Hi, and welcome to the Mindset Coach Academy podcast. Today, it is Mental Monday, and we are talking all about mindset, how to live it, how to teach it, and how to sell it. Hi, guys, and welcome back to Mental Monday and the Mindset Coach Academy.
My name is Lindsey Wilson. All right, I want to talk a little bit about belief work. This is one of the core principles of what we teach all of our athletes, our certified coaches in the Mindset Coach Academy. And the thing about belief work is the purpose is really helping individuals understand that when it comes to achieving goals, a huge, huge, huge, huge part of our success, a part of the reason that we will or will not be successful is our ability to maintain belief, our ability to maintain belief over time. And that's really the second part of what we talked about is we talk about our ability to set goals that we believe, and that's the first part of belief work.
The second part is being able to maintain that belief over the long stretch of time that it's going to take to achieve the goal when it's taking longer than we ever expected. And one of the core pieces of this is that... the way that our brain is designed is that when we feel discomfort we equate discomfort with a threat to our survival. We equate discomfort with a threat. And so immediately when we feel discomfort and in this case what I'm talking about is the mental discomfort and in particular something called cognitive dissonance. So cognitive dissonance is the idea that we cannot hold two contradictory things in our brain at the same time.
In other words we cannot be where we're at and believe that we are in a certain place in our life and also believe that it's possible for us to get to another level. That disconnect between where we are and where we want to be creates an enormous amount of discomfort in our brain. Now that discomfort is really really good because it also serves as fuel. It also is that voice in our head like I don't want this life. You guys have probably felt that before. That is a discomfort that motivates us. The challenge is that if we equate that discomfort with a threat to our survival we will immediately try to remedy it.
Okay and the easiest, quickest way to remedy that is not for us to raise our expectations and raise our performance but actually drop our expectations. That is the fastest way to find relief. It is the fastest way to find equilibrium to reduce the cognitive distance and for our brain to think I'm safe. No more discomfort. This is a really important principle because what it means is that again when we're talking about achieving our goals, belief work over the long slog that it's going to take to accomplish our goals, being able to handle that discomfort is huge and recognizing, here's the key, recognizing that that discomfort is not a sign that we are in danger but it is in fact the opposite. When we are able to recognize that discomfort as a sign that we are actually on the right track, when we're actually doing the right thing, when we're actually pushing ourselves, taking that feeling of discomfort and the story that we're telling ourselves that I must be doing something right, then we know that we have the belief system and the core belief that's going to get us to our goal. Okay if you like this episode we do this every mental Monday so subscribe do all the things to make sure you get the updates and thanks for being here.
Bye for now. Hey guys if you've ever thought had just even an inkling of a thought about becoming a mental performance coach it's likely that you also had some questions about that like where would I get clients? What would I teach them?
What would I charge? Can I do this without getting another degree? If you've ever had any of those questions I have really good news for you because I've answered all of them in a free 60 page book called How to Become a Mental Performance Coach even without your sports psychology degree. I go into all of these questions and so much more in this book and the best news is it's totally free. Go get your copy of How to Become a Mental Performance Coach at PositivePerformanceTrain.com forward slash guide.
