a winning mindset for personal trainers

One of the biggest challenges confronting Personal Trainers is self-belief. There is a saying that best sums up self belief "whether you think you can or you think you can't you are probably right". I know many trainers who would either like to start up a business or take their current business to the next level but there always seems to be something stopping them. More often than not that 'something' is a limiting self-belief. Thinking you might not achieve your goals or that you are not worthy of success will ultimately lead to failure unless you can turn those thoughts around.

My background in sport and fitness instructing has taught me that one of the easiest things in life is to spot a fault. However it is a far harder thing to correct. This same philosophy translates into business and in understanding that limited thinking is probably the cause of why many are not achieving as much from life as they would like, the question becomes - what can you do when suffering from low self-belief?

The first step is to define what success is for you? For me in a business sense it is about achieving a level of financial independence where I can do what I want, with who I want, whenever I want. Coupled with this are goals around maintaining an optimal level of health and fitness, being the best husband and father I can be, as well as a commitment to lifelong learning, and then passing my experience to others through teaching, coaching and mentoring.

Once you have an understanding of what your goals really are it is like having a fog lifted from your life and you are able to see clearly and take positive steps in the direction you want your life to move in on a daily basis. The great business coach Zig Ziglar is famous for saying "the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is that a millionaire reads his/her goals once a day while a billionaire reads his/her goals twice a day". The key learning point from this quote is about having clarity in what you want to achieve.

Another great tactic for developing a greater self-belief is to ask yourself better questions, i.e when you see someone doing something that you would like to do or achieving a result that you would like to achieve, ask yourself 'what would I have to do or change to make that happen for me?'. When you ask yourself better questions a magic thing happens - you get better answers and uncertainty about whether or not you will achieve your stated goals will often start to disappear.

Your beliefs can create your reality, so forming positive beliefs is the first step to achieving positive outcomes. An example of this philosophy in practice would be to look at a statistic that says 90% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years. Someone with a positive belief system would focus on the 10% of businesses that do succeed and would ask themselves good quality questions about what those 10% of businesses are doing and then modelling a number of their business practices.

One of the ways I have changed my beliefs is to constantly look at people who are doing things better than me and to learn from them. There is real power in associating with people who have achieved what you would like to achieve.

If you have a desire to start your own Personal Training Business and need an injection of self-belief then why not hang around other successful personal trainers in our Business Starter Pack (BSP) Program. The next course starts on Friday November 6 in Melbourne - click here for more details.

Aaron Whear