Neuroscience of Coaching – Episode 9
From Avoidance to Action (Nina Cooke)
Nina Cooke: The meaning is something I’ve just made up in my head. But what if there was no meaning to this activity? What if it was just a neutral activity? Because when you make it a neutral activity, you take away all the negative emotion associated with that, and it just becomes another thing to do.
Dr. Irena O’Brien: Hi. I’m Dr. Irena O’Brien, and you’re listening to Neuroscience of Coaching. I’m a cognitive neuroscientist with almost 30 years of study and practice in psychology and neuroscience. As the founder of the Neuroscience School, I teach coaches and other wellness professionals practical, evidence-based strategies to use in their own practices. In each episode, I invite a seasoned coach to discuss a topic that clients struggle with. And together, we provide you with science-based tools to help your clients reach their goals by working with their brains to create results that last.
Today, we’re going to talk about something we all have experienced to some degree. Procrastination. You know the pattern, right? The project is due in three days, but you just can’t seem to get started. You do everything else to avoid sitting down to start writing, but what is it that you’re actually avoiding? According to Dr. Timothy Pychyl, a psychology professor at Carleton University, the main force driving procrastination is not avoiding work. It’s avoiding stress. Procrastination is a subconscious desire to feel good right now, so you can feel a little stress relief.
People don’t make a deliberate choice to procrastinate. In fact, most people who struggle with procrastination feel like they have no control over it. And they’re right because they don’t understand the real reason why they procrastinate. We procrastinate because of some negative emotion about doing the task. Often that emotion is anxiety or fear. It’s like the brain is saying, I don’t want the negative emotions I’ll experience during the task, and so you avoid the task. When we avoid the thing that feels hard, we get a sense of relief. That sense of relief is a reward. So you’ll get a dopamine spike. And the more your procrastination is rewarded, the more likely you are to repeat it.
If you procrastinate often, you might consider this fact as well. Researchers in Germany found that the brains of procrastinators have a larger amygdala, which is part of the limbic system known for fight or flight. Another factor is a weakened connection between the amygdala and a part of the brain known as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is involved in self-regulation and exerts a top-down regulation of the amygdala. When the connectivity between the amygdala and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex is weak, the top-down regulation of the amygdala is insufficient, which could lead to more fear-based decisions.
But remember, the brain is plastic and changes with experience. This means that we’re not doomed to live with our fear motivated brains. There are things you can do to overcome procrastination and retrain the brain. The first thing research tells us is that we need to forgive ourselves for procrastinating. According to Dr. Pychyl’ research, people who forgive themselves for procrastinating are less likely to procrastinate on their next task. Procrastinators are really hard on themselves to begin with. They’re often perfectionists.
The second thing that we need to do is to focus on the future you. This gives you the objectivity to push yourselves in the present moment. So, for example, when researchers showed people their own pictures digitally aged, they were more likely to save for retirement. The reason why this works is because until you focus on your future self, your brain processes your future self as if it were a stranger. And finally, as I’ve said in other episodes, break down tasks into small chunks so they’re not scary.
We really have just gotten started on this topic, so let’s dive deeper with my guest, Nina Cooke. Nina is a mindset coach who has worked with hundreds of established entrepreneurs, helping them to increase their income by up to 800%. She’s the co-author of Renegade Mindset, a financial advisor’s guide to a peak performance mindset. She’s also the host of Entrepreneurs Inner Game and Wealthy Advisor Mindset podcasts. Nina has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine and on BBC radio and top podcasts.
Thank you so much for being with us today, Nina. So before we start talking about procrastination, will you tell us a little bit about your work and how you came to be doing it?
Nina: Hi, Irena. It’s great to be here. I started working in corporate world. I worked for Time-Life Books for many years. When I had my first child, I left work after a few years. I started my own first online company, which was a personal shopping company. It became successful quite quickly, but I had something, I had a behavior that really held me back. And that behavior was I hated putting myself out there. I hated being visible marketing because I was really scared of being seen.
