Actioning Our Way to Success

Today, I want to talk about a really unpopular topic: what it takes to move forward in your life. To be fair, it’s not the topic that’s unpopular. I coach women every day on this exact thing, but my response will be pretty unpopular.

Most of the time, people want action steps to solve a problem. They want to be able to do something or a list of somethings and see immediate results. However, the hard truth is that doing something or not doing something will never get you the results you’re looking for.

Let me give you an example using the statistic I often talk about of women only applying for jobs if they feel 100% qualified. The easy action response to this statistic is to tell women to apply for a job if they feel on 70% qualified like most men do. Easy, right? You want a great new job but don’t feel quite qualified enough, apply anyway!

Unfortunately, telling women to apply anyway doesn’t solve anything because the root of the problem is that these women don’t feel confident enough to apply in the first place. It’s not an action that will lead to the desired result, it’s the THOUGHT, the mindset, that drives the action. Women aren’t applying because their thought is, “I’m not qualified enough.”

Once when I told someone I was a “mindset coach”, they replied with, “Drop the mindset! Mindset doesn’t sell.” Mindset doesn’t sell because we think we want to “action” our way to change. Mindset change takes work and repetition, but mindset change is where the gold is!

I coached a client yesterday who recently earned a promotion to director in her office. She was beating herself up for not learning the job quickly enough. The thought we captured was, “I should know how to do this job; I’ve been in it for a month!”

Should-statements are favorites of our habit brains. We love to shame ourselves with the things we “should” be doing, but should-statements are always ripe for mindset change! As we discussed the reality of her learning curve, my client decided her new thought would be, “I’m learning my new job, and I’m going to give myself the grace to learn it and make some mistakes along the way!” From now on, every time she starts thinking of what she should be doing, she will stop and repeat the new thought. She will retrain her mind to think the more accepting, loving thought.

This week, I challenge you to capture one thought that your habit brain throws at you and replace it with a new thought. If you don’t know where to start, look for one of those should-statements. Changing our mindset takes work, but as we pick off those thoughts and begin to change them, the changes begin to multiply and you will notice a bigger payoff than you could imagine!

If you want some help capturing your thoughts, schedule an appointment with me and we can capture a few thoughts together. Until then, much love!