People get surprised by my reaction when they reach out to me and ask for mindset coaching.
What makes you think you need mindset coaching? Maybe you don’t, I say to them.
And although you’d expect a well-rehearsed answer to a question like that, their answers are always spontaneous, fresh, and truth-revealing.
Magic happens when you tell your story to someone who is genuinely curious and believes that everyone has all the answers within.
The process of giving structure to your thoughts and formulating the problem often reveals the answers to the problem itself.
But first of all, the role of a mindset coach or any coach is to remind his clients that there is no problem in the first place! The coach is there to help his client turn his attention to something positive that — once accomplished — eliminates the problem the client intended to solve (assuming the client ever had a problem).
Because I’ve found that when you focus on the problem, you always see the problem and you’ll never be content until the problem is solved, whereas when you focus on creating something new and beautiful in your life, you feel enthusiastic, motivated and engaged.
The role of a coach is to:
- Help you to become crystal clear on your vision
- Rewrite self-limiting beliefs and thoughts (install a new mindset that is aligned with your vision)
- Point you to that vision and make sure you’re on track
- Continue to do all this until you learn to do that yourself without his help
Table of Contents
Mindset Coaching is … Coaching
And coaching is … a soul-to-soul conversation.
In a soul-to-soul conversation new insight is born.
New insight brings self-awareness.
Self-awareness helps my people see that what they always thought was true… was only a story!
When they see the story, they dump all the disempowering thoughts and beliefs that came with it.
And then they decide to adopt new empowering thoughts and beliefs, ie. the new mindset that will accelerate them to their vision.
What Mindset Is And Why It Matters
Mindset is a set of thoughts and beliefs that influence how you perceive yourself and the world, and as a result, shape your behaviours.
You can think of mindset as a pair of glasses through which you see the world (and yourself).
You noticed that I used ‘the world’ and ‘yourself’ interchangeably above. This is true because we tend to reflect on the world what we see or believe about ourselves. For example, if we have a bad habit that we want to change, we tend to notice that habit in others or we even blame them for having it!
Adopting the right mindset (putting on the right pair of glasses) can either catapult you to success or drive you away from it.
Let’s look at an example.
Alex and Brad both want to build a successful startup business.
Alex believes that the startup world is full of highly competitive people so he prefers not to talk to anyone about his project. He is ambitious, intelligent and can work for endless hours in his garage developing an application that will change the world.
Brad is also hardworking but believes that the key element of startup success lies in collaboration, a good team, and most importantly listening to the customers. So he’s always around talking to people, asking for feedback and looking for inspiration from mentors and people in the industry.
Alex and Brad have a different mindset. They may both reach success but it looks like the way Brad has chosen to see the world will remove unnecessary resistance and will create unique opportunities for him.
Fixed Vs. Growth Mindset
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Stanford Professor Carol Dweck makes a distinction between a fixed and a growth mindset.
Someone with a fixed mindset believes that their talents and abilities are fixed traits whereas someone with a growth mindset believes that their talents and abilities can be developed through hard word, strategies and help from others.
A fixed-mindset person feels intimidated and unmotivated in the face of a challenge because they don’t want to look stupid to others and themselves! A growth-mindset person sees obstacles as opportunities to learn and grow and they are always eager to ask for help and mentoring from others. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?
A mindset coach helps their clients adopt a growth mindset by:
- Showing curiosity and interest in the learning process
- Asking great questions
- Shifting the focus away from success or failure to ‘what did you learn/ what would you like to learn from this experience’?
- Praising effort, persistence, and hard work rather than talent and fixed qualities
- Encouraging a change in strategy when something is not working
- Transforming the meaning of effort and difficulty
- Finding creative ways to help their clients fall in love with challenges and feel the thrill of improvement
- Promoting delayed gratification over instant gratification
LeBron James – A Growth Mindset Example
Read what LeBron James said when he and his coach Mike Mancias were interviewed by Tim Ferris. These words stayed with me forever.
After a bad loss, I’m rethinking about and replaying the game into my head, “What happened throughout the course of the game that made this loss become a bad loss? What did I do? What did I not do? What did we not do?” because I want to be better. I don’t want to dwell on that loss.
But I do want to know what there were things that I could have done, or we could have done to prevent it if it happens next time because I always preach the best teacher in life is experience. And it’s okay for you to experience defeat. But when you’re at a position where you may have to cross that threshold again, do you approach it the same way? Or do you learn from that? And that’s what I try to do. I try to put myself in a mental state of, “How do I learn from that defeat? How do I learn from that loss?”
