Kim Ades, the Founder and President of Frame of Mind Coaching, joined TREPX Podcast host Micky Deming to talk about mindset, journaling and getting ahead in business. Kim coaches executives and leading entrepreneurs to become emotionally resilient. ”Coaching, up until recently, has been highly focused on helping people take actions in order to reach their goals.  It wasn’t really focused on emotional resilience,” says Ades. Ades described emotional resilience as “the ability to bounce back from adversity with speed and agility to leverage the adversity.”

During our entrepreneurial journey, and discovering how to grow a business that’s bigger than just ourselves, we often try to forget adversity rather than utilizing it to move forward at a greater pace. Ades talked about the false concept of “balance,” and posed the question “do we really want balance?” She says that balance isn’t what we actually want. “What we are after is engagement. We are after passion. We are after being turned on. We are after being fully engaged and present. That’s a little bit different from balance.”

Ades says that the adversity we’ve gone through holds us back. “People have experienced things in the past and they carry those experiences to the present, and those past experiences will debilitate them. (Past experiences) will hold them back.”

As entrepreneurs trying to move forward in our businesses, we try to plan ahead and think of where we want to be in 5, 10, or 20 years. But what about the present? “I would say that the single most important starting point is to take stock of where you are right now,” says Ades. “Taking an assessment of where you are right here, right now with all kinds of areas in your life is super important,” continued Ades.

It’s amazing that we can go through life without stopping to think where we are in relation to where we want to be, but this zombie like thought process of going through the motions without understanding who and where we are is far too common. “People live unconsciously.  Like they are walking, but they’re like zombies.  Right?  They are not going anywhere in particular.  You know, they get up, they go to work, they come home, they watch TV, they go to bed, they get up, they go to work, they watch TV. You know, it’s the same life over and over and over again, and it’s the person who is determined to have a little bit more, to really kind of milk their lives that take a moment to say hold on a minute here -- this lifestyle of mine, this way of living, isn’t enough for me.  It’s not all that I want.  I want more.” Only by taking an honest look at where you are can you fully comprehend what you need to get to where you want to be.

Listen at 17:30 for Kim’s powerful journaling exercise. Kim offers to personally review your results, but you have to listen and do the exercise first!  Check out more insight and tips from Kim Ades at Frameofmindcoaching.com and contact her at [email protected].