You can learn techniques and strategies up to your eyeballs and they won’t work unless you have this

April 15, 2013 JOIN THE DISCUSSION

I’m really good at learning things. I aced almost every course I took at the University of Michigan. I learned a lot. Know what was the biggest learning tool? Getting the answer wrong and having a teacher tell me so. Sometimes the professor just said I was wrong and I had to find the right answer. Sometimes, he simply gave me the right answer.

No matter, I learned what was right and I learned what was wrong.

After starting my coaching business I gobbled up every technique and strategy about coaching, marketing and selling my services. But my business was going down the tube. I had no one to tell me when I was right and when I was wrong.

So I hired a coach to be my teacher and this helped enormously. He did much more than tell me what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong, he told me when I was thinking right or thinking wrong.

I had some negative beliefs that were hurting my business. I didn’t realize I had them There is absolutely no way someone can figure this out on their own, no matter who you are, no matter how smart. You need an outside observer.

The reason you need an outside observer is that negative beliefs and habits are part of the unconscious. Only 10% of our mind is

conscious. A whopping 90% is unconscious. By definition, it’s impossible to understand your unconscious mind. A trained observer can help you make your negative unconscious beliefs conscious, so you can change them. Of course I knew this. I was a trained clinical social worker before I got into coaching. I simply couldn’t figure it out on my own. I had mysteriously “forgot.” Everybody is that way. It’s part of being human. That’s why teachers, professors and therapists are so revered. They teach us to understand our inner wisdom to which we have been blind.

If this is beginning to sound too theoretical without practical benefits, just the opposite is true.

The lesson is this. You must have the right mindset to make all those sophisticated plans and strategies work for you. You can learn them and practice them until you’re blue in the face and they won’t work for you without the right mindset.

You can improve your mindset by reading, but only a little because you, I and everybody else are blind to our blind spots. (That’s why they’re called blind spots – duh!) Only a trained and skilled professional can shine the light of knowledge and let you see what you need to see to achieve your true potential.

The lesson is obvious. Find a talented teacher, coach or mentor to help you. A word of caution about mentors; they know how to use techniques and have used them very successfully in their own lives, but only an exceptional mentor knows how to help you with your negative thinking and other self-defeating habits.

To learn more about mindset subscribe to my online community, if you haven’t done so already. You’ll get my blog with really eye-opening ideas and my free six week online ecourse. http://www.solutions4advisors.com/subscribe/

Wishing you the very best, ~Stan

P. S. Want to learn how to make another $250 K per year? Register for my free online training.