Going back to my childhood, it came from having an older sister who was a narcissist. And whenever she noticed me, she would say something negative and so associated being seen with getting into trouble with people. I decided as a child that my strategy for staying safe was to stay hidden, stay under the radar, and not bring any attention to myself. Well, when you have an online business, you have to market. Luckily for me, I found an anonymous way of marketing to get clients. I used Google AdWords. This was back in 2005, where Google Ads were much cheaper than they are today. There was less competition for them. I was able to use them successfully.
One day I got a really great corporate booking. I still can’t believe that I had the confidence to get that booking. So I went along with my team. We had a corporate evening where we were pampering the senior female staff in this big accountancy company and all their senior female guests. It was a really fantastic opportunity for me and my team. We had around 20 team members there. We had lots and lots of people who were very excited to have their pampering session.
After everything was set up, I thought, this is a great opportunity for me to go and meet with some of the senior execs and see if I can book another pampering evening or another opportunity to work with them. And as I started approaching them, I suddenly thought, don’t go and talk to them because they’ll realize that you’re a fraud. They’ll realize you’re not very good at what you do, and they’ll wonder why they ever booked you. They’re going to be very disappointed in you if they talk to you.
And so I did a quick left turn. I found a half dark office, empty office, and I hid away in that office for the rest of the evening. On the way home, on the train, I realized that I could not continue like this. I was so frustrated with myself. I said to myself, you’ve just screwed up again. You’ve lost another great opportunity. You keep doing this. You can’t grab these great opportunities when they come in front of you. And you know when you have that moment, you think, okay, something has to change. I cannot continue like this. I’ve got to figure out a way of fixing myself.
And therefore, Irena, I started on a long journey of trying to find a way of permanently changing myself. I didn’t want anything that was going to be temporary or was just going to scratch the surface. I wanted something that was going to really change the way I thought about myself and how I saw the world because I’d always thought growing up that there was something I was missing. I was missing something that everyone else had. And that something stopped me from liking myself. It stopped me from feeling confident and really relating properly to other people without fearing what they were thinking of me.
I always wanted to please people and I wanted them to like me. It was really important to me. And so I felt there was a little bit that had to flick that switch and then everything would be absolutely fine for me in my life. So I’ve been searching for this switch that I could flick on. Suffice to say, these switches don’t exist in life. It takes work. It takes time to try and figure out what’s going on. What are the core beliefs that need to be dissolved and what I can do in order to start creating the life that I want?
And it’s all about identity, isn’t it? They start thinking, you know, who do I want to be? How will that person behave? How does that person think? What sort of behaviors, what sort of habits does that person have that I want to be? And after a long, long search, I finally found a way to permanently shift my mindset by identifying and dissolving the key limiting beliefs that were holding me back and then installing new productive beliefs, which allowed me to become much more comfortable putting myself out there, marketing in a bigger way. That inevitably helped me to grow my business substantially because I was able to start working with much bigger companies, wealthier clients.
I started working with companies like Sky and Goldman Sachs. After a while, I got bored with that business because I was really interested in helping entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. I’d done it for myself. I could see the link between business growth and mindset, and that in order to grow your business, you have to have the right mindset. Otherwise it makes everything much harder and slower.
Dr. Irena: Your story, Nina, we can be sisters because I’ve suffered from the same thing, thinking that the way to move forward in the world was really to hide, which is not the way to move forward. And I was excited when you said that you looked for the switch. I thought, you mean she’s got a switch. I need that switch. And then you burst my bubble. There is no switch. Right? It’s one step at a time. One foot in front of the other.
Nina: It’s one foot in front of the other. For me, it was getting to that level from where I wasn’t happy with myself and my life. And then slowly, as you said, one step at a time, changing my perception of myself and other people in the world. But it’s always a journey. You never get to the end of it, which is why I find mindset work. So exciting. And sometimes I feel I’m making good progress and then I feel I slip back. I don’t slip back to where I was, but I feel that I’m not maintaining it. And the times I’m not maintaining it is when I’m not doing the daily mindset work.
And this is something I learned over the years. It’s not enough to think, well, I’ll do it maybe once a week. I’ll sit down and I’ll really work on my mindset once a week. It has to be every day, because for me, if it’s not every day, then not only do I not feel as good as I can feel, but also my business results tend to suffer as well.
