When something bothers us, or we get anxious about something, we waste an awful amount of energy focused on this. What a waste of time-wasting energy or worrying about a mistake. The focus can be unbalanced, and generally, people are focused on the negative aspects of their life and not the positive. Negativity works 100% of the time, so why waste time on it.

I recently had a coachee who had struggled with an exam result when all of her training had gone exceptionally well. The rant for at least 20 mins was about the one error she made; there was not one mention of the endless hours of good work and preparation that had been done.  As I sat watching her, the focus and energy wasted on the mistake seemed ridiculous. I did wonder why she, along with the majority of people, could not have channelled this much energy in a much more beneficial way.

Make a mistake, but not let it take your focus, recognise the error then take the learning from it. When in this situation reflect at why the mistake happened, then think about the situation again. But this time, think about the situation and how you would deal with it differently. Always remember mistakes need to be looked at positively because this is where the learning takes place. If you don’t make mistakes, sadly this does not build the database which is our brain. So why waste endless energy on something you are not comfortable with, take the learning and stay positive.

When people face adversity, the beliefs that come and play on minds (which of course takes capacity) are dreadful, e.g. not good enough, I look an idiot, I am going to be found out. Adversity equals beliefs which equal consequences. If this cycle is negative what a waste of time and energy, the consequences will always be negative.  I would always suggest how about when you face adversity, you see the positives; then the outcomes will be positive. It is the patterns in our brain, so stay with the positive, learn from the mistakes but focus your energy down the right routes.

Energy plays such a massive part in our learning; it is how you focus this that gets results. We naturally waste energy on negativity; it is a pattern set up when we are young. The brain will only know to follow that route unless you change it and create a new pathway. So I always encourage positively using energy and again if you make mistakes see this as a positive, not a negative.

In coaching when you hear this, the coachee can be easily guided, creating a paradigm shift can be a very critical moment for a coachee. It is about raising the coachees' awareness when you feel this in a session, a huge lightbulb moment in any session.

Claire Moody is our head coach at Target Training, and you can read more about her here.  She delivers training on all coaching and numerous training the trainer courses.