How Do I Change My Mindset?
If a mindset is a set of thoughts and beliefs, changing your mindset comes down to changing those limiting beliefs that stop you from reaching your full potential.
It’s important to understand WHY you want to change your mindset and a coach can help you to see whether your mindset serves your vision or not. When it’s obvious to you that your current thoughts and beliefs are not setting you up for success, it becomes easier to change them.
Here you can find the 6-step process I use to change my own and my clients’ limiting beliefs.
I often get asked: What are some examples of beliefs and thoughts that make a winning mindset?
It’s a tricky question because a certain belief may be helpful to person A or harmful to person B because A and B have different visions!
However, from my experience, I’ve come to realise that when you believe that the world and others have your back, when you try to create a win-win situation for yourself and others, when you want to do good, you speed up to your vision.
A Mindset Coach Never Uses the Word ‘Talent’
I have removed the word talent from my vocabulary.
Because if you say to someone you’re talented, they think they don’t have to work hard and fail to reach their full potential.
Or if you say to someone you’re not talented, they feel they don’t have what it takes to succeed and give up.
So, even if such a thing as talent exists, what’s the point in reminding people of their talent or the lack of it?
We have created a ‘somebody’s got talent’ type of nation.
Every time you watch Somebody’s Got Talent, unconscious beliefs get registered in your subconscious mind that ‘talent is an essential element for success’, or ‘l’m not as talented as they are’. The films we watch, the content we consume online and the environments we choose to live in, all pass information to our subconscious mind. When we are not aware enough on a conscious level, all these limiting messages get registered in our subconscious mind in a stealth mode.
And you’ll say to me: ‘Look at those sports superstars like Lionel Messi! Don’t they have talent?’
They do have talent now when we’re watching them but that doesn’t mean they were born that way, as Carol Dweck says.
Think about your hero. Do you think of this person as someone with extraordinary abilities who achieved with little effort? Now go find out the truth. Find out the tremendous effort that went into their accomplishment and admire them more.
Mindset – Carol Dweck
A Mindset Coach Shows Confidence in the Unknown
I will never forget the story that one of my coaches and mentors Dr George Pransky once told me.
He had started working with a new client and successful businessman (we’ll call him Patrick). During their first meeting, Patrick shared all that was going on in his life. One of his sons suffered from drug addiction, the other son was in prison, his wife had cancer and his whole situation looked so desperate and glooming.
Patrick could sense that George probably didn’t expect to hear a story like that.
So, George what do you think?
George remained silent for a while and then said: I just don’t know what to say.
What do you mean you don’t know what to say? You’re supposed to be the best psychologist who works with people in distressed situations or not?
Yes, I just can’t see what a solution might look like right now. However, I’m confident we’ll find a way together.
Being confident in the unknown is another cornerstone of my mindset coaching.
Discovery, exploration, experimentation are all key mindset ingredients that I try to pass on to my clients. When I work with clients who are looking for their passion or purpose in life, I’ve found these ingredients to create magic.
If you think about it, this is another way to see Carol Dweck’s growth mindset. Having a growth mindset is the same as being confident in the unknown and committed to finding the answers through effort, exploration and experimentation.
This is how Satya Nadella interpreted Carol Dweck’s growth mindset and turned around Microsoft by promoting learning and experimentation.
A Mindset Coach Focuses on Building Awareness
Everything starts with developing awareness.
Carol Dweck asks her students to pay attention to what triggers the fixed-mindset thoughts.
What happens when you have a setback? How does it make you feel?
What happens when you come across someone who’s better than you in what you do? Do you feel intimidated or inspired? Do you reach out to them as ask them to mentor you?
What happens when you receive criticism? Do you get angry and offensive or do you try to use the feedback from the external word to improve?
Become aware of these triggers and see if you can switch to a growth mindset.
As a coach, I help my clients see for themselves which beliefs are helping them get closer to their vision and which are not. My role is to hold a mirror for them so they see for themselves. Putting the mirror down and telling my people what they should do or which beliefs they should adopt was never as transformative as staying silent and holding the mirror.
Exercise: Pay attention to your self talk or any limiting/negative thoughts that you have while you’re working towards your vision or in everyday life. Write them down, journal about them. Can you give them a different meaning? Can you replace them with more powerful thoughts that are more friendly to your vision? Bring to your awareness not only the thoughts about yourself but thoughts about others and whatever happens outside. You will see the reflection of yourself in those thoughts. Can you come up with a more powerful version of those thoughts too? Can you see a world that is in your favour and helps you achieve your vision?
