From Skydiving Instructor to Mindset Coach: How Francis Found His Calling

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Mar 22 (edited) • 🌟 Reviews

There's something particularly compelling about individuals who make dramatic career pivots, especially when they transition from adrenaline-fueled professions to ones focused on helping others transform their lives. Francis, a former skydiving instructor turned mindset coach, shares valuable insights about finding fulfillment and overcoming invisible barriers that prevent people from achieving their goals.

Finding Fulfillment Beyond the Free Fall

"Imagine you've worked towards your dream job for years only to get there and realize that something is missing," Francis shared during our conversation. This sentiment captures the beginning of his journey from skydiving professional to mindset coach.

For years, Francis lived what many would consider a dream life—jumping out of planes at 120 miles per hour and getting paid for it. After discovering skydiving during a trip to New Zealand with his best friend, he spent six years training and building his skills to become an instructor.

"There's nothing quite like climbing out of an airplane with your best mate and just falling to earth at 120 miles an hour," he recalled, the passion for those early experiences still evident in his voice.

But despite reaching this coveted position, something felt off. "It reached a point where despite the fact that this is an amazing job and a privilege to take people on this journey, for me, there was something missing. It started to lose its shine," Francis explained.

The realization was both jarring and enlightening: "I was going after happiness. I wanted to be happy, I was not happy. Skydiving as a job for me was... I'd learn to skydive, felt great, loved it. That must be a great job, right? But no. It wasn't, it was massively disappointing."

Understanding the Invisible Barriers to Achievement

What Francis discovered was missing wasn't happiness—it was fulfillment. This insight became the foundation for his work as a mindset coach, focusing on why people struggle to achieve their goals.

Francis explains this concept through a powerful analogy about flies hitting glass: "The fly sees something tasty on the other side of the window, you know, it can see the goal. So it flies straight for it... but it hits the glass, like, head on. Whack!"

This invisible barrier, Francis explains, represents our subconscious mindset—the collection of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about ourselves and the world that can prevent us from achieving our goals, no matter how much conscious effort we put in.

"Your mindset is the collection of all your thoughts, feelings, memories, and everything you know to be true about yourself and the world," he says. "It's all stored in your subconscious and it's everything that's been filed away throughout your life that shapes how you see the world."

The Challenge of New Year's Resolutions

One of Francis's key teachings focuses on why most people fail to achieve their goals, particularly with New Year's resolutions. He explains that initially, people feel motivated—they join the gym, download healthy diet plans, or sign up for classes. In the beginning, they feel great as they take action toward their goals.

"They go to the gym twice a week, and they're eating healthier food. They're taking action because they know what they need to do, and it's not that complicated," Francis notes.

But then something goes wrong: "After a few weeks, they'll miss a gym session for whatever reason... Something comes up or they oversleep. Maybe they have a doughnut at lunch and break their sugar fast and before they know it, their diet's out the window and they haven't been to the gym for a month."

Francis argues that this happens because of internal resistance from our subconscious: "When you try to do something new, it feels uncomfortable, like unreasonably uncomfortable... Your subconscious throws up thoughts and emotions to stop you from taking action that creates change."

The Path to Sustainable Change

The key insight Francis offers is that willpower alone isn't enough to create lasting change: "You can put in all the effort you like on the outside, you can take all the action you want, but if your mindset doesn't change you'll eventually give up, and go back to your old ways."

He compares the subconscious to the dad character in the movie "The Croods": "He thinks that if you leave the cave, your comfort zone, you die. If you try something new, you die. If you go anywhere you haven't been before, you die... your subconscious only cares about your survival."

For Francis, the solution is clear: "If you want to achieve any goal or make any change in life, especially if it's something new, you need to change your mindset first. When you change your mindset, you'll always achieve your goals faster and more easily in the end."

Encouraging Others to Find Their Path

Having experienced the challenge of leaving a career he had worked toward for years, Francis now helps others who find themselves in similar situations.

"If what you do for work isn't meeting your needs, isn't fulfilling you, is not living up to your expectations, then I would encourage you to explore," he advises. "Ask yourself questions like what's missing? What is it in life that you actually want to do? If you had all the money, what would you spend the rest of your days doing?"

For those feeling stuck, his message is clear: "If you feel like you are stuck, like you've spent years training for the career or the job that you're doing now, but there's something in you telling you that there has to be more... I just wanna encourage you by saying you're not alone, I've been there too. It is possible to take a brave step and change and you don't have to do it by yourself."

The Journey Continues

Francis's personal journey from skydiving instructor to mindset coach illustrates an important truth: sometimes our greatest fulfillment comes not from pursuing what seems exciting on the surface, but from digging deeper to understand what truly matters to us.

By sharing his insights about mindset barriers and the courage to change directions, Francis helps others navigate their own paths to fulfillment—proving that sometimes the most important jumps we make in life aren't from airplanes, but from one understanding of ourselves to another.

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