Josephine Hughes (She/Her)

See whatever you’re doing as a challenge, see it as something that’s an opportunity to learn. It’s not saying anything about you as a person.

I think the lovely thing almost about the growth mindset is you can almost embrace the times that they don’t work because it shows that you’re trying. And if anybody criticizes you, well, actually, you know, I’m in a position here where I’m out there and I’m trying to do something new. Are you?

Welcome to the Good Enough Counsellors podcast. I’m Josephine Hughes, and today I’m doing something a little different. But first, let me ask you a little question – have you ever made a big, brave decision?

It’s going to push you out of your comfort zone, but you think, yeah, I know this is the right thing for me. But then the doubts begin to creep in and you start second guessing yourself.

And you might even find yourself discussing it with friends, and then they might ask you some questions that make you doubt yourself even more. That’s what happened to me recently, and I’m going to tell you a little bit more about it.

During the course of this podcast, I’ve just taken on a new business coach.

At first I was really excited, but then I had a conversation with a good friend, and when I told her how much it was going to cost me, her eyes did get a bit wide and she said, are you sure? And she started questioning me about it. And it did then send me onto this spiral of overthinking and second guessing myself.

So I’m going to explain a little bit more about that as we go through. But I have actually started the coaching now, and the wisdom of the original decision is actually proving itself.

So what I’m doing today is I’m recording this podcast without having written it first. What I’ve been doing recently is spending quite a bit of time scripting my podcasts out, and I am a very, very slow writer.

It takes me about an hour to write 500 words I’ve discovered. So to write a 15 minutes podcast takes me four or 5 hours, and then I have to record it and edit it. So, you know, it’s become a really long process.

So the first meeting that I actually had with my business coach, that was the first thing that we looked at was how could I do it differently? And this is what I’m trying out today. It is quite difficult, actually, but what I’m doing at the moment is I’m speaking into the mic.

I’ve got a few notes, but I haven’t got a script. So I am flying scriptless, if that’s a word.

And what I’m doing at the moment is I’m actually staring at some black corrugated sponge because in order to get quite good sound with my mic, I put it into a sound box, which is corrugated sponge. So that’s what I’m looking at at the moment, a black wall of corrugated sponge. Anyway, let’s carry on.

Something that happened at the beginning of the week is every Monday morning I have an accountability session with a group of people, and the person who leads it pulls us a card to guide us during the week. And the card that she pulled for me, it’s a one word card, and on it it said play.

And we always have a little think and see how that applies to our week.

And I immediately knew what it applied to, and actually it applied to what I’m doing now, which is recording the podcast, because I decided that I would approach this exercise as something that I was just going to play with, that I’m trying something new out and I’m going to treat it as play. I’m not going to take it terribly seriously. I’m just going to try it out and see what happens, and I’m going to explain why.

Play is actually quite an important and helpful way to approach things if we’re trying something new. I’ve got a lovely quote here that you probably are quite familiar with, and it says, growth and comfort do not coexist.

And I think when we’re trying something new, when we’re moving into a growthful stage, whether it be our training, our marketing, or moving into a new area of work, we often feel quite uncomfortable because we’re pushing ourselves out of the familiar, we’re moving out of our comfort zone. And this is what I’m doing today with my podcast. So it seems really appropriate for that card to be pulled for me. But play can be really helpful.

And I’m going to tell you a little story that illustrates this. So a couple of years ago, I met up with my group of girlfriends.

We all had our babies together, so we’ve been friends now for over 30 years, which is incredible. The person who’s organizing it actually organized us to go to a mosaics workshop. So I think there was seven or eight of us all together.

So we all trooped down, went on this mosaics workshop together, and none of us had done mosaics before. And actually, it was really quite difficult because we weren’t using the normal mosaic tiles.

We were actually cutting up bits of old mug and old plates and using old things that were broken and making them into a mosaic pattern. It was really difficult. It was really difficult to do the cutting because that sort of took quite a skill.

And because some of the pottery was quite thick, it made it even more difficult. And you have a picture in your head of what you want your mosaic to look like, and, of course, you haven’t really got the skill.

So, in actual fact, it was really quite a stressful experience and we were all sort of a bit worried about it and we were all sort of apologizing and sort of, in a way, saying to each other in advance, well, I don’t think mine’s going to be very good or this is really working, because I think, really, and truthfully, we were a bit frightened about whether or not we were going to be judged by each other by the time we got to the end of the mosaics workshop. And, in fact, I brought mine home and we filled it in and it lasted about six months before I put it in the bin.

I’m telling you that story because what I’d like to offer is a contrast. So recently I’ve been helping out in my church with the young children coming into Sunday school. And over the summer, we did some summer activities.

