Self improvement made easy! In this vlog, we're exploring how to use your mindset to become your best self — featuring my 4-step process to make your mindset work for you... (Plus, get answers to your questions: "What is a mindset coach? What can a mindset coach do for me?")
Quick overview of what's in this video...
- 0:00 Did you know you can make your mindset work for you? How mindset coaching is a big part of the work I do in life coaching sessions with my clients, and the 4-part process we use
- 1:20 Example of what types of mindset shifts you might want to experience
- 2:55 Step 1: Differentiating between external obstacles vs internal obstacles
- 5:10 Step 2: Unpacking and understanding your internal obstacles and mindset blocks
- 6:50 Step 3: Deconstructing your internal bottlenecks and mindset blocks
- 8:30 Step 4: Coming up with specific actions you can take to implement your new mindset shifts
- 9:20 The cool thing that happens with many of my mindset coaching clients (the snowball effect with mindset shifts!)
Transcript:
Did you know you can make your mindset work for you? How can you actually use your mindset to become your best self? In this video, let's talk about self improvement made easy…
Mindset coaching is a huge part of the work that I do in life coaching sessions with my clients. And it essentially boils down to these four pieces:
- Identifying what ways you are holding yourself back.
- Unpacking, processing and working through those things.
- Shifting your perspective, beliefs, and thought processes to be more empowering and productive.
- Making it 10 times easier to take action on the things that you are struggling with.
Your mindset directly affects your actions. It absolutely 100% influences your behaviours. So we really want to ensure that you have a very strong mindset, a really good foundation of the type of mindset that you desire and that you require in order to make good progress on your dreams and your goals and the behaviours and habits and actions that you really want to be taking.
For example, maybe you love the idea of moving across the country, but it feels too scary, too big, too bold, too brave for you. And anyway, there are a bunch of other factors that you need to think about how this is going to affect your family, your financials, your career. You don't know anyone in this new city that you want to move to. All of those types of things are coming in… or perhaps you want to quit your day job desperately. Or perhaps you're really frustrated that your family never seems to care about maintaining the household as much as you do. Or perhaps you are not giving yourself permission to pursue a hobby or a creative outlet that you would love to try. Or perhaps you really want to start exercising, but there are way too many things getting in your way. You don't have time to exercise and there's always different things that keep on coming up that stop you from being able to do it. You get the picture.
So in any of these scenarios, we can do mindset coaching around it. Let's break down that four step process that I mentioned earlier at the beginning of this video. Let's really break down what that would look like. And again, in any of those scenarios or in many other types of scenarios, we can really use mindset coaching to work through it.
What we would do in this instance...
Step number one, the first thing that we do is to differentiate between the external obstacles versus the internal obstacles, the obstacles that you have constructed for yourself.
And spoiler alert, often the obstacles that you have constructed for yourself are masquerading as external obstacles. So what we really look at here, the external obstacles are things that are happening outside of you that you really don't have control over. And they can often be systemic issues or things that are in the hands of other people, societal things, different pieces like that. Internal obstacles are the things that you have control over and that you have power over.
What we want to be able to do is focus on the things that you have power and control over. We are always going to fully recognize and acknowledge those external obstacles and understand that they are very real, very valid problems and blocks that are getting in your way. But there are also so many things that you are doing that you have control and power over that are blocking you from what you want. And those are the things that we want to focus on — Because if you have the power and the control over those things, then you can change them.
So that's why we really like bringing our focus and direction to the internal obstacles that you are facing.
And really pinpointing those internal obstacles, those blocks that you have constructed, pinpointing those are one of my specialties, so you are not going to be alone in identifying them when we work together in a coaching session. I'm not going to expect you to know what they are or to be able to just see them all right away. This is something that I specialize in. This is something that I will work with you to identify what specifically are those internal obstacles that are holding you back? So that's the first thing that we do.
The second thing is that we unpack and understand those obstacles that you have constructed at a very deep level.
