps with self-distancing and later with forming better plans to address what you notice.
For me, one trigger appears when I think about taking on a bold challenge, especially one that I have no clear idea how to achieve. Almost immediately, my mind starts simulating what other people might say, and how I might look in their eyes if I fail. In those imagined scenes, I am a total loser. It feels shameful. I get scared. I freeze.
I decided to give this reaction a name. I call it the Fainting Goat. (If you have seen videos of fainting goat, you know what I mean.)
Another trigger shows up when I see someone I know making a bold move. Somewhere inside me, a part quietly wishes that they will fail. Now I understand why. Their courage makes me feel less special.
I wanted to be there. Then I look at myself. I compare. What am I doing here? The self-critical rabbit hole begins. Nothing productive comes out of it.
I hate this part of me, and I am ashamed of it. But I have learned that if I deny it or refuse to accept it, I do not improve. So I decided to name this one too. I call it the Jealousy Parrot. No intention of harm to parrots.
Educate it
How do we tame the thing we have just named?
I suspect that this part of us is drawn to comfort and safety. If that is true, the question shifts. It becomes less about forcing change and more about asking, how do we comfort it enough to introduce the change we want?
For me, the answer comes down to three things. (A) Break down, (B) Visualize, and (C) Feedback.
(A) First, break things down.
Take the thing in front of you, the one you feel paralyzed by, and reduce it to bite-sized actions. Ask yourself, what is the smallest thing I could do and I would do, even in my worst state, when I feel almost defeated by my fixed-mindset self?
It helps to remember this. Change is a long journey for everyone. It is a marathon, and the conditions are the same for all of us. Everyone has to take the first step. Everyone is a beginner at the start. Only the accumulation of small single steps, taken one after another without skipping, leads to the goal. That includes you. That includes the most successful people on the Forbes list.
If you accept this is the only way forward, why bother looking for an easier route? And what is the point of designing stairs you cannot climb? It only increases the chance of tripping. All it does is to trigger more negative self-talk. You end up setting yourself up for failure.
If you don’t think about it rationally, failure becomes inevitable. So let’s fix the expectation instead of blaming yourself for not having enough willpower.
(B) Once you have broken the challenge into small, manageable actions, the next step is to visualize them.
Visualization makes things less frightening. It is like a mental simulation. When you can picture each step clearly, the task feels less uncertain and less threatening. It is no longer an abstract thing you imagine failing at.
When I managed to visualize my workflow step by step, for example from the end of work to getting into bed at night, where each action is small and concrete, I noticed something shifted. I was able to replace endless scrolling on Twitter after work and YouTube binges before sleep with stretching on a yoga mat and journaling with incense.
If you still feel significant anxiety, take it as a signal. The task might be still too big. Break it down further. Keep going until it feels manageable.
(C) Feedback
In the book, several examples of internal self-talk are offered as ways to educate the persona you have named. I came to see this not merely as encouragement, but as a feedback process, one where neural rewiring can begin to take place in the brain. The capacity known as neural plasticity.
When that rewiring occurs, the same bold challenge may begin to evoke different feelings and emotions. The situation itself remains the same, but our response changes.
Here is one example I have come up with, inspired by the book.
“Hi, XXX (persona you named), here you are again. Thanks for the warning. I know you are frightened, and that makes sense. Please come along with me anyway for once. I want to give this a shot.
Yes, I know. It might be embarrassing. It might not go well. But I want to change, and I have a plan. So stay with me and see what happens.
See? It was not that bad after all. Now that is useful information. That is data we just collected. Let’s update how we see and feel about this. Next time, we can try one more step further.”
This is how the feedback loop begins to form. Not by silencing the inner voice, but by accepting it, guiding it, testing reality, and updating the story it tells.
Message
So what is the message I would like to deliver to my younger self? It’s like this.
Life seems to be less about passing a single decisive test and more about the accumulation of partial points. You are given many chances to earn them, in many different ways. And the points that matter most are not outcomes, but learnings. I find myself drawn to people who have accumulated a great deal of learning and can still smile after carrying many battle scars.
Remember Scottie Scheffler’s comment. “I just love playing golf.” You do not need a grandiose vision, elaborate reasoning, or external validation. The moment you start seeking validation, your fixed-mindset self shows up. You begin acting to look smart. You avoid mistakes. You avoid action. You stop embracing challenges. Eventually, you get stuck.
I am also coming to accept a view that may sound a little sad to some. That there is no single, unique life calling prepared just for you. For me, this view is grounding. I experience it not as pessimism, but as liberation. You can forge one mission, or several, and choose to call them your calling. You do not need to worry whether it is the one “meant-to-be” path. There is no judgment. There is nothing to prove. You can hold it quietly and close to your heart.
Be okay with all of your emotions. This does not mean becoming numb. It means the opposite. Feel everything, including the emotions that are uncomfortable or painful. Learn that even when you feel horrible, you are still okay. You will not explode. You will not disappear. You will not die. Your life remains safe. As you learn to live with your emotions, your diagnosis becomes more accurate. Your thinking is no longer distorted by them.
Start your self-improvement feedback loop, and stay in it. Once you are in the loop, energy returns. You become the subject of your own experiments. As you grow more comfortable with your emotions, you also learn to observe your reactions with curiosity rather than judgment. And when you reach that point, you may find that you are no longer chasing outcomes at all.
You are simply enjoying the process.