My Top 3 Mindset Challenges & How I Navigate Each One
Today I am sharing something that feels a little more personal and a whole lot more vulnerable than usual – I’m taking you into the deep recesses of my mind and sharing my top 3 mindset challenges and how I navigate each one.
I want to share this because, first and foremost, I think it’s important to remember that no matter what you see on the internet – the highlight reel, the celebrations, the successes – there’s always more going on behind the scenes. And one of the things I’m committed to on this podcast is bringing you behind the scenes and giving you a real look at how I run my business – the good, the bad, and everything in between. And mindset is a big piece of that puzzle.
Mindset is one of the three pillars of my signature framework that informs my approach to coaching. This is the signature framework that I share with my clients inside the Spiritual Business Mistressmind. In episode 3 of the podcast, I go into this framework in greater detail. You can listen to it here.
Mindset is a huge part of the work I do for both myself and with my clients – it supports me to be the best business owner, mum, partner and all round human I can be. And when it comes to my clients, I can tell you hands down that those who have the MOST success all share this commitment to their mindset.
Today I want to dive deeper into what that looks like for me personally, as I know that one of the biggest things that has supported me to move and shift through mindset challenges over the years is hearing from the experience of others.
So if you’re moving through any of these or any other mindset wobbles right now, know that you’re not alone. It’s my aim that you walk away from this episode with some practical strategies that you can use right away to shift through your own mindset challenges.
Imposter Syndrome
The whole “who am I to be doing this anyway?”
Who am I to be a coach when I don’t have my shit together all the time?
Who am I to be charging *that* much for my time?
Who am I to be starting a podcast?
Who am I to be sharing *this* content with the world?
Blah, blah, blah.
The amount of times I’ve had this conversation with myself is ridiculous.
One of the things you get really good at when you do mindset work regularly is having coaching conversations with yourself. You get really good at catching those thoughts when they are happening and talking yourself down off that ledge before your thoughts spiral out of control.
Because here’s the thing when it comes to your thoughts. Your thoughts are not necessarily truths. And when you can take a step back and bear witness to your thoughts, you can approach yourself in a much more compassionate way.
And when it comes to imposter syndrome and that question: who am I to be doing the work that I do?
Well, I’m Bec *flipping* Cuzzillo and I’m amazing at what I do.
The first strategy I want to share with you today is one that I recommend to my clients all the time and one that I know is going to support you if you’re moving through imposter syndrome (because it’s helped me!).
This is a strategy that one of my mentors, Antoniette Gomez, shared with me a few years ago during my NLP training and it’s stuck with me ever since.
You know how you might have a vision board of everything you want to manifest in your life?
Well, this is called an achievement board. A collection of things you can look at and point to whenever your inner mean girl tries to run that “I’m not good enough” programming. And it doesn’t have to be an actual physical board – it can be, of course – but you can also just have a digital folder in your phone or on your desktop.
Everytime a client sends me a message of gratitude or to celebrate a win – I take a screenshot and keep it in a folder on my phone. So whenever that voice of self doubt pops up or anytime I doubt my abilities as a coach, I can jump in there and be reminded that actually no, I’m really freakin’ good at what I do and here is the evidence.
Now I can almost hear you asking: “Bec, what if there is no evidence? What if I haven’t got any evidence like that yet?” Firstly, the key word there is YET. And secondly, there will always be evidence! You haven’t gotten this far in life without evidence of how amazing you are.
If this is you, I recommend taking some time to reflect and journal about a time that you helped someone, anyone! And then journal about a time where you did something even though it scared the shit out of you. And then about a time where you really surprised yourself, when you did something that felt hard – because I know that you’ve done “hard” things. And because you’ve done it before, you can do it again.
As I said, there will ALWAYS be evidence, trust me. Take the time to sit down and pull that evidence together for yourself. Create your achievement board.
And whenever that voice of self doubt pipes up, you’ll have something you can physically look at to help you have that coaching conversation with yourself and shift that self doubt. Because really, that’s what imposter syndrome is – self doubt. It’s doubting our ability to do something or be something. And, quite frankly, it’s total BS.
2. “Building a business is hard.”
Bleugh.
This is such a sneaky one because this programming will literally be a self fulfilling prophecy.
If your brain is running the program that business is hard – then guess what, business will feel hard. Your brain will unconsciously be looking for ways to make business hard. You’ll overcomplicate things, feel overwhelmed and make everything more difficult than it needs to be.
Whereas if you run the opposite program – that business is easy – then your brain does the opposite. It looks for ways to make business easier.
Simple, right? In theory, yes. In practicality, it takes some commitment to actually shift this programming. But it is possible!
And this is where the duality of things comes into play. Because yes, business gets to be easy, but sometimes you will have to do things that feel hard.
I’ll say that again because it’s a bit of a mindfuck – business gets to be easy BUT sometimes you have to do things that feel hard.
And this is really about shifting out of the mindset that business is hard and cultivating 2 new mindsets for yourself – firstly, that business gets to be easy and secondly, that you can do hard things.
Business gets to be easy AND you can do hard things.