The Mindset of Ownership
The turning point for my career as an entrepreneur and later as a coach was when I decided to take control in my hands and become the owner rather than the victim.
In our society, we’ve learned to please people. What you often see on someone’s calendar is appointments with people that if you didn’t keep, those people would be mad at you.
This is how we think (including myself). Life becomes running around trying to please people and if I have a little extra time I’ll jump on FB to see what’s going on there and maybe someone will invite me to do a podcast, or why not spend some time to like other people’s stuff on FB so they like me back and ask about my services?
And we operate from a standard of the type ‘Oh… it can’t hurt my business. And if they invited me to do a talk at the Donut Makers’ Association, I’ll do it and who knows… someone will want to become a client!’
And when you’ve spent most of your precious time on all these can’t-hurt-my-business activities the least intentional aspect of your day is your own wonderful creation you’re meant to create in this world, ie. that book you’ve always wanted to write, the amazing business, the ideal clients you want to serve, the extraordinary product/service that will change lives.
Most people in our society from their time they’re kids, they go to school, they try to please everyone and live up to others’ expectations. They get their first job, they then try to please their boss ‘Oh, what’s the minimum I can do in this job to not get fired? What would please my boss? What do I have to do to get a promotion?’ And then they decide to build a business. They get up in the morning, and first thing, they look at email. ‘Oh I’d better answer that, it’s good to be friends with that person… you never know I might need them later…’ You see, it’s all outer-directed, ie. all power is outside of me!
The real game-changer for me (and something I’m still working on) is the reversal of focus ‘What do people expect of me’ to ‘What do I want to create today?’. Things change when you see your week as a work of art and you start painting in those activities that will lead to a prosperous business and a meaningful life.
It restores the direction of your life to the power that’s in you. There is less regret there. You have more control. You don’t expect anything from the world. You’re creating YOUR world.
Mindset Coaching – 3 Final Missing Pieces
I’d like to talk about three missing pieces that I have found to be extremely important when it comes to mindset coaching.
Missing Piece #1: Acceptance and Self Compassion
Towards the end of her book, Carol Dweck says that Step #1 towards installing a growth mindset is to embrace your fixed mindset.
I think this is where most of us fail. In my opinion, we have ended up with another think positive tyranny when it comes to mindsets, ie. you should be ashamed of your fixed mindset.
But if the fixed mindset is omnipresent in the human nature, there must be a reason it exists.
The way I see it is that those emotions associated with a fixed mindset have deep roots in our survival and we have to address them if we want to let go of a fixed mindset. The fear or shame of failure, the need to feel accepted by others (the tribe!), the need to be praised, etc.
If we want to transition to a growth mindset we first have to accept our human nature and all those needs and feelings we want to feel every time we decide to stay in a fixed mindset.
When it comes to limiting beliefs, before we rush to replace a belief that’s not serving us any more we have to address the purpose that that belief meant to serve in our lives. If we now don’t accept it we have to show compassion to ourselves for choosing to believe it at some point in our lives. The belief has been there to protect us and we have to acknowledge that. Because when we chose to believe it we were not as aware as we are now or the circumstances were different. Because back then it seemed to be the right thing to believe even if we did so not to thrive but to cope with the reality. Only then will be able to let go of the limiting belief and replace it with a more empowering belief.
Missing Piece #2: Meaning
Letting go of a fixed mindset and working toward a growth mindset requires hard work.
Persistence, effort, hard work, learning, the obstacle is the way, all sound good in theory … but what’s going to be on my side while I’m going through all this?
Meaning.
When there is meaning in your vision, you will cut through when walking the path of Arete.
A caveat on hard work and a path of resistance: When someone finds resistance and gives up along the way, it’s not always because of lack of motivation and persistence. It might be the case that they need to reevaluate their vision. And it’s the role of the coach to go deep and help his client to become aligned with their true vision.
Missing Piece #3: If You Meet The Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!
A coach should not be afraid or ashamed to admit that they also become a victim themselves of their fixed or limited mindset. Developing a growth mindset is a lifelong journey for both the coachee and the coach. Both the coach and the coachee are pilgrims. The best way to teach a growth mindset is to be a living example of it and show your own hard work and effort. If you meet the Buddha on the Road, you may not want to kill him but be sceptical. He will probably not be a good coach for you.