Mindset is everything to succeed in life. The mindset either leads you to your goal or holds you back. In this episode of Consulting Success Podcast, Nina Cooke, a coach in Clarity Coaching Program, shares her insights on overcoming the self-limiting beliefs that hold you back from succeeding. Along with her wisdom, one of her approaches to personal development is building an agreement between the “meanings” we make up about everything in our lives. She also discusses how our fear of failure is the most significant factor that holds everyone back, and the flip side of that fear is the fear of success. So if you want to achieve your goals finally, it’s time to take action now and hit that play button to learn more from Nina to help you develop and grow.
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I am very excited to have Nina Cooke joining us. Nina, welcome.
It’s great to be here, Michael.
You specialize in working with people on their mindset and in the areas of growth, development, and overcoming limiting beliefs. You run your own consulting coaching business. You also are a coach in our Clarity Coaching Program. Prior to that, you ran a shopping consultancy and had clients like Goldman Sachs, Ernst & Young Skye, and various public relations companies. I know that you are a big believer in the power of mindset, as am I. I’m excited to have you on the show to talk more about your experiences of mindset, what you’ve done with clients over the years, and how you’ve seen things play out.
I know that mindset is this area that so many people don’t often think about or if they think about it, they don’t maybe pay enough attention to it, yet it can be so massive. I thought what we could do to start off is go back in time a little bit to your career in your earlier days. I’m wondering. At what point did you identify the importance of mindset in your own life? When was that? What were you doing and the circumstances around that to have the awakening or the power of the mindset?
It was something I was aware of for a very long time but I didn’t have a name for it. I remember I went into a bookshop. It must have been around 1990 to 1991. I wandered into the bookshop. I came across a section that I had never come across before. It said something like mind and body. I thought, “This is interesting.” I started picking up the books. There were books about how to feel better about yourself. I was absorbed straight away. I remember I bought two books. It was Louise Hay’s, You Can Heal Your Life, and Susan Jeffers’s, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. I took them home and devowed these books. I thought, “There’s something I can do to help myself feel better because I was unconfident.”
I grew up always trying not to attract attention because I thought if I attracted attention, then I will be in trouble. That was the pattern in my childhood with my older sister. I thought, “If I stay under the radar and don’t speak up, then no one will notice me, and I will be safe.” The problem was that it had a big impact on my relationships and worked as well. I worked for Time Life Books in the London office. I’m convinced I would’ve done much better had I put myself forward and speak up in meetings. I had good results with them but I was always modest about everything I achieved. I had children. I had Emily in 1995 and took ten years off to have children.
I used to watch my young children. They had this lovely confidence. I was very good at faking confidence but I never felt it. I was never aligned with it. I remember thinking, “I need to try and fix this because I want to be a role model for my children but be a genuine role model.” I felt that I could do this but I didn’t know how to do it. There was another part of me that thought, “I’m not fixable either.” There’s something about me. I’m missing something that other people have, which gives them that likability. I don’t have that bit, so I was always trying to cover up that.
I started my personal shopping business in 2005, and I managed to land a great corporate gig with a very big accountancy company in London. They hired me and my team to go and put up a big pantry for their senior female staff and senior female colleagues. I took along about twenty team members. They had stationed themselves and were lovely offices, beautiful floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and huge plants with champagne canopies. There was a lovely buzz in the room.
Once my team was set up, and I made sure everyone was okay, I thought, “Now is my chance to go and meet up with the senior ladies at the corporate staff and see if I can get small business.” I started walking towards them and suddenly thought, “Don’t do that. Don’t speak to them because they will suddenly realize that you are flawed. You’ve got nothing about you. They will say, ‘Why have we hired her? We’ve made a mistake.'” I did a quick sharp left turn. I thought, “Where can I go for the rest of the evening?”