And I methadore this lovely little boy, and he absolutely adores craft activities.

And on a Sunday morning, he will literally run into Sunday school because he knows he’s going to have fun, he’s going to be doing his craft activities. I think he’s such a sweet little boy and I love being around him and helping him.

Anyway, we were together a few weeks ago and he said, oh, I’m going to make a rabbit. And he started cutting things out with great gusto. And I think we were doing something with the rabbit’s nose.

And I sort of said, oh, well, shall we get some glue and glue the rabbit’s nose on? No, I’m going to use cellotape. He said, you know, and he gets out this cellotape and he’s putting loads of sellotape all over this.

And I’m looking at it with my adult eyes, thinking it would be much better if we glued it, it would look better. But he’s not bothered about what it’s going to look like. He was just completely in the moment of really enjoying making it.

And he was convinced that Sellotape was the best option, so it didn’t really matter what it looked like.

And when I contrast what we were like in our mosaics workshop compared to what that little boy was like with his rabbit, you know, who do you think had the most fun? And I think it was definitely the little boy. And I think children can teach us something about play.

We forget, actually, that play’s about really enjoying ourselves and having fun. So how does this apply to what I’m talking about at the moment?

Well, I wonder if you can think about play and how you feel if you can approach things in a playful way. And there was a study that was done back in 2013. They looked at university students, and the university students were rated on their playfulness.

So what they found was that the students who were more playful actually had lower stress levels and they were able to use their coping skills more than the people who were less playful. So being a playful person actually does help our mental health and helps us cope with challenging situations.

And so this is part of the reason why I’ve approached this podcast with the mindset that I’m just going to play. It doesn’t matter if it goes wrong. Well, to set extent, I am a bit protected from that because I can start the recording again if I need.

But being playful does actually help us to cope. It helps us to be more willing to approach change and helps us to cope during that change.

So I’m going to just move on now and think, well, what are the implications for that when we’re actually facing change? And this podcast, it’s called good enough counsellors, I tend to focus on the marketing side because that’s how I help people.

This may help you actually in your sessions as well. I hope so.

But really sort of, I’m thinking about it from a marketing perspective, from the point of view that I know many of you who listen in are quite nervous about marketing, a because you’re not really sure how to do it, but b because you wonder if you’re going to make a mistake and what might happen if you can’t do it properly. So really what I want to talk about, this little section is about approaching things with a growth mindset.

So the growth mindset was originally suggested by somebody who was researching children and education and looking at children’s levels of ability and what helped them to perform. Well, it’s absolutely fascinating, this research, when you learn about it.

And what Carol Dweck, the researcher, said is she divided the children into people who had a fixed mindset and pupils who had a growth mindset.

Now, the ones with the fixed mindset tended to believe that you were either intelligent or you weren’t, whereas the ones with the growth mindset believed that intelligence is something that could be developed and those different mindsets actually led to different behavior.

If you think that intelligence is something that can be developed, you’re much more likely to be prepared to take risks and to be prepared to fail because what you think is, well, actually, I’m just going to try this and see what happens, and then I can learn from it and I can improve, and that will help me reach where I’m trying to get to.

Whereas if you believe that intelligence is static, that it’s something that you’re maybe born with and can’t be changed, what you actually want to do is, in a sense, show that you are okay and that you are intelligent, and that means that you might not take risks because you’re not entirely convinced that you’ll be able to meet the challenge.

And really importantly, what it tends to do is it makes you give up more easily, because if you can’t do something, you think to yourself, well, obviously, I’m just not very good at that, so I won’t do it. I’ll give up, you know, I’ll have to do something I am good at.

And also, you can be quite defensive and protective of yourself because you don’t want people to see that perhaps you aren’t as clever as you should be. Notice the should I?

Whereas I think with the children who had the growth mindset, they took criticism on board because they were able to listen to it and to not see it as something that was about them, about their personality. They just saw it as a useful way to learn how to do something new.

And I think this has something to really, really teach us in the way that we approach our tasks, whether we’re in therapy, working with our clients, or whether it’s, we’re doing our marketing. And that’s to approach the tasks with a growth mindset. Because we’re human, we’re not going to get it right, are we?

So it’s really, really helpful to think to yourself is, you know, when you make a mistake, this isn’t actually about who you are. It’s just about the fact that you still haven’t learned how to do this yet. And it’s really, really helpful to remember that.

Really helpful to remember that word yet. I can’t do it yet, but with practice, I may well be able to do it. So that’s the second thing I really wanted to talk about.

