Olympic Gold Mindset: The Only Mental Hack We Medium Writers Need

Earlier this month, 22-year-old team USA skater Nathan Chen won Olympic gold. Chen rose up from the ashes after a bad fall during competition in the 2018 Olympics. Instead of allowing himself to be defeated, he came back in 2022 — to victory.

Afterward, he credited a major mindset shift for his success. He’d stopped focusing on winning.

“Whether I won, whether I lost, I [wanted] to gain as much as I could [from the experience] that didn’t revolve around what sort of placement I got.”

Chen went so far as to say he had fun breaking the short program world record.

Did you hear that? Fun.

When’s the last time we had fun writing?

For me, fun with writing comes in waves. Whether I’m riding the fun wave or not is 100% based on my attitude.

That’s why I think Nathan Chen struck gold with his mindset shift.

Stop focusing on winning.

That’s tough to do here on Medium. Any time we log in, we’re faced with stats measuring our success.

• Follower counts
• Member reading time
• Views

Olympic notoriety here on Medium is measured in readership. The medal is granted in dollars. (As long as you’re in the partner program.)

If we’re only here to win, it can feel like a losing game.

But what if we shift the goal of writing from winning to having fun?

Focusing on what we gain from the writing experience means we’re not waiting for someone else to measure our accomplishments. We win gold every day. Just by showing up.

I’ve been experiencing a taste of this lately. When Medium notified me a week ago that I would be removed from the partner program if I didn’t reach 100 followers by March 2, I could have thrown in the towel. In the spirit of keeping it real here, I’ll be honest. I thought about it.

Instead, I used it as a catalyst to challenge myself to write daily.