What’s Your Why? The Simple Mindset Shift That Transformed My Life
Apologies for the unplanned hiatus, the fluey bug doing the rounds in the UK caught up with me last week! 🤧
Fear has always been my shadow. It’s hovered over me since childhood, shaped by the anxious environment I grew up in, and followed me well into adulthood. Fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of the unknown—it kept me small, quiet, and stuck for years. And yet, there’s a twist to this story. Despite my overwhelming anxiety, I found myself standing in front of a classroom of teenagers, about to teach my first lesson—a decision that would lead to a mindset shift so profound, it still drives me today.
I was raised by a very anxious, fear-based mum, who’d been raised herself by a mother who was fiercely overprotective. I sometimes wonder what on earth happened to Nana to make her like that, but I doubt I’ll ever find out now as my mum has passed away and I’m not that close to my aunt (in fact, I’m not even sure they ever knew, themselves, to be honest).
While my mum fought hard against those kind of protective tendencies - she allowed me to join the Air Cadets as a teenager, which involved all kinds of scary and potentially dangerous activities such as flying light aircraft, doing assault courses and spending weekend yomping over mountains and sleeping in the woods under bivouacs - but I couldn’t help but become affected by her everyday attitude to life, understandably.
By the time I was in my mid-teens, I was struggling. I developed an eating disorder, and also used alcohol as a coping mechanism. I suffered enormously from impostor syndrome in my job as a software engineer, always assuming I was nowhere near as talented or capable as my colleagues.
And then I did something which might seem crazy on the surface for someone who was so flipping scared of everything, pretty much all the time.
In 2002, I applied to retrain as a secondary school teacher.
A month or two before the GTP (Graduate Trainee Programme) course started, they called the six of us into the head’s office for a meet-up. There were two people who were training as Science teachers, one as a Modern Foreign Languages teacher, one joining the English department, one in the Maths department and then me, in IT.
We sat around in a circle, and were asked to tell the others, as well as the head, deputy head and the chair of the Governors, in turn, why we were looking to move from our current careers into teaching.
I cannot remember now what I said, but you could easily have fried an egg on my blood-red cheeks after I finished talking, I was so embarrassed. I went away from that event feeling deflated, terrified that I was making a horrendous mistake. If I couldn’t speak up in front of half a dozen adults, how in the heck was I going to be able to teach upwards of 400 kids a week, many of whom really did not want to be there, let alone listening to me trying to teach them how to use Excel on a rainy Monday morning?
I wavered, I really did. I almost withdrew my application and went scuttling back to programming. But for some reason, now lost to the mists of time, I didn’t. Instead, I pulled on my big person pants and got on with it.
And I’m eternally grateful that I did, because that decision allowed me to meet Carole, one of the long-established teachers in the IT department I joined in January 2003.
Carole was one of two teachers who were pretty close to retirement age in the department, who’d both joined the school before the advent of computers, starting out their careers teaching the kids touch-typing on typewriters in what must’ve been a very noisy classroom. She and Margaret were a part of the establishment, just as much as the stained glass window in the onsite chapel. They couldn’t have been more different, though.
Margaret was a bit of a Miss Trunchbull character (although she was very slender and to the best of my knowledge she’d never taken part in an Olympic hammer throwing competition), strict and with absolutely no leeway in terms of the behaviour she expected from the kids she taught. I once heard her say to a pupil, “ADHD? Have you never heard of a clip round the ear hole?!” 😬 Ouch.
By contrast, Carole was a cuddly teddy bear of a woman. Kind and caring, with a twinkle in her eye. The kind of person whose handbag was fit to busting with boiled sweets and packets of tissues.
She was the person sitting in the classroom (it was her class) when I taught my first lesson. Even though it was 21 years ago now(!) I can still remember that moment, as clear as day. I don’t remember what I taught, though… it went okay, no one died, and I think some morsels of information managed to lodge themselves in the kids’ heads.
When they’d gone, and I sagged onto a chair, she sat down across the table from me.
Little did I know that the next moment was going to be one of the most pivotal, transformational moments of my life. It might seem like I’m over egging the pudding (as we say in the North of England) but I really do think that in this case it’s 100% true.
“That went well,” she said, with a reassuring smile. “You seemed very calm.”
Really? I’d felt like I was about to pass out, and my hands were still shaking so badly that I was keeping them out of sight, tucked away under the table.
I smiled, not sure what to say.
“What you need to do,’ she continued, “is not to think about what they’re thinking about you…”
I frowned. Was this woman some kind of a witch? How was she reading my mind?!
“… and think instead about why you’re here. The value you’re providing for them, how you’re helping them to achieve their educational goals and to move on to the next rung of the ladder.”
And with that bombshell delivered, she smiled again and got up to go and finish packing up everything in her voluminous handbag.
I’m not sure her words really felt that revolutionary to me at the time, but as the rest of the year went on and I continued my training, I found myself relying on her advice more and more, reminding myself often of why I was there - out of a sincere desire to help people - rather than worrying about my own ego.
And this is a mindset/mantra I use to this day. Every time I’m about to do something which is going to push me out of my comfort zone (or as I like to call it, my “Dreams Death Zone” or DDZ™️) I take a breath, and I remind myself why I’m doing this.
Nine times out of ten, it’s for the exact same reason I went into teaching in the first place.
Whether it’s an article or a book I’m publishing, a guest appearance on a podcast, or a coaching session with a new client, whenever those tendrils of doubt start to creep into the back of my mine, I remind myself that I have something valid and helpful to share, which may well help people with their own lives, their own struggles and battles, and I remember my why.
I may even ask myself:
What’s your why?
As an extra bonus, I also sometimes also do this amazing thing I picked up from Ted Lasso:
Remembering why I’m doing the scary things I do, how sincerely I just want to help people, kills my fear of judgement or failure dead. Honestly, it knocks it straight on its backside, and I can then smile and get on with it, knowing that there’s a bigger, far more important reason for me to be doing what I’m doing than anything to do with my own ego.
The next time fear creeps in and threatens to derail you, take a deep breath and ask yourself: What’s my why? Shifting your focus from self-doubt to the value you bring to others might just be the key to silencing your inner critic and taking that brave next step. If you’d like more mindset tips and stories like this, subscribe to Reboot & Rise—it’s a little corner of the internet where we tackle fear, rediscover courage, and move together toward the lives we truly deserve. Subscribe to join me on the journey!