The world truly is our classroom. Life is our great teacher and without doubt, every day is a new lesson for us - an opportunity to grow, learn, develop, adapt and improve. It's fantastic. Yep, all good.

In theory.

It is all true, however (there's always going to be a however) what if, for some of us, those life lessons have been the very thing that helped us become the dysfunctional, fearful, indecisive procrastinators we are today? What if our life hasn't been a great teacher at all? What if most of the lessons we've had over the course of our lifetime have actually been our biggest handicap?

What if our life experiences have taught us we are a bunch of ugly, useless, stupid, talent-less boofheads who are more than likely destined to live lives of misery, mediocrity, obesity, frustration, loneliness, poverty, and struggle?

It sounds blunt and borderline offensive, but that's exactly what some people have learned on their journey. I know; I talk with them every day. That's what their experiences have somehow programmed into their psyche. When you get told something enough, especially something negative, it easily becomes your reality.

I talk to people every day who have been programmed for failure; people who have learned a failure mentality. I talk to too many of them. Most of them are full of talent and amazing potential; they could be anything, but they don't know it - or believe it. There's no hope in their mind. There's no self-belief because they have learned to expect the worst.

Is it possible that you — sitting right where you are, right now at this moment in time — are being cheated and robbed of your best life because of some limiting, disempowering, and completely unnecessary beliefs that you've unknowingly and unintentionally collected along the way? Of course it is. We've all done it at some stage - embraced destructive, limiting beliefs and thinking.

Including me.

Way too many of us have been programmed, trained, and prepared for mediocrity, if not failure. My biggest challenge as a coach is not working around people's lack of talent, but actually getting them to believe in themselves and their potential, to acknowledge their talent and do something with it, and to get them to stop telling me what they can't do and why. Getting them to unlearn the limiting beliefs that have controlled and shaped their life for far too long is the objective. Getting them to learn new, positive things about themselves. Getting them to consider different possibilities. Getting them to believe something different, something better.