Two weeks after a loss to Southampton prompted a vote of confidence in the manager - the first of Roman Abramovich's 12-year ownership - the Premier League champions beat Aston Villa 2-0 at Stamford Bridge.
Mourinho dropped Eden Hazard to the substitutes' bench and afterwards encouraged the playmaker to improve his work-rate as the Blues boss opted for a more pragmatic approach.
"In this moment it's difficult to be brilliant before we have points," Mourinho told Chelsea TV.
"What produces results is both quality, plus the other things.
"When you are not able to show your quality, you have always to be able to show the other things.
"In between quality in some moments and fantastic work by the team and the fantastic desire to win the game, the performance was solid, not brilliant.
"They wanted to win, they wanted to show that they wanted to win, they wanted to show they are together and ready to fight.
"I'm really happy because it was two long weeks after the last defeat."
Chelsea next play Dynamo Kiev in Champions League Group G on Tuesday, with Mourinho planning to retain the same approach.
"In this moment we are losing 24 hours to Dynamo, like we did against Porto," the Portuguese added.
"Porto played Friday, Dynamo played Friday
We played in Newcastle on Saturday (prior to Porto); we played again on Saturday.
"We are losing 24 hours
We have to try to recover that with other ingredients and the ingredients will be the same - fantastic spirit
Let's start from that point."
Villa have now lost seven of their nine Premier League matches this season.
Manager Tim Sherwood, though, saw reasons to be positive following the performance at Stamford Bridge, where a poor Brad Guzan clearance led to Diego Costa's opener and Alan Hutton deflected the ball in for Chelsea's second.
"It was encouraging at points in the game," he said.
"We dominated the game in the first period without opening them up too many times
We have had a few chances.
"They have had none except the one we gifted them
It was an uphill struggle after that.
"There were positives
We have come to the Bridge and matched them
We haven't sat back and tried to dig in and nick something.
"Unfortunately we didn't have that cutting edge which you're going to need to win football matches.
"But it's onwards and upwards now."
Source : PA
Source: PA