There was a row of semi-dark offices. I tried one of the doors, and it opened. I went and sat there for the rest of the evening in the darkness. I didn’t even put the light on. I hit there until it was time to go home. I snuck out of the office, made sure my team was okay, then packed up. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone from the corporate world. I went back on the train and sat. That was the moment. I remember it very clearly. I thought, “You’ve blown it again. You cannot carry on like this. I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to find a solution to this.”
There is a massive lack of self-awareness about what we say to ourselves. Click To TweetThat’s when I tampered a little bit. I had a little bit of a go in the personal development work. I thought, “I’m going to find someone who’s going to help me.” I tried lots of different things. I did lots of training. I read lots of books. The online world was wonderful because there was so much I could absorb from there. What I kept finding is, “This gives me temporary relief but I want permanent relief. I want this to go away completely, so I don’t have to keep dealing with it again and again.” I found a guy by chance. My friend connected me. He said, “The only reason you don’t have any confidence in yourself is that you believe your limiting beliefs are true about you.”
I thought, “I’ve heard this type of thing before.” Anyway, he did something. He did a process with me, and although I was reluctant to believe it was changing anything within me, I started behaving differently. For example, I had always wanted to do videos and put myself out there but I always was hidden away and anonymous online. Suddenly, I remember one day thinking, “I will do a short video, and normally there will be a kickback. Don’t do that. It’s not safe. You’ve got nothing to say. People aren’t going to be interested.”
There was nothing. There was no negative language about it in my head. I went, had, and did it. It was very grainy. It wasn’t great but I was so proud that I put something out there. It probably got about five views but it didn’t matter. That’s when I realized things were different. When I thought about beliefs like, “I’m not good enough. There’s something wrong with me,” they didn’t resonate with me anymore.
What that did was that freed me up to start thinking in a different way about myself and what I could do and achieve. To cut a long story short, I thought, “This has worked for me.” I trained intensively with this guy. I thought, “I can help other people in the same situation as me.” In the beginning, I thought I could help everyone, “Everyone needs this,” and I started niching and working with entrepreneurs. They were struggling, not because they didn’t have the right strategy or the right marketing team but they were struggling because they didn’t believe in themselves.
When I was able to meet them at that point when they were beginning to think, “It’s not a process in my marketing. I need to work on myself first to get myself out of the way,” that was a sweet spot where we could start working together. They had transformative results. To be transparent, it didn’t work 100% of the time for every single client but it worked for the majority of them. I was blown away by the results. That’s what I do now. I work with entrepreneurs to help them think bigger and dissolve all those negative patterns of behavior that get in their way, which they keep repeating again and again. Once we can do that, we can start looking at their goals and feel confident that they can achieve their goals.
Let’s dig into that. There’s so much of what you mentioned that will resonate with everyone at some level. We’ve all had an experience where we want to take some action, whether that might be recording a video or going up to meet somebody like the examples that you shared but we don’t because there’s some talk that’s going on in our mind that convinces us otherwise.
The first thing I want to ask you about is this. Some people might say, “This is the way I have been doing it for so long. Here I am. I’m 40 years old, 50 years old or 60 years old. It feels like it’s so ingrained inside of me.” Is it ever too late for somebody to make a shift to rid themselves of these shackles holding them back or open up the possibilities so they can overcome some of these roadblocks or limiting beliefs that are keeping them from reaching their full potential?
It’s never too late. I felt that I was stuck, and this was all I could have out of life. I felt that if it cut me open inside, you would see I was not good enough. It was so ingrained in me. The process that I use takes around 15 to 20 minutes. Many of our beliefs are from childhood. You can say some of our beliefs are as early as 2, 3 or 4 years onwards.
You can say you’ve had them all your life, and that has been your reality and truth that you’ve brought into. Once you can see that is an absolute lie, which I can confidently say every limiting belief we have about ourselves is a lie, once you can see that, and then you can plant a new truth about yourself that aligns with who you are, then those changes everything.
It’s not something that you have to maintain using willpower and affirmations. It’s you who makes that change deep within you, and you connect with your new truth. You toss out the old stuff that’s not working for you, and then you have a new perspective on life. It’s like you change the filter through which you see the world because we know none of us to see the world as it truly is.
