Do you feel like you can no longer progress in the game? That you’re unlucky with your teammates and they make you lose games? Does it make you angry when someone else exposes your mistakes? If you answered YES to these questions, there is a high chance that you found the root of your problems - mindset.
How you think about the game and how you reflect on your gameplay, dramatically influences your growth as a player.
Your mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world and yourself. It influences how you think, feel, and behave in any given situation. Researchers identify two general mindsets: fixed mindset and growth mindset.
Players with a fixed mindset believe that abilities are fixed, and a person cannot do much to change his or her abilities. That’s why they often believe that they are at the top level already and all their failures are caused by external factors. Fixed mindset can harm your improvement in the game, because it doesn’t push you to get better, to put in effort and learn from your mistakes.
Some examples of fixed mindset:
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believing you are hard stuck, that you are challenger player already
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ignoring or rationalizing any criticism towards your play
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seeing your effort of playing useless towards the elo climb
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gave up trying to improve
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reacting negatively to mistakes
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having trouble focusing when losing
Players with a growth mindset believe that abilities can be developed through learning and practice; therefore, if one puts extra effort into learning tasks, one's abilities can grow incrementally through practice. They embrace challenges or hard tasks and see mistakes as a learning opportunity.
Growth mindset can help you to learn faster and improve more.
Fixed vs. Growth Mindset
| Fixed | Growth | |
| Should be avoided | Challenges | Should be embraced |
| Is meaningless | Effort | Is how you improve |
| Is to be ignored | Criticism | Is valuable |
| Is seen as a threat | Success of others | Is seen as a learning opportunity |
How to develop a growth mindset?
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Criticism is worth considering. Take criticism or at least consider the information before casting it aside. Sometimes other people are able to see things we can’t notice.
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You can improve, whatever your skill is right now. Set a small goal for every game to focus your attention on one part of your play (ex. map awareness).
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Effort is the only way to get better. You can only control one person in the team – YOU. If someone is trolling, the best thing to do is focus on what you can control. Even in a loss, if you give 100% effort, you will increase your skill over time.
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Learn from other’s success. You can learn from other successful people. Try to mimic better players and learn their strategies and ways of playing.
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