A few years ago, I had the privilege of working with Shauna, a stay-at-home mom whose dreams of going back to work had begun to feel impossible.
“I left my career in finance eleven years ago to raise my children. When they were old enough, I started to homeschool them, ” she told me during our first meeting. “The plan was always for me to go back to work when they reached high school, but now I feel so behind, I don’t know if I ever will. I’m not even sure I want to any more…but lately I’ve been feeling so restless. I really need a change—I just don’t know what that is. And I feel like I don’t even have any options. ”
Poor Shauna. She sat slouched in her chair, looking totally defeated.
The thing is, Shauna’s not alone. I hear things like that all the time. So often, people fall into a rut—a dull routine, a tedious job, a set of lowered expectations—and they forget that there are always possibilities in life.
Shauna also told me she felt lethargic all the time, making it hard to stay active, even though she’d always been an athlete—she even played varsity volleyball in college. “Lately, everything feels so slow and…sludgy, ” she said. “My body, my thoughts, my life. It’s like I’m moving through mud. ”
“I think I have just the thing for you, ” I said. “Are you willing to try something a little unorthodox?”
“I’ll try anything, ” she said, and I told her about a little thing called Mindset Reset.
Mindset Reset: 7 Steps to Radical Life Change
I’m going to hit “pause” on Shauna’s story so I can fill you in on what we’re about to do. It’s called Mindset Reset, and it’s a simple Moticise process that we’ll use in Part One of this book.
Mindset Reset is designed to help you:
- Tap into your core to identify what it is you really, truly want
- Align your beliefs, actions, and emotions so you can take real, effective action toward that core desire
- Bushwhack through your fears and limiting beliefs—and ultimately get you where you want to go
Along the way, we’re going to use questions like What if it were easy? (and others—yes, there are more like it!) to help make each step as clear, fun, and as true to YOU as possible.
It’s called Mindset Reset because, well, that’s what it gives you—a clean slate. A new beginning. It’s a way to wipe out all that negative, fear-based, cobwebby clutter that’s been accumulating in your head, and start fresh. It’s like walking into your house and finding it sparkling clean and spacious instead of filled up with all those old boxes of junk you’ve been meaning to take to the curb. A mindset reset is exactly what so many people need, and this process is a super-easy way to make it happen.
“That sounds great, Sonia, but what is it? How do we do that?”
Good question! Here are the seven steps to Mindset Reset:
- Choose a Goal (that’s what we’ll do in this chapter)
- Step into the Future
- What Do You Have? What Do You Need?
- What’s Stopping You? Burn Those Beliefs!
- Take Action.
- The Ring of Life
- Celebrate!
In each chapter, we’ll use both physical movement and mindset tools to take giant steps closer to the life you want. The beauty of this process is that it allows you to move incrementally, one step at a time—so there’s no need to get overwhelmed. Each step will bring you new clarity, new ideas, and new neural pathways specifically built to bring you closer to the life you were born for.
Meanwhile, in Shauna’s World . . .
Back in our coaching session, I was explaining all this to Shauna, while she stared at me dubiously.
“This process is going to shake things up for you, ” I told her, “in your body and in your life. You’re going to have more energy, get a new perspective on your life, and work toward something you really want. And, you’ll do it while exercising. ”
She agreed to give it a try (even though I could tell she was skeptical—but that’s okay, most people are at first). I sent her an audio track of the process, and she committed to listening to it while she ran for three mornings that week.
When she arrived at my office the following Monday, she was smiling even before I asked her how she was doing.
“Tell me how it went for you, ” I said. “Were you able to choose a goal?”
She nodded. “I was, ” she said excitedly, as if she were about to let me in on a juicy secret. “And you know what’s funny? The idea came up so clearly—like it was fully formed, ready to go. Yet it had never even occurred to me before this week. ”
“I love when that happens, ” I said. “What is it?”
“I want to start my own homeschooling business, ” she said. “I’ve already written a curriculum for every grade up through middle school, and I’ve used most of them multiple times. I started thinking, Why not put them to use? I bet it would help other parents. My kids’ friends say that our classes are way more fun than what they do in public school, and my own kids score super high on standardized tests. So I know it works. I know it’s good.
“And also—why stop there? I started thinking about ways to supplement the curriculum. Other products I could offer. There could be online communities to support parents, and for students based on age group and interests. Field trip ideas cross-referenced by age group and subject. Maybe get sponsorships from local businesses…” She rattled off a long list of brilliant-sounding ideas. By now, I didn’t even need to prompt her—she was rolling.
“And that was all during the first few minutes!” she went on, “I thought I could just stop there. But I was already on a roll, so I let it play out. And you know what? When it was over, I knew something. I could feel it my whole body. I can totally do this. ”
Shauna had found it: the thing that lit her up, that came straight from her core, that she knew she was meant to do.