For the full interview please listen to the most recent CM Group- Free Lunch Podcast, Episode 56 “Health & Wealth Mini-Series – The Mind”
Colin and Greg: Thanks again for joining us Charlene. First of all, tell us your story, how did you end up where you are today?
Charlene: I'd love to share. I mean, it was kind of linear in an aspect. I'm a nutrition coach and a mindset coach. I overcame a severe eating disorder when I was in my teenage years and this eating disorder arose when I was suffering with self-doubt and low confidence issues. I was using food as a means to feel better on the inside. But really, it just stemmed from really having a poor mindset and just struggling with a lot of self-sabotaging behavior. I was really disconnected from my self-talk and I was really just in a really bad place. I kind of hit the so-called “rock bottom” and I was using food as a means to feel better. But obviously it didn't work. I kept trying to change my habits and use different types of behavioral change to feel better, to get healthier and nothing was working until I discovered the power of mindset. Before I get to that, when I worked through my eating disorder after nutrition school, I started to become a health coach in the corporate world, helping people with chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol get better through coaching. It's great and it's really empowering. But trying to coach someone by just changing their behavior, just changing their actions won't really be sustainable until you change the story in your mind. This is because the things that we say to ourselves are the reasons why we do the things that we do. So I finally figured that out, and it took me a lot of figuring that out. It took me hitting rock bottom, realizing that doing all these different things wasn't working and changing my habits. I came across NLP, or Neurolinguistic Programming, which is basically just a modality that tells you a lot about mindset and why we do the things we do – why we think, the way we think and how to change our thoughts, to match our behaviors and become successful with our goals. So I enrolled in a program to become a Certified Neurolinguistic Practioner. Not a very attractive name, but and using that mindset, techniques and holistic healing through eating healthy food, I was able to finally heal my eating disorder. That empowered me to not only continue doing nutrition coaching in the corporate world, but to also break free and do mindset holistic coaching. So it's a very “mind body health”-way about coaching.
Greg and Colin: I have to ask you a question about that. In the investment world, we talk about things like cognitive biases or heuristics or mental shortcuts on why people make the decisions they make, because things are always so obvious after the fact. Like, “Why did I buy that GameStop stock?” – but when you're in the midst of it, these heuristics, these mental shortcuts are kind of what take over. Is it the same thing in your world? Is that what you're kind of describing?
Charlene: It is it's like our inner dialog, the things that we say to ourselves everyday take over. So if we don't control our minds, our minds will control us and the crazy statistic is like 95% of our thoughts every day are repetitive and 85% are negative. It's mind blowing! Really makes you think: “What are we saying to ourselves?” – and a lot of the times we're not in charge of it. Our inner dialog is a lot of that behind the scenes thinking, which is a part of our mind called the subconscious mind that is responsible for our identity, our beliefs, our thoughts. SI think the first step is just becoming aware of that, realizing that you have the power to change the story and your thoughts and when you do, then your behaviors and your actions will follow through.
Colin and Greg: Interesting. So tell us, what does a Mindset Coach do? How do you approach this challenge with your clients?
Charlene: I approach it very holistically. I think one of the first things is just asking my clients what their struggle is, what their roadblock is, what's not going right in their life, and what they would like to fix and overcome. Getting really, really clear about that, because a lot of people like they can focus on what they don't want, but they have a hard time actually clarifying what they do want. So I think it's changing the story and becoming more the driver and realizing that you have more of the power to change and change the story into something a little bit more empowering and focusing on what you do want to change. Then when you focus on what you want to work towards, realizing what roadblocks are in the way and those roadblocks in the world, we call them limiting beliefs. The stories that you tell yourself that isn't necessarily true and it's definitely not empowering. “I can't do this because of X, Y and Z” and we challenge that because half the reason why we go about the way we do things and it's not successful is because we're letting these self-limiting beliefs get in the way.
For more questions and answers with Charlene Valentine please refer to our Podcast.
Stay safe, stay happy, stay well!
-The CM Group