Dr. Irena: So what kind of mindset work are we talking about?
Nina: I like to do a variety of things. I like to work on limiting beliefs. At the moment, my routine is I have a vision board because I feel if I’m not clear on my goals, then I don’t know what I want to achieve in my life. I want to look at my whole life, not just business, but also health, well-being, my mindset, practice, exercise, relationships, my daily habits. I wanted to look at everything. So I put together a vision board. I really felt a strong compulsion to create it, which to me is a really good sign.
And once I created that, then I have a little system that I use in order to look at the images and feel that I already have them, rather than out there in the future that I get that feeling, I already have this. I don’t need this. I don’t want this. I already have it. Really stepping inside those images. Then I script out my goals. So I’ll write at the top, thank you for having this, as if I already have it. So I stick very closely to the goals on my vision board, which I script out.
Then I turn that eight four piece of paper over and I think, okay, what doubts do I have about achieved any of these goals? And I’ll write down all my doubts about that particular goal. And then I’ll pick one of those limiting beliefs and I’ll do my unstoppable success process to dissolve that limiting belief and plant a new, powerful belief in its place. So that keeps me very, very focused on what I desire to have in my life.
Dr. Irena: People who have these mindset problems procrastinate. It’s not that they’re lazy. It’s never a time management issue. It’s always about avoiding some emotion that they don’t want.
Nina: It’s interesting, when I look at procrastination in my life, there are some areas where I regularly do things even though I don’t particularly want to. So, for example, I regularly exercise. I can’t say that I look forward to exercising. This could be taking my dog out for a walk or doing something at home, doing some parties, routine or whatever at home. It’s not that I want to, but the consequences of not exercising are too great for me. So often we look at the benefits of doing something. So I could say, well, the benefits of exercising is I’ll feel better, I’ll feel fitter, it’s good for my health, etcetera.
But we often don’t look at the consequences of not doing something. So for anyone who’s listening, if they find that the benefits aren’t really motivating them, then they may want to look at the consequences of not taking that action. That might be a stronger motivation for them. So, for example, when it comes to exercising, the consequence of not exercising are that I won’t fit into my clothes, that I won’t feel as energetic, which is going to have an impact in every minute of my waking day. I don’t want to feel tired. Also, as I get older, it’s going to be hard for me to keep flexible and fit, etcetera.
So because I’ve got my exercising to a level which is okay, what I want to do is to maintain that. And the consequence of not exercising means that I would have to recreate that level again from the beginning. That is too difficult for me to think about doing. It’s got to the stage where it’s easier for me to maintain my habit than to lose it. It’s more painful for me to lose it than to maintain it.
Dr. Irena: So what you’re doing, Nina then, is really looking at your future self, right? You’re looking at your future self if you exercise, and you’re looking at your future self if you don’t. And you prefer the future self where you exercise.
Nina: Exactly. I think my fear of not exercising and having to start from scratch to build up to this level, that pain is greater than the pleasure I get from exercising.
Dr. Irena: I identify with that, too, because really exercising, it’s not a whole lot of fun for a lot of people. And I want to avoid being like my dad. You know how old people sometimes shuffle along? My dad was a shuffler, but he lived in the country. And then when he moved to the city and he had to walk more and further distances, he stopped shuffling. In his eighties, he stopped shuffling. And I think I don’t want to be the shuffler. So I exercise.
And one thing that works for me is I take classes and I have them in my schedule. And what’s in my schedule? These questions of do I feel like it or don’t I feel like it? Don’t even come up, they’re in my schedule and I go and do it. So that’s the way that I manage the exercise and don’t procrastinate on it. So you work with established entrepreneurs on mindset. So how does procrastination impact your clients?
Nina: Hugely, it’s such a big subject. Procrastination for clients means that they don’t do marketing activities, they don’t reach out to clients, they’re not putting out social media posts, and if you’re not marketing, you’re not going to be getting clients. So there’s a lot of avoidance and resistance of doing certain activities, which logically they know that if they were to do these activities regularly, then they would be setting up conversations in their calendar, etcetera, and then speaking to prospects turn them into clients.
