Mindset Coaching

By Javier Iglesias – Mindset Wizardry

In our book Magic Wizardry: The Magic Behind Thriving in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) World, we talk about the power of mindset coaching that enables the reader to have greater influence and impact while building team capability.

How do we coach ourselves or others to thrive in a VUCA world? We do this by building our mindset coaching skills.

Your self-coaching journey will start from a state of curiosity, by getting a clear understanding of who you are through an evidence-based assessment and self-reflection. Once you raise your self-awareness and can coach yourself, you are well-positioned to coach others.

Mindset coaching consists of:

✅Understanding how a mindset is created

✅Helping yourself and others change their mindset

✅Helping yourself and others keep your new mindset

A mindset coach helps people transform their mindset – breaking old patterns, beliefs and behaviors and building new, more productive ones that will help them achieve their goals. They do this by focusing on building the characteristics of a growth mindset such as curiosity, interest, open-mindedness, learning, etc.

A mindset coach can also help with guiding a person to:

✅Gain self-awareness

✅Build accountability

✅Increase motivation

✅Set realistic goals

✅Engage in self-reflection

 Mindsets are created in two ways:

✅Patterns, habits, behaviors and beliefs are a function of past experiences. Our brain translates our life experiences and turns them into behaviors. It’s about how the data was presented to us in our past and how we perceived it.

We want to go from our old: EXPERIENCE -> STORY -> BELIEF -> HABIT                                                              

To creating a new:  EXPERIENCE -> STORY -> BELIEF -> HABIT                                                                    

✅Instill or create a belief and mindset through self-talk. You tell a story to yourself and this self-talk becomes the story of your life because it is generalized as the truth. Our life experiences and self-talk are associated with our emotions and form our beliefs about ourselves. People who lack confidence often are telling themselves negative stories. For example, “I don’t know enough to sell this product or I can’t possibly speak at this conference.” When self-talk is negative, it will trigger emotions such as anxiety or fear. Over time, these feelings will compound and often will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, setting the person up to fail.

With mindset coaching, the aim is to shift the negative self-talk to positive self-talk. We do this by reframing the negative self-talk. Here’s an example:

Negative self-talk: “I don’t know enough to sell this product.”

Positive self-talk: “I have a good relationship with this customer and I have studied the product features. I can always engage the engineering department if I need help with the technical questions.”

Negative self-talk: “I can’t possibly speak at this conference.”

Positive self-talk: “I was invited to speak at the conference because I am an expert on my topic. I will practice my talk so I feel confident speaking at the conference.”

A word of caution: mindset changes are not immediate. 30-40 years of programming cannot be switched off in 4 days. It takes time (days, months, or years). It also takes effort and energy for you to have and accept an identity shift that feels congruent to you as a human being. We are always growing and evolving.