Your role as a parent is to hunt for coaching opportunities, not just react to your child’s performance. Most parents only “coach” when their child messes up when something irritating happens and they feel the need to fix behaviour or habits. If most of your coaching moments happen after mistakes or failures, your child will start linking “coaching” with something that is not enjoyable and helpful and you don't wont that, do you? So how do you change that? Start by getting clear on the mindset you want to develop in your child. Then, write down where they’re likely to: - struggle and fail, - struggle but overcome, - and absolutely smash it. You might need to adjust or add some routines, like stretching together, building Lego, or doing something active side-by-side. Now you can observe with intention, ask calibrated questions, and praise specific behaviours that show progress or mindset. Most kids build their mindset by chance, we help them build it by choice.

Today I took my son for his first run, and oh boy! It went as expected 😅. I will cover my thoughts on it with a separate post, but for now I wanted to show you my favourite coaching tool in action: "On a scale 1-10..." I love using this method with my kids and clients for a few reasons, but the most important one is that it teaches my son to be self-aware and retrospective. If I let him judge his performance with: it was ok, I would be creating a problem further down the line. It's a slippery slope when your mind looks at your performance and labels it with vague statement. It's near impossible to build character, confidence and mindset with vaque statements. I can't let my son walk that path, so I took my time to get him used to this tool. Have you tried it yet?

Let’s shine a light on what really builds a high-performing mindset — for our kids, and for ourselves. Watching movies, athlete highlights, and success stories of rich people, it’s easy to believe that high performance comes from big moves — that it all boils down to that one moment where you go “all in.” That might work in the stock market. But it doesn’t work when you’re investing in your child’s mindset. When kids feel too much pressure, they talk themselves out of trying. And even when they do try, their self-talk sabotages the outcome, which then becomes “proof” that they’re not good enough. What we actually want is a narrative that sounds like: “Oh shit, I can do it.” “I’m doing it!” That’s where momentum starts, and momentum builds confidence. Last week I told Xavier: “One of my go-to mindsets for handling pressure and building confidence is: Let’s give it a go.” I want to approach challenges with ease and playfulness — detached from the outcome. So how does it look in practice? It’s about controlling the narrative when facing a challenge, shifting your emotional state before it controls you. When my kids face something new or hard, I often say: “This might fail… but let’s give it a go.” I want to take the pressure of their shoulders, and signal that failure is OK, but not giving an honest go, isn't. When you take the pressure off, and detach yourself from an outcome, or make a bad outcome less scary, you have a better chance to be playful and notice your small wins. Small wins create momentum and momentum leads to a new mindset. Give it a go! If your kids ask you to play and do something outside of your current skillset (video games, handstands drawing etc), respond with: Lets give it a go and see what happens. The best way to teach the mindset, is to roll model it!