I mentioned that I’m recording on this podcast live, and what happened is I did actually have another go, so I’m recording this on a Thursday, and when I first tried, I did it this Tuesday, and what I realized when I listened back to it was I hadn’t done enough planning in advance. So yeah, I’m going to scrap that and I’m going to come back.

I’m going to do spend more time planning it because then that gives me a sense of direction and it doesn’t sound as muddled for you. So hopefully it’s not sounding muddled and I will bring it all together at the end. Carry on listening.

You can mark me out of ten for how good a job I’ve done. But yeah, see, whatever you’re doing as a challenge, see it as something that’s an opportunity to learn.

It’s not saying anything about you as a person.

I think the lovely thing almost about the growth mindset is you can almost embrace the times that they don’t work because it shows that you’re trying. And if anybody criticises you, well actually, you know, I’m in a position here where I’m out there and I’m trying to do something new. Are you?

So let’s move on. I think the other thing that is really helpful is to think about our north star.

We need to connect with what is important to us and what our values are. And I think, you know, the title of this whole podcast is good enough, counsellors.

And I think problem that many of us face if we’re feeling not good enough is because we’re somehow measuring ourselves against that external locus of evaluation, so against what we think we should be or against what we think others think we should be. You know, we’re always measuring ourselves against some sort of external value. And I think it’s really important to come back to our own North Star.

If you think about the North Star, the North Star, Polaris, that’s been the guiding light for navigators. So it’s what sailors would look to in the sky when they were trying to steer a ship.

So the North Star, the idea of the North Star is this is what guides you through life, and it really sort of represents in this context what’s important to you. And this is often why when I’m talking about, you know, your fear of being judged is to come back to your why.

And it’s the reason that I’m doing this, it’s the reason why I’m working with a business coach. It’s because I have a why that’s really important to me and that helps to guide me.

So if you do face a situation where you’re being criticized or judged, you can actually come back to your why to your north star. And this is what happened to me.

When my friend questioned me about the cost of the business coaching, it really did rock me because it made me think, is it worth it? And when I thought about it, I remembered the times where I have been helped by a business coach.

The first business coach I took on, it seemed like such an enormous amount of money that I had to spend on her. And yet now it’s a been a few years now, but now what I spent on her, I earned double that in a month.

And equally, when I worked with one of my business coaches, we thought of the idea of the gloriously unready podcast.

And this episode here probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t have gone through creating gloriously unready because it just made it so much easier to then launch my business podcast. Good enough, counsellors. So working with a business coach can really make a difference to you.

I’ve got another lovely quote here from Maslow and he says, in any given moment, we have two options to step forward into growth or step back into safety. Now I knew that I was ready for the next step. I haven’t had a coach for a little while and I was feeling the need. I wanted someone to help me.

Because when you’re working with a business coach, they basically show you what you don’t know. Like creating the gloriously unready podcast, for example. And I don’t know what I don’t know.

But my new business coach, I’m pretty sure he knows an awful lot of what I don’t know. And that’s why I want to work with him and that’s why I’m prepared to spend the amount of money that I’m prepared to spend.

And actually, while I’m grateful to my friend for just saying, are you sure? Because that’s where she was coming from, a place so of wanting me to double check.

I also talked with some other friends who really know what I want and they reminded me and encouraged me about who I am and what my own north Star is. And that really supported me in coming back to myself and thinking, yes, I do actually know what I want.

I think that’s the thing about coaching is it does help you to think outside the box, and that’s a bit of what you do when you’re helping your clients. So your clients will come to you and they’ll be really stuck. They don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know how to get outside of that box.

And as a therapist, you actually help them to see the bigger picture. You help them to work their way out of that box that they’re stuck in.

So what I’d really like you to remember as a therapist, that because you help your clients, you are most definitely worth the money that you’re charging.

And I know many of you worry about the price of what you’re doing, but the difference that you make to clients and the experience that you bring to the counselling room is what makes you worth them paying for you. I think with all of us, it’s really important to remember that you’re actually not paying for the hour, you’re paying for the years.

And again, this is what I came back to when I was thinking about paying for my business coach, because he’s been in business for over 20 years and he’s got a very successful business and so I want to know how he’s done it. And the tips and tricks that he can give me are going to help me grow as well. And he is worth, I’m not paying him for that hour.

I’m paying him for the 20 years of experience that he brings to the table. And that’s a bit like when you work with me too.

You know, I’ve got ten years of working in private practice and all that that entails, but also all the years that I’ve been working with loads and loads of therapists and helping them with their marketing and learning from what’s worked for them and what hasn’t worked for them. And it’s that sort of experience that I’m bringing to the table.

