Someone I was coaching recently told me she'd been given a piece of feedback at work: "You need to be more productive and contribute more, help us grow."
She sat with that for weeks. She wanted to act on it. She just had no idea what to actually do on Monday morning.
I realized: that's mostly advice about mindset. We tell people to be more open, more positive, more growth-oriented, and then we leave them standing there holding an abstraction. "Be more open-minded" is the motivational equivalent of "be better." It names a target without giving a move.
The Pink Elephant Problem
Simon Sinek has a line about this that I keep coming back to: the brain cannot comprehend the negative. If I tell you not to think about a pink elephant, what do you immediately think of?
You just thought of, envisioned, imagined exactly what I told you not to think about.
This is why telling someone "don't have a closed mindset" fails. The instruction itself puts closed-mindedness at the center of their attention.
It's also why, when you're driving, running, skiing, or even simply walking, you do not constantly tell yourself "don't hit that car, don't step on the branch, don't step in the puddle, don't hit the tree." If you did, you'd be so focused on the negative that you'd collide with exactly what you fear.
Instead you focus on where you should be moving, stepping, or navigating. You follow the path.
Keep Your Eye on the Path, Not the Tree
Here's the reframe I want to offer in place of "open mindset vs. closed mindset":
Mindset isn't who or what you are. It's where you're looking.
When you're navigating, you have a destination in mind, but you're not constantly thinking about the long-term goal. You're making sure your vision is on the positive: what you can do right now to stay on the path. That's not abstract. That's a micro-behavior you can execute in the next thirty seconds.
"Be more open-minded" asks someone to change who they are. "What would you be looking for in this conversation?" asks them to change where their attention lives for the next five minutes.
One is identity work. The other is a move.
What Expert Clinicians Already Do
I teach medical students clinical reasoning, and this principle is woven into how truly good diagnosticians think.
Sometimes I see students anchor on a diagnosis. They've seen something recently, and when they see a similar pattern, they focus so much on that being the likely diagnosis that they miss all the clues around them. Or they close prematurely, convinced they've figured it out. They hunt for evidence that confirms their suspicion rather than looking for findings that would distinguish between the alternatives.
This isn't only a novice problem. Experienced clinicians do it too, especially under pressure.
Underneath all of that is the same thing: fear. Fear of missing something catastrophic, fear of being wrong, fear of looking uncertain in front of the team. When fear drives attention, attention narrows. The clinician stops scanning for signal and starts scanning for threat. They're staring at the tree.
So I tell them: keep your differential broad, and look for the things that will help you narrow it. Don't try to prove a diagnosis exists or doesn't exist. Think about all the possible paths, and look for the findings that distinguish between them, rather than avoiding the ones you don't want to see and hoping you're right.
That's the same move. Eye on the path, not the tree.
And notice what it isn't: positive thinking. A differential diagnosis is full of scary possibilities. The difference is that the clinician is actively looking for signal to navigate toward the right answer, not scanning for things to avoid.
When Naming the Negative Actually Helps
I want to be careful here, because I'm not arguing for empty positivity. There's a version of feedback where naming the negative is exactly the right move, as long as you attach a path to it.
"You should be more open-minded" doesn't help.
But: "When you do this, here's what happens. Instead, if you do this, here's what you might get." That does help. The negative is named, but the important part is that it's not the endpoint. It provides contrast, with the purpose of providing direction and guidance for actually achieving growth.
The problem with abstract mindset advice isn't that it mentions what's wrong. It's that it leaves the person stuck there, with no path out.
What This Looks Like When You're Stuck
Most of the people I coach through career reinvention aren't stuck because they have the wrong mindset. They're stuck because their attention is entirely on what they want to get away from. The role that's draining them, the version of themselves they've outgrown, the identity they're afraid of losing.
That's the tree. The more they stare at it, the more certain the collision feels.
The shift isn't "think positive." It's: what are you looking for?
- What energizes you in the work you do now?
- What kinds of problems pull you forward?
- What does the next useful step look like?
Not the ten-year plan. Just the next move that keeps you on a path you actually want to be on.
That's not abstract. That's something you can do at any moment, regardless of how little time you have to reflect.
eye on the path, not the treeThe next time you're stuck, or the next time someone asks you for advice, try this question instead of the mindset one:
What am I staring at right now trying to avoid, and what should I be looking for instead?
That's the whole move.
This is what reinvention actually is, at the micro-scale: not changing who you are, but changing what you're looking for.
If you're stuck staring at the tree and trying to figure out where the path is, that's where I come in as a coach. Book a free discovery call if you'd like a thinking partner to help you find what you should be looking for instead.
Comments and conversation live on the Substack version of this post. Join the discussion there.