We see the world as a distorted place through what we believe is true. Some of our beliefs are positive and helpful, and some of them are unhelpful. You don’t see the world as I see it but we can change our perspective of the world, other people, and ourselves simply by changing what we believe to be true about ourselves. It’s never too late.
Let’s say that someone has gone through this process. I want to dive deeper into the process and also go through some examples that you see coming up with entrepreneurs, consultants, and those in the consulting industry. If we come back to this idea that someone has started and worked through this process, they are feeling like they are maybe dissolving some of these limiting beliefs or at least being more open to that process they would go through. I believe it might be inevitable.
Let’s say that their old selves come back. I take the example that they want to go up and meet somebody or generate more business. They know they must follow up, make a phone call, or send an email. They know they need to take action to create an outcome they desire but for whatever reason, they don’t. They start thinking negatively. They think about the worst-case scenario and everything that could go wrong. They then hold off taking that action, oftentimes shifting to doing work that is easier and that they feel is productive but is not creating the outcome they want.
At that moment, when people feel like they are getting pulled back, maybe they’ve read a whole bunch of books on psychology or mindset. They’ve spent time at the self-help section at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or whatever bookstore they go to. They’ve consumed those books, and I believe probably many people have, yet they still encounter that hesitation. It’s that old mindset that is still there. What should people do when that happens? What can they tell themselves at that moment? What’s the approach, process or steps they could take so that when that pops up for them, they can still overcome it and keep moving forward?
Here’s one of the basic things that I’ve discovered. There are many different personal developments, gurus, etc. that talk about it. There seems to be an agreement that we make up meanings about everything in life. We have passed judgments and grievances. As we said, we don’t see things as they are. If it’s raining, for example, you will have a different meaning about it than I will, depending on whether you like rain, whether you know you are a farmer and want your crops to grow or someone who’s having an outside wedding. We all have meanings that we attach to things.
If someone feels that they are slipping back in their personal development and their mindset is going back to the old way of thinking, first of all, awareness is key. They are aware that they are slipping up and do something sooner rather than later because if that turns into days, weeks, months, etc. then that’s going to be a long way to come back again. What I would advise anyone to do is to set up a daily mindset practice. Mindset is not a weekly thing. It is every day for the rest of your life. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming. It could be as simple as journaling your thoughts. It could be saying affirmations. It could be meditating, whatever it is.
Do something. Spend 5 to 10 minutes at least every day, becoming aware of what you are thinking. Know and say to yourself, “All I’m doing is I’m not seeing reality. I’m making up a bunch of meanings and negative meanings about stuff.” As soon as you know you are making up those meanings, that’s when you can let them go. I teach my client something called a Peace Process, which is completely designed to dissolve the made-up meanings in our own heads, the stories, and the dramas we create. It could be about work, other people, raising your fees, reaching out to people, networking or whatever it is.
We make up all these dramas like, “They are not going to be interested. I’m going to be disturbing them. I’m not important enough to talk to them. I can’t charge that much. No one is going to pay.” These are all meanings we are making up. There are several processes to dissolve meanings. I use a particular one. Everyone can say to themselves, “I’m making all this stuff up. Let’s get rid of the meanings and see what I’m looking at.”
The biggest challenge of growing your business is the fear of marketing and putting yourself out there. Click To TweetAll you are looking at is maybe making a phone call. It could be making an offer, writing a proposal or whatever it is. That’s all you are looking at. It’s never the thing that you think is causing the suffering. There’s a lovely saying, “Whatever makes us hysterical is historical.” It’s never what you think it is. The task or activity you are looking at is just a neutral task.
Do you find that’s because people tend to almost rush through? Let’s say that they want to take action. They want whatever that action may be, and then that voice comes into their mind of the reasons why they shouldn’t take that action. Is it that at that moment, they don’t slow things down and try and process what’s going on? They take the voice in their head and tell them, “Don’t take that action. Hold off. It’s not going to work.” It’s all that negative talk, and accept that as is and not slow things down. Is that what you found? Is there something else going on when that conversation pops up in their minds?