I often refer to those internal obstacles that you've constructed as internal bottlenecks or mindset blocks. All right, those are all essentially the same things, internal bottlenecks, mindset blocks, obstacles that you've constructed. They're all the same, the same concept.
Here, when we are unpacking and truly understanding them at a deep level, what we are doing is exploring the root causes of those various obstacles that are holding you back and whether there are other obstacles that you need to deal with first as well. Sometimes we're going to focus on a particular obstacle or bottleneck and what we will discover is that there's actually another block at play that we need to work through first. Alright, so we're going to look at the different ways that these blocks are affecting you and how they're affecting your thoughts, your beliefs — and therefore your behaviours or actions, and what's really going on at that much deeper level.
We are pushing past these surface level things and getting very deep with us. So that's the second thing that we do. All right. The first is identifying the differences between your external blocks and your internal obstacles, really pinpointing what are the internal obstacles at play. And then the second thing we are unpacking and processing you're really working through identifying “okay, what's going on here? What are the ways that they're affecting you” all of that sort of thing.
The third thing that we do is to work through those internal bottlenecks, those internal mindset blocks to essentially deconstruct them.
This is where you are shifting your view of things, your perspective, your beliefs, your thought processes. And it's really important here that this is not about me as your coach telling you, “here's your new belief. Now go believe it.” Instead, we are exploring these shifts together and we are coming up with a new approach that feels very good and very realistic and very progressive in the right direction for you.
Now, sometimes this happens within a matter of minutes. Other times, this is going to take several sessions, and that really just depends on how deep rooted it is. So it does vary, okay. We really want to ensure that we are doing this third piece of working through and deconstructing them after those initial two steps.
First, the very first thing we want to do is differentiate between internal blocks and external blocks. The second thing we want to do is really understand at a very deep level exactly what is going on with those internal blocks. And once we've done that, we can move on to that third thing of essentially deconstructing them. When we understand them at that deep level, then we can process, we can unpack, we can shift that we can really shift how you are approaching it. We can change your beliefs and your thought processes from there.
And then the fourth thing that we do is we come up with very specific actions that you can take to implement your new perspective.
This might include behaviour changes in conjunction with your new thought patterns. This can include doing thought experiments, or thought exercises. This can include testing out your new belief and observing your reaction and our response to it. All of those different types of things are very tangible and practical. Because we want to be able to measure your new beliefs and your new thought processes.
And we want to see if there is any resistance that comes up. Because sometimes the resistance indicates that we want to actually shift things a little bit more, or it might indicate that there's another mindset block we also want to work through to kind of play with that. 
Oftentimes, what happens for my clients is that when we do this — when they start implementing this new perspective that they've got, we're going through this full four step process, they start taking action — what often happens for them is they're able to take the action… but then what they notice is that this one action in this one specific area of their life has a snowball effect.
Suddenly it helps them with this other piece over here that they had no idea they were even struggling with. So I see this happening in all kinds of different scenarios. And it might be something where a client is frustrated with a particular habit that they're having in one area where they keep on obsessing over social media. They managed to work through their mindset around that, and suddenly, they're also eating healthier, which is something they've also been struggling with. And there doesn't seem to be at surface level a connection between them, but the mindset piece is, at a very deep, deep level has actually been affecting both of these areas.
I see this also happens a lot with my clients who are working on business pieces: We'll uncover some beliefs and thought processes and mindset blocks they have around visibility, and suddenly that makes it a lot easier for them to have communication and conversation with people in their personal lives. Something they've been kind of having difficulty with, a relationship issue in their personal life suddenly becomes resolved as a result of doing this work on our business. So it's really cool to see the different ways that by working on one piece, it actually has this huge effect across the board.
Now sometimes the change is immediate and it feels effortless upon doing this four step process — when we're doing this mindset coaching in our sessions, sometimes that change is immediate. Other times, it takes a few times to really sink in, or it may need additional coaching, if it's especially sneaky and if it's something that has been coming up for you a lot over the years. So again, this just really varies from one person to the next, and also from one scenario to the next.
So there you have it! Now you know what mindset coaching is, how it works and how it can benefit you.