So when you’re paying me, you’re not paying me for the hour, you’re paying me for those years in private practice, the years I was in business before that, and the years that I’ve been in business coaching therapists, that’s what I’d like you to think about when you’re thinking about your fees is that, you know, when clients come to you, they are not just paying you for that hour of counselling, they’re paying you for a lifetime of experience, especially the lives that so many of us have experienced, the bereavements, the trauma, the overcoming difficulties that going through therapy ourselves, that is invaluable. And that means that we can have a huge amount of empathy for our clients.

If nothing else, it gives us empathy, but I think quite often it gives us a lot more than that.

And then, you know, you’ve got your training, you’ve got the hours that you’ve spent on placement and the hours that you’ve spent listening to people after you’ve qualified. You bring so much to the table, and that’s why you’re worth so much more.

And when clients pay you, they’re not just paying you for the hour, they’re paying you for all those years. So I’d really like to encourage you.

If you’re someone who does worry about your fees, remember, they’re not paying you for the hour, they’re paying you for the years. But I’d also like to challenge you as well and ask you, are you prepared to invest in yourself?

So it may be that you’ve got clients who are investing in themselves. They’re coming to you and paying you because they want to grow. Are you doing that for you?

And again, that’s part of the reason why I’m working with a business coach, because I believe in coaching. You know, why am I expecting people to come to me and invest in me if I’m not prepared to do the same?

It’s almost, you know, putting my money where my mouth is. So are you investing in you?

And if you’ve ever thought about working with me, the way I’d like you to see it is it’s a bit like therapy for your business. I’m not, you know, a psychological therapist anymore, but I do help people with their businesses. Are you prepared, you’re listening to this podcast.

Are you prepared to invest in you? Because I think the thing is, is that with business coaching, you can actually see the results of the money that you’re putting in.

So, for example, when I work with people on the make your profile work training that I do, you know, we see results. We see people investing the money in working with me, and the results are that they get more paying clients.

And the return on investment, if you work with me, is just incredible. You know, I’ve got somebody who’s doubled the number of clients that she’s working with. And you think you might pay to join therapy growth group?

Yes, it’s 50 pounds per month, but she’s, she’s making that oh so, so many times over, just in a week. So as we draw to the end of the episode, I just want to draw all the threads together. I did tell you I had a plan, didn’t I?

When we’re growing, it feels really risky. It doesn’t feel very safe, does it? We’re out of our comfort zones.

But what can help us is to approach the situation with a growth mindset, to approach it playfully, to relax and enjoy the process. Think about that little boy in Sunday school with his sellotape. A lot of it is about having fun. I have a tremendous amount of fun doing this.

I love playing with canva, for example. You can have a lot of fun in your marketing. You don’t have to take it too seriously. Remember, use the growth mindset.

Approach the task you’re doing as, as a challenge where you’re going to have fun. And that if it doesn’t work, that’s all right, because you can pick yourself up again and just try again and be kind to yourself in this.

You know, don’t expect yourself to be perfect right from the get go. You’re not going to be. Why is it that we expect that of ourselves? And I think the answer is because we’ve got a fixed mindset.

It’s all about learning and growing and being kind to yourself in the process, reminding yourself that you’re just learning and being able to play. And so I’d also say, remember as well, that the results don’t say anything about you.

If you’ve got your own North Star, you’ve got your own values, you can actually call on those to help you. So that if you do fail, you might think to yourself, yeah, but, you know, I was being true to myself in that.

And also, rather than thinking to yourself, you know, I’ve got to rely on other people’s judgment of whether or not I’m doing a good job here. You actually can measure yourself against your own North Star, against your own values and your own principles.

And that means that you can be much more robust in the face of criticism and judgment. And finally, I’d really like to say about other people, other people can really support and encourage you.

Like I said about my friends with my decision about my business coach, but also I had people who reminded me of what I was capable of.

I had people who knew me and knew what I wanted, and they encouraged me, and they reminded me that I could trust myself, I could trust my judgment, and that’s what I try and provide when I’m working with people in a coaching capacity. And it’s also what I provide by facilitating it.

Within therapy growth group, where there’s a group of therapists all together who really do encourage each other.

And so when we’re working together, people, if they are doubtful, they will get support and they’ll get encouragement and they’ll get people who believe them. And that is a real joy to be able to facilitate that within my work. So don’t take it all too seriously. Be playful, have fun, and see what happens.

Thanks for listening. Do come and join my Facebook community, goodenough counsellors.

And for more information about how I can help you develop your private practice, please visit my website, josephinehughes.com. if you found this episode helpful, I’d love it if you could share it with a fellow therapist or leave a review on your podcast app.

And in closing, I’d love to remind you that every single step you make gets you closer to your dream. I really believe believe you can do it.