People don’t take time. There is a huge lack of self-awareness about what we are saying to ourselves. We are running exactly the same conversations in our heads every single day, and we don’t pay attention to them. We may think, “I’ve got to get a lot done. I haven’t got time to slow down and listen to what I’m saying to myself,” but it will save you a lot of time. Imagine you are putting off a task because you think it’s too scary. How much time are you spending talking about it in your head versus just doing it? You are wasting an awful lot of time by not slowing down and listening to yourself, so you can write down your thoughts.
The word you will be writing down is a bunch of limiting beliefs like, “I’m not good enough to do this. I haven’t got enough value to charge that much. My competition is better than me.” Write it all down and say to yourself, “These are all meanings I have made up in my head. They’ve not come from the outside world. They are stories I have been telling myself, probably since childhood. Do those stories serve me?” If you can’t work with someone, do as much as you can yourself, “Do these stories serve me?” Ask yourself a really critical question, “Are these meanings 100% true about me?” There will be no one who will be able to say, “Yes, they are 100% true.”
You may feel they are 97% or 99% true but if you can’t get to 100% true, then they are not the truth about you. It’s about challenging and questioning yourself, “What is the truth about me?” and not settling for anything less than that. I have been doing this. I’ve really upped it because I know that it has to be done on a daily basis. Otherwise, my mindset and results slip, and I start spending more time not feeling good. As soon as I feel any discomfort in my thinking, I will do a process on it because I’m no longer willing to waste hours with my head stuck down in a rabbit hole.
What you are sharing now resonates with me. Two things came up for me right away as you were talking. The first is the connection between mindset and everything you mentioned and how people approach their marketing. In the Clarity Coaching Program, we have what we call the Marketing Engine 2.0. The whole idea behind that is to invest in delivering value to prospective clients and building relationships with them. There’s all this stuff online that people talk about in terms of automation. They think volume over value. They get in front of lots of people, automate stuff, and just send a whole bunch of messages.
It feels like that’s the easy thing to do. It’s “productive,” but it’s not creating a lot of value because people typically don’t get great results when sending out very general messaging. The opposite of that is that you take a little bit more time upfront. You get a good strategy and system in place. You figure out how you can deliver great value to people and build relationships. It might take you a little bit more time upfront but you are going to see better results from it. It sounds like it’s the same when it comes to mindset. It’s by slowing down. Here’s my personal example around that from what I’ve experienced.
For me, probably one of the biggest “breakthroughs” from a mindset perspective was a few years back. When I started to realize that I would be around my children or wife, all of a sudden, I would feel a shift from positive energy to negative energy. I would feel a little bit of anger. There was something negative tone that my mind shifted to.
For a long time, I would probably get sucked in by whatever was going on. One day, I asked myself like, “Why am I feeling that way? What’s causing that feeling that I’m having now?” I would realize the reason I’m feeling a little bit different where I went from feeling great to feeling a little bit disturbed, preoccupied or a little bit on the negative side. “Why is that?”
I realized that I had just read an email, and something had happened or my attention shifted to some story, conversation, or disappointment, and I would then let that take over everything else. The moment I recognized that I needed to stop, process, and instead of going down that path, I asked myself, “What caused the feeling I’m having now?” I then go, “It’s that email and this client issue. We are going to take care of that. That’s not a problem. That’s not a big deal.”
Being able to cut that off made such a difference in how I was able to be present for my family, and as you mentioned, not being taken down this long river of negative thoughts, which is, to me, there’s a much better way. I’m glad that you brought that up. Hopefully, the example I shared might resonate with some people and also help them to slow things down and catch themselves as they are thinking in real-time.
