Struggling To Achieve Your Goals? Harness The Power Of Your DARING Mindset
- Feb 22, 2022
- 6 min read
Updated: Feb 12, 2025
Written by: Dr Jo Cresswell, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Ok, I’m going to ask you to be honest here.
How are you doing with achieving your ambitions and goals?
How good are you at harnessing your creativity and taking forward your ideas?
How are your New Year’s resolutions coming along?
When was the last time you really stepped outside your comfort zone?
If you’re hesitating or feeling uncomfortable over your answer to any of these questions, relax, you’re not alone. Welcome to being human where even thinking about change unleashes a whole series of feelings and behaviours which are designed to keep you from moving away from the status quo. But don’t worry, these can be overcome. Read on to find out how.
If you’re reading this, you’re most likely intelligent, innovative, and passionate. You’ve created success in your career and life. You’re respected and you inspire others.
Yet you’re feeling as though there should be more to life. Perhaps your career is not as satisfying as it used to be. You want to be doing more in your business. Maybe you want more in your life besides work or feel that your relationship isn’t all that you wish for.
Whatever the cause, you know that you want more. That there’s more you want to be, do, have, say, and achieve. You have ideas, aspirations, and a vision for the future which excite you with their possibilities.
Yet… you struggle to achieve your dreams. You talk yourself out of your ideas. You begin to doubt your vision, and your ability to make it a reality.
I’m here to tell you that there is a solution. That you can break through those fears and doubts. You can realise your vision, experience incredible growth, and create lasting change. All through the power of the DARING Mindset.
First it helps to understand what happens when you start to dream of change
Comfort Zone
Imagine you are living happily in your Comfort Zone, when suddenly inspiration strikes. You connect with a dream or a wish. You come up with an idea. You create a powerful vision. All of which create a powerful state of excitement in you. You’re fired up and ready to change the world. You start to see ways you can achieve your dream. It feels as though anything is possible.
Fear Zone
But then… you start to experience feelings of fear and trepidation. Doubts creep into your mind about your idea, and suddenly things don’t seem so rosy.
Welcome to the Fear Zone. Your host is your subconscious mind, which has been alerted to the prospect of change by the excitement of your great new idea. As a human being your brain has been primed by millennia of evolution to fear change. To your subconscious mind, change equals the unknown, and the unknown equals danger.
Which is why your brain acts so quickly and so powerfully to try to pull you back from the brink of change by creating physical feelings of unease and fear. It’s just trying to keep you safe – even though it doesn’t need to.
Doubting Zone
The next step for your subconscious mind is to guide you back to the safety of your comfort zone, via the Doubting Zone.
Have you ever found yourself distracting yourself rather than working on your new idea? Creating drama or self-sabotage? Coming up against old stories and beliefs which cause you to question what you’re planning to do – or your ability to make your vision a reality? I’m guessing the answer is yes
However, are you really aware of what is going on? In many cases, these doubts and stories appear under the radar of your conscious mind. They act quicker than thought to create automatic reactions (such as reaching for social media) to divert you from your path of change. Until eventually you arrive back in your comfort zone, and often forget that you ever had the idea in the first place.
If this is all going on at a subconscious level, how can you overcome these automatic beliefs, thoughts, feelings and behaviours and unlock your true potential?
Daring Zone
The answer is by being DARING! The Daring Zone is a powerful state of being which allows you to think bigger, reimagine your life, be more creative, and take aligned actions. This is achieved through the DARING Mindset framework, which I will write more about in my next article and which is outlined below.
D Your DREAMS. The DIFFERENCE you wish to create in the world and your DETERMINATION to do so
A AWARENESS of your ACHIEVEMENTS, your ANXIETIES, and what you may be AVOIDING
R REIMAGINING your world to REINVENT and RE-ENERGISE your life
I The INITIATIVES and INNOVATIONS that you plan to IMPLEMENT
N The NURTURING and NOURISHMENT that you give yourself as you stretch outside your comfort zone
G Your GRATITUDE for your GROWTH and learning and the success you have created
It all starts with reconnecting first with your dream and what you want to be different in your life, and then creating awareness of everything that is going on in your subconscious mind.
In this way you can start to challenge those fears and doubts, to create conscious choice in how you act and move forwards. You are more able to take aligned actions, which in turn gives you the courage and inspiration to continue to stretch further away from your comfort zone, and make your aspiration a reality.
Growth Zone
All of which propels you towards growth and lasting change. As you become more confident through the actions you are taking and the success you are creating, you move into the Growth Zone. This is where you enter the flow state, where your doubts and fears have far less power over you (and you have the tools to deal with them when they come up).
In the Growth Zone you move to a new level, creating and embedding lasting change, and experiencing fulfilment, connection, and joy in your new existence. Which then sets you up to repeat the journey again as you think big, then bigger, then bigger again, and turn your thoughts to the next level of growth!
This is a powerful and transformational journey – I can testify to that from my own experience and that of my coaching clients. While it is possible to do some of this work on your own, I have found that sharing your journey with others is essential to support the awareness that underpins this whole process.
Think about who is best to support you here. A trusted friend who knows you well? A mentor? A coach? Think about who can help you challenge the doubts when they come up – because they are VERY convincing. Who can help you cut through the excuses and obstacles that you create. Who can help you visualise your future so that it feels tangible, and more important to you than your fears.
This is how I work with my clients in the powerful and immersive DARING Mindset 1:1 coaching programme. I empower incredible women to let go of all that is holding them back, create their own DARING Mindset, and unleash their incredible potential to create the success and abundance that they truly deserve.
To apply to work with me 1:1, please contact me at jocresswell.coaching@gmail.com
Alternatively subscribe to my weekly email newsletter and receive a free download of my DARING Mindset ebook: https://jocresswell.newzenler.com/f/daring-mindset-30-minute-guide
Dr Jo Cresswell, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr Jo Cresswell – The Human BEING Coach is a powerful, high-performance leader, coach, and entrepreneur with a highly successful career spanning more than 20 years. In 2019, Dr Jo chose to pivot her career, following her passion and purpose in setting up her business, Dr Joanne Cresswell Coaching. Based on her career experience, and her own 5 year deep mindset journey, Dr Jo works with high-level leaders at a deep human level to support them to uplevel personal, professional, and organisational performance through connection and understanding of themselves, peers, employees, customers and stakeholders. This helps them to lead successful, purposeful, impactful and inclusive organisations in a new and powerful way.
Dr Jo also coaches innovative, passionate, and dynamic leaders, entrepreneurs and those with an innovative mindset via her signature DARING Mindset (TM) framework and suite of 1:1 and group coaching programmes and courses. By combining aspirational coaching with deep mindset work, she inspires passionate and innovative people to create their own powerful DARING Mindset, so that they can unlock their potential and create the life, career, business, and relationship success that they truly deserve. Dr Jo has a passion for adapting psychotherapy, psychology, and neuroscience tools into her coaching programmes to support truly transformational change for her clients.