It’s really interesting because we often make decisions that work against our own good. It’s classic sabotaging behavior. The intention is there the beginning of the day, you know, they’ll have the intention to do this, but then they just won’t get around to doing it. They’ll find lots of excuses and I’ll do it tomorrow. And because most of them are solopreneurs, we’re all accountable to ourselves. If we’re in a corporate job and our boss said, have this report on my desk by the end of the week, we’re going to do that. When we’re accountable to other people, we don’t want to be seen to be a failure or letting people down. So we tend to perform it even if it means doing it at the last minute.
But being a solopreneur, they’re just accountable to themselves. If they don’t reach out to certain number of prospects that week, then they could just push into the following week and the following week. So it’s a huge problem because it has a big impact on their leads, sales and on their profits and the impact they can make. I had one client in Australia, she was a business coach, who had this conversation about why she wasn’t going through her to do list. And I said to her, what meanings are you making up about the actions that you’re not taking or the marketing actions? Because the action is just a neutral thing.
Maybe she was doing a LinkedIn strategy, making five connections a day, that’s a very neutral activity. It doesn’t come with an inlaid negative meaning. So she said, well, the meaning that I’m making up is it’s not going to work. I’ll be spending my time doing this connection request. No one’s interested in hearing from me. I hate getting silence from people. So she wants to avoid the pain of being rejected or not being noticed by other people.
So what we talked about was that if she were to look at that activity of doing LinkedIn connections and she were to say, okay, this is the meaning I’m giving this activity. The meaning is something I’ve just made up in my head. But what if there was no meaning to this activity? What if it was just a neutral activity? Because when you make it to neutral activity, you take away all the negative emotion associated with that and it just becomes another thing to do. So I showed her a way of neutralizing her meaning around that activity.
And after she applied this, on the next call, she said that she was getting through her list of things to do much more easily because she was deliberately and intentionally stripping away any negative meanings from the activity. So if you think about it, brushing your teeth, we’re not going to sit there thinking, I really don’t want to brush my teeth, it’s really boring. I’d much rather be doing something else. It’s just like we just get on with it without thinking about it. It’s just something that we automatically do.
Now, there’s probably a subconscious thinking that I have clean teeth before I go to bed, which is healthy. I don’t get gum disease and all the rest of it. But I don’t know about you, but I don’t think all those thoughts logically. If I’m brushing my teeth, I just do it without thinking about it. So that’s how I wanted her to think about her daily LinkedIn strategy, just to say, it’s just something I’m going to do. There’s no negative connotations around it. There’s nothing about rejection, there’s nothing about this being a waste of time, or it’s not going to work and all the rest of it, because that’s the stuff that causes the resistance, all that emotional baggage that we bring to an activity.
I’ve talked to people who seem very productive, and when you delve deeper, there is an area in their life they procrastinate around. It may not be their business, but it could be around health, it could be around relationships, friendships, etcetera. So if there is an area that you’re not doing, it’s because you have some emotional resistance to doing that activity. So, as you said, you said it brilliantly. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t be hard on yourself. Be really kind and gentle to yourself. You’re not ill disciplined, you’re not lazy. That’s not your identity.
It’s just that you have some stuff that you’ve associated with that activity, which is normal, it’s natural. We all do it. And I think sometimes when we really give ourselves a hard time and then we think, oh, I’m bad for not doing this, I should be doing this. Other people do it. What’s wrong with me? Then we focus on the resistance part, and as we know, what you focus on really persists and grows.
So sometimes I think, I suggest to say, okay, I’ve got resistance to doing this activity. That’s okay, I’m going to be kind to myself about it. And what can I do now to remove this resistance and so I can get on with growing my business? It’s all allowing and owning the resistance and saying, I’ve got it here, I’m not going to fight it, but what can I do about it now?