To give you an example of this from my personal experience, last year during a launch, I had several days without ANY sign ups and I remember thinking: “OMG, why is this SO hard? Why can’t I just have a launch where things feel easy? A launch where people are signing up everyday? Where I’m having sales conversations everyday with dream clients who can’t wait to join me? Why does it have to be so hard?”
Now it didn’t help that while this was happening, there were things going on personally for me that also felt hard. I know I’ve shared this vaguely before in an episode towards the end of last year, but 2021 was a challenging year for me in many ways.
I promise to share more details on that at some point with you. I’m not quite there yet but I will be, so bear with me until that time. I know that’s super vague and annoying, but the upshot was that things felt hard in many ways – launching felt hard, business felt hard, life felt hard.
Of course it did. Because here’s the thing when you’re in that space of things “feeling” hard – you unconsciously start looking for all the things that make life feel hard. So even though, many things in my life were (and are!) wonderfully easeful, I wasn’t focusing on that.
This is why something as simple as a gratitude practice is really powerful. Because you consciously shift out of that place where you might be focusing on things that feel challenging, and instead focus on the things that you’re grateful for in your life.
When you do that you are consciously breaking that cycle of unconscious thought. You purposefully interrupt that pattern before you spiral down that hole of despair.
So the question then becomes: how can you consciously break that thought pattern? How can you consciously start looking for the things that make life and business easier?
If we go back to that example – I knew I needed support to shift out of that mindset. So I reached out to my coach and had a conversation with her. And then I booked in to see a hypnotherapist.
I invested in support and leaned on that support, not because I don’t have the skills to shift that mindset myself, but because it’s easier and faster when you do have support. Plus hypnosis is like a shortcut to rewiring your brain. It’s amazing.
3. “It’s just NOT possible for me.”
I remember when I first went full time in my business I had a conversation with my dad and I told him, “I’ve run the numbers and set a goal of making $60,000 this year”. And he was like, “really? Is that even possible? Wow.”
Now, my dad wasn’t trying to discourage me in any way. But his experience of the online business world is limited. He only knows what he knows, and he doesn’t know many people who run online businesses – let alone super successful ones. And I was the same when I started out.
When I think back to that goal of $60,000 – it felt like a HUGE stretch at the time. I knew it was possible – as I said, I'd run the numbers, I could do it. But it still felt like a stretch. I didn’t know many people running successful businesses.
And whether I want it to be or not – that money story, my dad’s reaction of “is that really possible?” is embedded in my unconscious mind.
Shortly after that conversation, I did my NLP training and we were asked to set a goal. I remember stretching myself further and wrote down $100,000. Now if $60k was a stretch, $100k felt wildly impossible. And I distinctly remember Antoniette coming around and saying, “let’s make it $150,000.” Well, as you can imagine, my heart constricted at that number.
And it’s because of this mindset that I had: “it’s simply just NOT possible for me.”
Which is obviously total BS.
One of the things that really helped me shift this one was consciously surrounding myself with people who were hitting those big income goals. People who had big visions for what was possible for them. Expanders in that space for me.
Because again, you only know what you know. If you’ve never been around people who are building successful businesses, then you have no frame of reference. Your brain literally doesn’t compute the possibility of it.
So I put myself in spaces with people who could expand me in that way. I joined a mastermind. I followed people on socials who celebrated publicly reaching their money goals – everything from 6 figures right through to multi-7 figure business owners. I surrounded myself with evidence that it IS, in fact, possible.
Now what can happen when you start inviting this energy into your space is that comparison can come up.
If comparison-itis ever comes up, my approach is to lean into gratitude and genuinely thank that feeling for coming up. Because that feeling of comparison is actually showing me what I deeply desire. And perhaps I’m not even allowing myself to acknowledge that desire – because it feels too big and scary and impossible.
When that happens, it’s a sign for me to lean in and acknowledge that – YES! That is what I want. I want a million dollar business. I want to earn enough to retire Matt from his job. I want the dream lifestyle to go with it. And it’s all possible for me. That’s my truth. That’s my mindset. The possibilities are infinite.
So those are my top 3 mindset challenges and how I navigate each one. To recap:
Imposter syndrome. The number one strategy I recommend is creating an achievement board – a collection of evidence to remind you just how flippin’ amazing you are.
“Building a business is hard.” The shift here is to cultivate a dual mindset that business gets to be easy AND that you can do hard things. And if you want to fast track your mindset shifts, I suggest investing in and leaning on support. For me, that looked like chatting it through with my coach and seeing a hypnotherapist.
“It’s just not possible for me.” The strategy that has helped me navigate and shift this block is to surround myself with expanders. Expanders that provide me with the evidence that it is actually possible for me. Because it is. Of course it is.
I truly hope that this episode today has been supportive to you. It’s felt like a big one for me to share. Come and let me know on Instagram what resonated most. You can find me @bec.cuzzillo
And if you loved today’s episode, I would be forever grateful if you could leave me a 5 star written review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. This is one of the best ways to support the podcast and help me get more episodes just like this out into the ears of more spiritual business owners just like you.
Thanks so much for listening in today! Have an absolutely magical day and I’ll see you next time on the Feminine Fire podcast.
