As a business owner for 23 years, Emma could write a book of stories where she's overcome hardships and challenges

While talking to her, I noticed there was one type of roadblock that kept on coming up, that she has not been able to overcome.

And that was the day-to-day nitty gritty challenging tasks that popped up and can be really annoying.

Whenever Emma would encounter this type of challenging task, she’d either give it to one of her employees or give up and move on to something else.

On the surface, delegation doesn’t look like a bad solution, however, there were some big issues coming up.
On a practical level, sometimes none of her employees were available and a task needed to be taken care of immediately.
And mentally, it was draining her.
She didn't even realize how much emotional energy it was taking to give over every small task or drop it when things weren’t working out.

With a simple switch, Emma was able to approach challenging tasks differently.
This actually added more time to her day, helped her be more productive, and gave her the ability to show up to all her work better.

While you are doing any task, you (without even realizing it!) are using your 28 thinking skills.

When the thinking skills you need to use are strong, doing the task happens easily.
If the thinking skill you need to use is weak, doing the task will be a challenge.

The struggle that Emma had, came from a fixed mindset.

We need to start by defining what a growth mindset is as many entrepreneurs think they have a growth mindset because they’re always looking for ways to grow their businesses.

So, what is a growth mindset?

Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford university, coined this term when doing research on what makes a person successful. Was it talent? IQ? Background? What makes a person successful? The answer: Their mindset.

There are 2 mindsets:

While Emma had a growth mindset about business in general, she had a very fixed mindset about working through daily challenges that came up.

You could identify it really quickly in the way she spoke about her day or what she needed to do. “I can’t do this….” “This is too hard…” “I’m too old…”
All those sentences are fixed sentences.
They are saying she can’t do this.
The way she is the way she’ll always be.

Guess what happens?
There’s no way her brain is going to figure out what needs to happen. And it only causes her more frustration with the task and “proves” her point that she can’t do it.

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Every single time, I would hear Emma say a fixed mindset sentence, I’d stop her midway and have her repeat the same thing in a way that’s a growth mindset sentence.
This is not about lying, but rather showing your brain it’s possible.
Phrases like “I’m learning…” “I’m working on…” “This is challenging..” (instead of impossible) or my favorite, adding the word “yet” can take the same sentence and turn it into a growth mindset sentence.

As soon as you go from “I can’t to this” to “I can’t do this yet” your brain starts looking for ways that you’ll be able to do it because well… yet, you’ll be able to do it at some point.


I also had Emma teach her team the concepts of growth and fixed mindset.
This way everyone around her is working on their growth mindset and they can call look out for one another to support each other in talking with a growth mindset.


Lastly, Emma had to change the way she viewed these challenging tasks.
Sure, she can still delegate them but not from a place that “this is impossible” but rather it makes sense that a specific employee should do it.
What she found was, that delegating was actually a lot easier and it wasn’t an emotional process of “I can’t do this” but rather logical, “This is part of your project, it makes sense you should do it”

Plus, many of these challenges she figued out herself and from then on they were no longer a challenge or a task that needed to be delegated as she could it with ease.