Dr. Irena: Well, Nina, I think you’ve said everything. That was really good. What fools people a lot is when they decide, okay, I’m not going to do it today, but I’ll do it tomorrow. And they think they’re going to do it tomorrow, but they don’t do it tomorrow because tomorrow they’re not going to feel any better about it than they felt today. And so it’s a way to fool yourself, because as soon as you say, oh, I’ll do it tomorrow, you have that sense of relief, and you really feel like you’re going to do it tomorrow. Yeah, I felt that a lot.
Nina: You’re absolutely right, because those feelings that you feel today, they’re not going to magically disappear by tomorrow until you do something to start removing them and changing things up.
Dr. Irena: Well, there’s always a reason, right? Oh, it’s late in the day, I’m better in the morning, so I’ll do it tomorrow morning instead of now. And then invariably, if it’s one of these things that you’re avoiding because of some emotion, it’s not going to be better no matter what time of day it is.
Nina: We’re very good at making excuses.
Dr. Irena: Oh, I know, I know. All right, so my producer was telling me that nine out of ten times that she procrastinates there ends up being a good reason, and she interprets that as her intuition telling her to wait, but that she was judging it as procrastination. So do you have any thoughts about that?
Nina: That’s really interesting. I’ve never heard that before. So she’s obviously very tuned in to her intuition, which is fantastic. So that’s not procrastinating so much as waiting and maybe deciding, is this the right thing for me to do? And giving it the time, the space.
Dr. Irena: Exactly. People call it procrastination, but it’s not procrastination. It’s a deliberate task delay.
Nina: Yes. I would say procrastination is something that’s different, where your intuition isn’t saying you should sit on it. It’s just you don’t want to do it, even though you know it’s the right thing to do or it’s going to help you to do it. For example, marketing for your business, the fears around doing it can be so great that they win each time until you do something about those fears.
Dr. Irena: Yeah, exactly. And that’s what differentiates task delay from a true procrastination. So can you share a client success story that illustrates someone who you did help get unstuck?
Nina: Yes. So going back to the Australian client, she started reaching out. She hired a VA to help her with a LinkedIn activity. So she took it a step further, and she grew her business by 25%.
Dr. Irena: Well, hiring a VA to do that, I mean, that really takes the meaning out of it, doesn’t it?
Nina: It takes the meaning out of it. But she had to get to that level where she’d mastered the strategy herself, so she could then teach it to her VA. And then she was able to let the VA do all the connection requests, and she would step in when it came to the more personal conversations. And then they had obviously went on to Zoom and had sales conversations. So she grew her business because she was able to do that critical marketing activity, which led to conversations, which led to sales.
It’s actually very logical. If every single person who’s listening to this consistently marketed, every day, Monday to Friday, they would logically have more sales conversations, which would logically lead to more clients. So actually, it’s not rocket science. And if we all did what we really needed to do to grow our business, there would be many more thriving entrepreneurs than there are, because we’re all very good at what we do. We’re talented, we’re great at delivering for our clients, etcetera. And I think that one of the biggest reasons why some entrepreneurs thrive more than others, because the ones who thrive, have the mindset that allows them to market consistently and to close more sales.
Dr. Irena: I think that business is a fantastic growth opportunity because to grow a business, you constantly have to be putting yourself out there in different ways, even though it’s really uncomfortable, whereas in many other areas of people’s lives, they don’t have to do that all the time. So it’s daily training to put yourself out there.
Nina: It really is, yeah. And it can be enjoyable. It can be fun. It’s just what you believe it is. If you believe it’s scary and difficult, then obviously that’s what you’re going to believe is true and you’re not going to do it. But if you believe that it can be fun, enjoyable, impactful for other people, then you’re going to enjoy doing it. This is exactly my story.
For me, to do a podcast interview before I did the mindset work would have been impossible because I thought, no one wants to hear from me. I’ve got nothing useful to say. I feel like a fraud. I’m not good enough to do this, et cetera. I would have given myself a million excuses why I could not do it. Whereas now I see it as an opportunity. I look forward to it. But it’s the same thing. It’s a podcast interview. It’s a neutral event. Because it’s a neutral event, we could put any meaning on it.