This is so important. It’s catching ourselves, being aware, and knowing that you can shift this stuff. There are so many different strategies and processes for working on your mindset. Try different things out. Some people may enjoy doing one thing or another thing but often, we try different things. We think, “That didn’t work, so this stuff doesn’t really work.” That’s not true. There will be a methodology that feels good to you, so I would encourage all your readers to keep looking. I had to search for quite a long time until I found something that worked for me. Believe me. It is one of the best things you can do.
I know you and I both agreed that the foundation of a successful consultancy practice is a solid mindset. Once you’ve got that in place, then you can grow. You don’t lose all your fears because it’s always a work in process but you can lose big fears around rejection. There are so many people who are outstanding at what they do but don’t tell enough people because they think, “They are going to say no to me.” They are undercharging or not playing a big enough game because they limit themselves through this fear of, “I’m going to get a no, so I’m not going to put myself out there.” I did a survey to my list and asked, “What’s your biggest challenge to growing your business?”
I thought it would be money blocks. The biggest challenge is a fear of marketing and putting yourself out there. That’s what we have to do to have a great business. You can do some clicking stuff and sell products but if you want to work with high-caliber clients, you have to speak to them and tell them about how good you are. This is all about relationships and the exchange of value between you and your client. If you don’t feel you can ever have that conversation, not only are you doing yourself a disservice but you are doing a big disservice to your community as well.
Let’s break that down in a bit more detail. You hit on several different mindset blocks or areas people have or are challenged around, whether rejection or increasing fees. You said also thinking bigger, acting bigger, and marketing. Out of all these things, you mentioned that marketing is top of mind for many people.
When you think about the professionals that you’ve worked with, especially the service-based professionals, and I know you’ve done lots of work with entrepreneurs, financial advisors, and consultants now as part of the Clarity Program, what stands out for you in terms of where you see the most common challenges or areas that tend to hold people back? Maybe we could explore a couple of these and talk through what the challenge is, what typically is the limiting belief, and what you have seen in your experience the steps people can take to overcome that challenge so they can create that breakthrough and, ultimately, the result that they want.
The biggest area or challenge is two words, procrastination and overwhelm.
Let’s do each one of those, then.
The flip side of fear of failure is fear of success. Click To TweetProcrastination is where consultants are typically working hard during the day but they are doing the busy work. They are doing the stuff around the edges, which isn’t making a big difference. They start projects but they don’t finish them. They have the Shiny Object syndrome going on. They are jumping from thing to thing. What stops them from finishing projects is that if they were to finish them, they would have to make offers and get out there.
They may get rejected, and then they would have to deal with all of that. It’s very easy to justify and make excuses to ourselves, “I had a busy day. I got a lot done but I didn’t get around to finishing that project off.” I worked with a financial advisor. He had started writing a book. It was a few years ago, and he had written 80% of the book in two weeks. I said, “What would happen if you were to finish that book off?” He said, “I have to probably create a funnel around it and get it out there. It’s terrifying.”
This is the reason. If we can dig down and find out the real reason what is, and often it is fear, what is that fear? It will be about, “People will judge me. They will realize I have nothing anything good to say. I’m not as good as my competitors,” and all of that. Overwhelm is very much tied with procrastination because they feel there are so many things they could do. They can’t focus on one thing, and all these different things need their attention. They end up not doing any of it.
There’s an excuse. If we can strip away those excuses and say, “What is going on here?” let’s find the goal. Let’s find those limiting beliefs which are running the show for you. You are making your decisions based on beliefs like, “I’m not good enough. I haven’t got what it takes. I can’t have what I want. I’m a fraud. Rejection is scary.” If you are building your business and making decisions based on those beliefs, you are not making the best decisions for yourself and your family.
Where have you seen this idea of fear of failure? I’ve seen this played out many times over the years with consultants and consulting firm owners. You are exactly right. They will start something. They don’t finish it. They put it off. A big thing that I see is that people are often wanting to make things perfect. The story in their mind is that, “The more I work on it, refine, polish, and get it perfect and professional the way that it needs to be, the better the result I’m going to have.” People spend time because I’ve spent the time as well.
