Week 11 – lecture 1

Welcome, to week 11 of your PN Level 2 Master Health Coaching Certification. As coaches, we

know that the problems clients face are often not physical things out in the world, but rather
mindsets, beliefs, stories, and attitudes clients have within themselves. For instance, clients’
challenges around improving their deep health, generally have less to do with understanding
which foods would best serve their goals, or how exercise would help them, and more to do with
things like:

• How they cope with stress and emotions

• How they bounce back from setbacks

• What they believe about their own ability to affect change in their lives

• The scripts and stories they hold about how things work

And so on.

So this week, we're going to talk about how you as a coach can impact the mindset and
confidence of your clients. Starting with: Exploring the difference between a fixed and a growth
mindset.

What is a growth mindset? A growth mindset is the belief that anything – a capacity, an ability, a
personality trait – can be improved with sustained effort. Having a growth mindset helps clients
to:

• focus on process over results, and behaviors over outcomes;

• respond productively to coaching feedback;

• keep persevering through inevitable setbacks;

• learn from “failure” and “mistakes” – maybe even eventually enjoy them; and

• look at everything realistically as a constant “work in progress” (rather than a magical-

thinking, time-limited project like “12 weeks to magically transform your body and life”).

And in general, deal with the ups and downs of life as they work towards their health and fitness
goals.

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Week 11 - lecture 1: Transcript

How can clients develop a growth mindset? Well, compassion is fundamental. We start to see
possibilities for ourselves and our clients when we bring kindness rather than criticism to
situations. As coaches, we can always start with compassion.

Building out from there, we can also support our clients in these four specific areas:

1. Recognizing what a fixed mindset and growth mindset look like.

2. Identifying the specific skills where your client has a fixed or growth mindset.

3. LIFT-ing up their mindset.

4. Recognizing, reinforcing, and rewarding the process of using a growth mindset.

So now, we'll explore the specifics of each one of these in practice.

First up, let's compare a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, so that we can recognize both when
we meet them in our coaching practice. Having a fixed mindset can show up as a client:

• seeing challenges as problems to be avoided

• believing they're either good at something or not

• valuing talent instead of effort

• giving up in the face of obstacles

• viewing critical feedback as something to ignore or take offense to

Whereas having a growth mindset helps a client:

• see challenges as an opportunity to learn

• believe they can learn to get better at anything

• embrace effort as the path to mastery

• persist in the face of obstacles

• view critical feedback as useful

• meet failure with compassion and curiosity

You'll usually hear these mindsets being expressed in your clients’ language. If they have a fixed
mindset, you might hear:

• It's genetic.

• I'm the kind of person that _____.

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Week 11 - lecture 1: Transcript

• I've never been good at _____.

• My whole family is like this.

And if they have a growth mindset, you might hear:

• I know if I put my mind to X, I can do it.

• If I'm consistent, I should see results.

• I guess it's just a matter of putting in the reps.

Our second step in supporting a client in developing a growth mindset is to understand that a
growth mindset is domain-specific. That means that you can have a growth mindset towards one
skill or domain, and a fixed mindset toward a different skill or domain. Listen closely when clients
describe different aspects of their deep health, the actions they're taking, or the challenges they
face. What do you notice in their language, and how they express their sense of confidence within
certain tasks? Can you hear in which areas they feel they can grow, and where they feel things are
fixed? Where they're able to persist compared to where they might give up?

It's also important to remember that when a client is under stress, it can make it harder to see
opportunities and have a growth mindset. Be aware of that as you work together on this.

The third element you can bring in to support a client here is to LIFT up their mindset using the
acronym LIFT: L-I-F-T.

• L stands for listen, which means you use your active listening skills to watch your client's
language and find any indications that they don't believe a certain quality, trait, or piece of
their personality can be changed.

• I stands for investigate. Use your motivational interviewing skills to ask questions that
allow the client to notice, name, and explore their fixed mindset.

• F stands for falsify. Work with a client to come up with evidence against the fixed mindset.
Have they ever improved at that skill, even a little? Has anyone in the world ever improved
at that skill?

• T stands for test. If it was possible to grow that skill, what would it look like? Work with
your client to choose and test an action that could potentially help them improve.

And finally, our fourth piece is to recognize, reinforce, and reward the process of using a growth
mindset. Here are five examples of how you might do just that.

1. You could praise effort over results with something like, “Amazing, you worked really hard on
X and it showed a lot of guts.”

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Week 11 - lecture 1: Transcript

2. You might connect results to effort, like this, “You achieved X because you put a lot of work
into taking action.”

3. Perhaps you identify times the client persisted like, “I know you could have quit many times,
but you didn't.”

4. You might choose to appreciate the client's fortitude and persistence with something like
this, “I appreciate how you didn't quit there, even though there were a few rough moments.”

5. Or, you could identify the progress that emerged from effort like this, “Three months ago,
you were doing X, and because you've worked so hard, now it's up to X+20. That's not an
accident.”

Every time you celebrate a client's move toward a growth mindset, you help to solidify it even
more.

Just one more rep. These are four powerful words you – and your clients – can use to strengthen a
growth mindset. For example – when you're working on a new behavior and you feel like quitting,
you say “just one more rep”. Now that doesn't necessarily mean one more rep of exercise. It could
be one more minute of tolerating a craving, one more bite of vegetables, one more sip of water,
etc. This way, you and your clients begin to align the trigger of, “I want to quit or do something not
aligned with my goals” with the action of, “I'll just do one more…”. Reinforcing the growth mindset,
one rep at a time.

Before we close out this lecture, let's take a few moments to pause and reflect. In what skill or
domain of your life do you demonstrate a growth mindset, and how do you do that? Now consider
a skill or domain where you have a more fixed mindset. Have you ever improved at that skill, even
a little? If it was possible to grow that skill, what would it look like? Try out an action that could
potentially help you improve.

PN Level 2 Master Health Coaching Certification

© 2021 Precision Nutrition, Inc. -4-