Dr. Irena: Exactly. And I identify with that, too, with what you just said. I mean, when I had to defend my dissertation, it was one of the worst experiences of my life. And now I’m doing podcasts, and it was just little steps, one step at a time. And you just keep putting yourself out there a bit more, a bit more and a bit more until you can do a podcast. So in addition to your coaching work with clients, you also have books and courses. So why don’t you tell me a little bit about them?
Nina: Well, I have a book which I wrote with a financial advisor. It’s called Renegade Mindset, and it’s the financial advisors guide to peak performance mindset. When I started working with financial advisors, I’ve worked with coaches, consultants, entrepreneurs for many years. I thought, oh, they can have different challenges, different goals, but they don’t because we’re all humans. We all have exactly the same challenges. So the book Renegade Mindset, which is written for financial advisors, actually is good for every entrepreneur because we’re dealing with all the same mind blocks that stop us and sabotage our success.
And the main challenges that entrepreneurs have is they procrastinate; they have a fear of putting themselves out there. They have money blocks; they have blocks around selling. They have overwhelm, lack of focus. They’re all exactly the same challenges. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re working in. So this book has been, it’s had really nice feedback, which is really great. So that’s the book. If you want to just start delving into your own mindset, there’s lots of different exercises, etcetera, that you can do to start creating the mindset that you want.
Dr. Irena: Okay, thank you for that. So, finally, is there anything else you’d like to say to our listeners?
Nina: I would say that you don’t need to fix yourself. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re absolutely amazing and you’ve got everything you need. It’s just accessing that. It’s blowing away all those cobwebs, all those limiting beliefs so you could really start standing in who you are and appreciating who you are and getting out there and doing some great work.
Dr. Irena: And having some self-compassion and forgiveness like we spoke a bit before.
Nina: Absolutely. It’s so important.
Dr. Irena: Do you find that without that, it’s not possible to move forward?
Nina: I think this is such an important piece, which we don’t talk enough about. The way that we talk to ourselves is gruesome. The way we put ourselves down, terrible. So I would encourage anyone to who’s listening to just listen to what you say to yourself, the terrible things you say to yourself, how you put yourself down. You would never talk like that to anyone else. You would give someone else who was feeling like that. You give them lots of encouragement, really build them up. So do the same thing to yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.
What is your mental diet like? Is it full of trash? If it is, start paying attention to it. Become really aware of how you’re speaking to yourself and start putting some positive thoughts in there. Just if it’s one positive thought that you can just remember to say to yourself every now and then, just try doing that, but slow down that negativity.
Dr. Irena: I completely agree, Nina. So what’s the best way for listeners to find out more about you and your work?
Nina: They can come to my website, NinaCooke.co.uk. I’ll spell that for you. N-I-N-A-C-O-O-K-E dot co dot UK. And I also have a scorecard. It’s called the Millionaire Mindset Scorecard. And that is a way of identifying which success beliefs and which money beliefs are sabotaging your success. So you can give yourself scores for all the beliefs. You’ll see where you’re doing well, but also what’s stopping you from having more profit, more impact. And it’s a fun scorecard to take, so I can give you the link for that.
Dr. Irena: Okay, thank you. And it will be in the show notes. So thank you so much, Nina. This has been a really great conversation.
Nina: Thank you. It’s such a pleasure.
Dr. Irena: Thank you all for listening. And remember that when we procrastinate, it’s about short-term mood repair. You’re not avoiding work, you’re avoiding stress. So the first thing to do is to forgive yourself. It’s very human to avoid stress. In fact, avoiding pain is part of the brain’s purpose of keeping you safe. And if you can refrain from beating yourself up, you’re less likely to procrastinate the next time.
I’m Dr. Irena O’Brien and you’ve been listening to Neuroscience of Coaching. You can find out more about me at NeuroscienceSchool.com. The Neuroscience of Coaching is a part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Just Between Coaches and Once Upon a Business. This episode was produced by Cynthia Lamb, Danny Iny is our executive producer and post production was by Marvin del Rosario. To make sure you don’t miss great episodes coming up on Neuroscience of Coaching, please follow us on Mirasee FM’s YouTube channel or your favorite podcast player.
If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a comment or a starred review. It’s the best way to help us get these ideas out there to more people. Thanks, and we’ll see you next time.