I’ve done this myself where I will get all excited about planning in my mind what success is going to look like. I’m even indulging in the success. I can taste it when I’m thinking about what it’s going to be like in the future but I’m not taking action at that moment. I keep playing with it. I remember doing that for a long time, and I know that people are often doing this. This idea of like, “If I spend time perfecting it and getting it better and better, I’m going to be more successful,” yet that never ends. You never actually take action, so you never create success. It’s that fear of failure, it seems.
I’m two parts to this question. One is, is it fear of failure that’s holding people back, and that’s why they are doing busy work, even though it’s not the real value high priority work? If it’s not that, what is it? If it is fear of failure, where does that stem from? Why does it seem to me like that’s such a systemic core issue for so many people? Is that from childhood that so many people have it? Is it from as we are growing up over our careers? What’s going on that is having many people hesitant to take action and instead spend so much time trying to get things right before we get out there, which is the worst thing we could do?
I know the show is very big on taking imperfect action. That is a scary thing to do because if you put something out there and people think, “That’s not good,” or if you don’t get the attraction you want, that can feel scary. Wanting to make things perfect is another excuse not to put yourself out there. As we know, things will never be perfect, and it’s better to be 80% done. With the fear of failure the flip side of that is the fear of success.
I often ask my clients, “Why do you not want to be more successful? What do you fear if you were more successful?” It tends to be around, “If I were more successful, I have to work harder. If I were more successful, I would have to build a team and have all this responsibility of looking after people. Maybe I would get to a certain level of success, and I have to sustain that. If I fell back, I would feel terrible about myself. If I were very successful, certain people would be upset with me. Maybe members of my family or I lose friends, etc.”
There is a fear of being more successful but if you never realize that’s what’s going on and never look for that reason, you can never deal with it. Therefore, you carry on through life self-sabotaging. An opportunity will show up, and you won’t show up for it or you won’t deliver something that someone is waiting for. There will be something that will happen that will get in your way. The fear of failure is feeling humiliated and embarrassed. If you launch something or put it off right, then it doesn’t work. You admit, “What I’ve got is not good enough.”
The other thing that people do is that they tie their own value with their offer or service. I had a great conversation with a client. He’s working in a corporate and is supposed to do a workshop. He had been sitting on it for a long time. We talked about why this was not happening, and he said, “It’s because they will reject me.” I said, “It’s not about you. You are not for sale. All you are doing is putting an offer or service out there. They can reject the service but they can never reject you.”
Separate who we are from our service. We are not our service. We are so much more than that. Once you can see that, you can say, “They cannot reject me because I’m never for sale. They can say no to my offer, and that’s fine because, in my world, rejection doesn’t exist. I don’t allow anyone to reject me. If someone doesn’t want what I have, that’s fine. It’s never personal to me.”
Do you think that connection between the way that people view what they are offering or putting out there as being part of them increases with age? I’m thinking back to when I was younger. I remember trying to get jobs during the summer and hustling to make money. I wanted to travel. I would open up the Yellow Pages, which I don’t know in the UK if you have had a similar one. It’s a big booklet with all the different businesses. I would start calling companies like different landscaping and this and that, saying, “Are there any opportunities to work?” I don’t know if I would do that nowadays. Maybe I would, and I probably should.
I believe that more people should, regardless of age and industry, because I know that as a business owner if somebody approaches me and shows determination and is willing to take action, I’m impressed by that. Often these days, people hide behind. They try and take the easy route, even just picking up the phone or sending an email. These are things that are not necessarily that hard to do. I’m wondering. As people tend to get older, do we often overcomplicate things? Is that something that you’ve seen in your work as well that, with age, we tend to overthink and overcomplicate? Are there any lessons we can learn from our kids or younger selves?
We overthink things and talk ourselves out of things all the time. If we were to take action on the spontaneity of that time, “I’m going to do this and just do it,” we would probably save ourselves a lot of grief and open up lots of opportunities. We worry about getting a no. That stops a lot of us. You are so brave and courageous through that, and you probably picked up work. I will say to my children, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get in life.” Few people ask because they think they know what the answer is going to be.
By putting yourself out there, you shine and learn so much. Any entrepreneur or consultant who’s reading this, if you remove the word rejection from your vocabulary and say, “I can ask. People are entitled to say no. That’s fine. It doesn’t mean anything about me and who I am. My value stays intact,” and have that mentality of asking for things, you will be amazed at how many people will say yes. You will stand out from everyone else. If you want to be different and be noticed, ask nicely and be okay with the no.
That’s such powerful advice. My own experience is that it applies to many aspects beyond business. You can apply this to your business but you can also apply this to your life. Don’t be afraid to ask. Many people don’t ask. They get in the line. They follow everybody else. They do what they think they are supposed to do and what society expects.
What we are talking about here is to do things a little bit differently. Don’t hold back. Try things. Ask for things. The worst-case scenario is that you will learn from that experience, especially as you are saying that if you don’t take it personally, there’s nothing at all to lose. I appreciate you sharing that. Before we wrap up, I would love to get a couple more questions in.
How To Overcome Your Self-Limiting Beliefs As A Consultant With Nina Cooke: Podcast #262 Click To TweetOne of them is when you look at what you feel contributes most to your performance, the value that you create in the world, and the success that you are able to achieve. What are 1 or 2 daily habits or parts of your routine that you keep coming back to you that you feel plays an important role and have a big impact on you?
There are three things I do. The first thing is that I dissolve meanings. As they come up in my mind, whenever I’m aware of them, I will dissolve meanings. If I spend a day dissolving meanings, I have a good day. If I forget, then things start piling up in my mind, and I think, “Time to stop.” I will set my phone time for three minutes and look at everything around my office and say, “I have a meaning about that coffee cup.” I’ve made up meaning but there is no meaning to it. I’ve got a meaning about my computer. I’ve made it up. There is no meaning. I will spend three minutes doing that. By the time I came to the end of that, my mind was pretty clear. That’s one thing I will do, dissolve meaning.
Before you go on, I’m intrigued by that process or that way of thinking. Do you do that when you start to feel something come up inside of your mind that you feel holding you back or it’s negative, and then you go through that process? Are you doing this regardless of something coming up or not?
I sometimes say at the beginning of the day, “I’m going to start off on this.” Other times, I won’t do it at the beginning of the day because I’m rushing in the morning. I’ve got such good self-awareness now that my mindset starts slipping. I try and do as quickly as I can to try and disrupt that pattern before it takes hold and wastes part of my day. I do a more in-depth peace process where I dissolve meanings as well. If I do that exercise I’ve shared with you, that helps me to realize I’m just making all of this up. That’s one thing I do. Another thing that I do is focus on my goals or desires but instead of thinking through my goals, I think from my goals. This is another training process.
What does that mean? Break that down a little bit for everybody.
It means that I believe, own, and feel as if I already have my goal now. It’s not that they are in the future. I have it now. I’m living it now. Although it may feel like there’s a timeline, for example, if I have a desire that I want to be earning a certain amount in a year’s time, I will feel, believe, and own it as if it’s true now. Our subconscious listens to a conscious mind. It says, “Whatever you are thinking is the truth. I’m not checking if it’s true in the physical world. I believe you that it’s true.” If I’m in that state of being the entrepreneur earning that much, for example, then that’s for my subconscious beliefs to be true about me, and then the hows will show up.
It’s so interesting that you mentioned this. I was out for my morning run. I was listening to an interview with Jay Papasan, who’s the co-author of The ONE Thing, that he wrote with Gary Keller of Keller Williams Realty. He talked about Gary Keller, who is a billionaire. One of the biggest things he approaches when it comes to goals is exactly what you are talking about. When he decides that he wants to be a multimillionaire or a billionaire, whatever it is, the big thing for him when it comes to goals is figuring out what behavior, mindset, and attitude that person wants to be.
We are using numbers now but goals don’t have to be financial. Your goals could be about your health and relationships but numbers are easy to do this with. Let’s say that now you have a $100,000 net worth but you want to have a $1 million net worth. You might have significantly more or less. It doesn’t matter. It’s not about thinking through, “I’m at $100,000. What do I need to do to get to $1 million?” That’s one way of doing it but what I’m hearing from you, and what I also heard that Gary Keller uses, is the idea of, “If I want to have $1 million net worth, who do I need to be? What does that look like for me to be that specific person if I want to have $10 million, $100 million or $1 billion?”
The behaviors and the beliefs of that future state are what you bring into your current state. Some people might feel or say, “That sounds a little bit out there, Nina. I’m not sure about this. That’s a little bit too fuzzy for me.” I wanted to add this because this is stuff that successful people all over the world use. It’s a powerful concept. Dear reader, you may not be comfortable with it. You may not be doing it now, but I want to encourage you to bring in and apply what Nina is sharing with us.
It’s more than acting as if. It’s being in the state of, “I will up my game considerably with this. I had my best month in business ever.” People are popping up on my calendar, and I was like an observer thinking, “This is amazing,” and then my limiting beliefs started kicking in, “It can’t be this easy. It’s not going to last.” I had to deal with all of that stuff as well.
I’ve significantly improved the relationship using this method and had some small wins along the way. I teach my clients all of this. They only work with clients who are willing to do daily mindset work. This stuff works, and you have to be consistent with it. The third thing I do is this. It’s not always on a daily basis but when I feel that I’ve got stuff that I need to work on, I think, “These are limiting beliefs.”
It could be around anything. It could be around showing up in a bigger way. It could be around relationships. It could be around fees, whatever it is. I think, “I need to sit down and unpack this. What is this challenge? What is this pattern I keep repeating?” and then I dive beneath it to find the limiting beliefs. I write them down. I rate them all out of ten. I think, “Which one am I going to work on first?” I use exactly the same process I use for my clients.
I don’t skip any of the steps for myself. I do it as thoroughly as I am working with a client. When I’ve written those limiting beliefs, I go back to that situation, “How am I feeling about it now?” If it feels good and clear, I move on with my day. What I’ve learned to do is to disrupt at the beginning as early as I can so it doesn’t build up and become a big problem for me.
Last question here before we wrap up, Nina. Over the last months or so, what’s one book that you’ve either read or listened to, it could be fiction or nonfiction, that you thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend others check out?
I am going to pick out, The Jelly Effect: How to Make Your Communication Stick. It’s by Andy Bounds. He is an English guy. He’s brilliant at cutting through to the important questions you need to ask your prospect and how to show them the value of what you do. There are lots of common sense. It’s very straightforward. He gives brilliant advice.
Nina, I want to make sure that people can learn more about you and your work. NinaCooke.co.uk is your website. Thank you so much for coming on here. You know how big of a fan I am of the power of mindset. That’s why we were so excited to have you come and be a coach in the Clarity Coaching Program. Even before you became a coach in our program, I’ve known you for years and the great work that you do. I’ve seen the effect that it can have on people. You did a presentation for one of our masterminds as well, and I know that people enjoyed that. Thank you for coming on and spending some time with us.
It has been a pleasure, Michael. Thank you so much.
Important Links
- Nina Cooke
- Clarity Coaching Program
- You Can Heal Your Life
- Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
- The ONE Thing
- The Jelly Effect: How to Make Your Communication Stick
About Nina Cooke
I’m a coach for business owners who have internal blocks around growing their business.
My superpower is DIGGING DEEP to find the root cause of why they’re struggling. And then showing them how they can clear out their resistance. So they can charge their value, serve a wider and deeper audience, and have easier relationships.
I get a huge kick out of seeing my clients have a 180 degree turnaround – from looking to the outside world for the solution to their business struggles to looking within themselves and finding the answer.
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