Success on the outside

In my early career, I was truly passionate about what I did.

As the youngest Regional Manager at 23, I seemed super successful to the outside world but what I hadn’t dealt with how I really felt about myself.

Deep down I didn’t feel truly worthy of the status I had gained.

This led me to question everything and regularly procrastinate.

I constantly questioned whether I was good enough which negatively affected my intimate relationships and friendships.

It was the lowest I had ever been in my mental health and needed support, so when I say coaching saved me life, I don’t say it lightly.

I was pointed in the direction of a coach and it was the best decision I ever made – an absolute game changer.

I finally worked out what my anxiety triggers were and where they came from and was able to implement successful coping strategies.

Discovering triggers

As an 11 year-old, I had to deal with my own anxiety and, back then, there was no discussion around children experiencing negative mental health and I certainly didn’t have the language to express what I was feeling so I struggled on and off until I was diagnosed with depression at the age of 15.

There was a history of depression in my family and so it wasn’t seen as a big deal and, in fact, it was quite common for family members to be on anti-depressants.

But the real hope and light came to me in an unusual way when I started dating my first love.

We were happy for a time, but he started to struggle with his mental health too and, tragically, he committed suicide a few months after we got engaged.

I had been through so much depression, trauma and now grief at a very young age and these experiences became part of the story I told myself, about who I was and what I was capable of in life.

The stories we tell ourselves

I was doing well in my career. Company car, good salary, a team of people underneath me and I’d just bought my first property. There were many positives, but I was also experiencing a huge lack of confidence and suffering with imposter syndrome.

The story that I was telling myself was that I wasn’t intelligent, I wouldn’t amount to much and yet the success in my career did not fit with that story.

This conflict ignited my depression which came back full force, this time manifesting as an eating disorder.

I would binge and purge regularly and my story now included not feeling worthy. My experiences with therapy didn’t really work for me and my eating disorder was forcing me down a very dark and scary road and it was at that point that coaching came into my life.

So when a life coach was recommended to me in early 2000, I was willing to give it a go.

Fortunately for me, my coach was able to dig deeper and discover that my eating disorder was a manifestation of my unresolved and unprocessed emotions.

Facing fears

Through powerful sessions, we discovered the root cause of my depression and eating disorder was feeling ‘not good enough’ and this showed up in all areas of my life. I didn’t feel pretty enough, clever enough, educated enough…it went on.

Coaching shone a light on my feelings but also gave me accountability to tackle some of the fears I held. At work, I feared they would discover they had hired the wrong person and realise I couldn’t do the job and was just winging it.

Once I recognised this as simply an anxious thought and not the truth, I was able to take positive action and start to work through it and with it.

I wrote a list of reasons I was good at my job including the interview process I’d had to go through to get it and realised I wasn’t there by chance.

Seeing this in black and white helped me to face my fears and reframe them.

My default reaction had always been to feel an anxious thought then immediately run from it and bury it deep, but now I started asking myself what I could do to resolve it.

If there was an area in my role that I knew I could do better at, I took action that would move me towards improvement and achieving my new goals.

Working on developmental areas is key to removing imposter syndrome and is something that’s well within our control.

A decade of lessons

It’s taken a good decade to embrace myself, my triggers, who I am, remove the fear of what other people think, not seek external approval or validation to prove my worth and instil self-worth and self-belief and enjoy more positive mental health.

It also took all these years to reflect and realise that I actually didn’t suffer with depression. That was just a symptom and this was a revelation to me,

I knew I couldn’t keep what I had learned to myself and in 2014, I gained my coaching qualification and over the last 8 years have designed the Unbreakable Mindset Method® which gives people access to learn in 4 months what I learned in 10 years.

The power of self-inquiry

I take clients back to their childhood to help them understand fully what their childhood blueprint is and what story they tell themselves.

From here we access their subconscious to learn how that blueprint shows up in adulthood to figure out what’s holding them back and what’s propelling them forward.

Then we work on identifying personal triggers and reprogramming limiting beliefs.

A key part of my Method is a self-enquiry technique to deal with anxious thoughts in a methodical way. Once you can understand where your anxieties come from and how they show up, the groundwork is done.

We then introduce their new identify, instilling self-worth and clarity on who they are in every part of their life, making sure their habits and actions align with their desired outcomes.

This is all built up in layers.

Postive mental health

I feel very blessed to have experienced this journey to positive mental health so that I get to help others do the same. For so many people, depression and anxiety are situational and are linked to how they feel about themselves and their external circumstances.

These beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves can be rewired and retold.

Long term issues and struggles that have kept you from living your dream life, can be resolved.

Coaching is that powerful.

Jude Daunt is founder of the Unbreakable Mindset Method® and a global transformational mindset coach supporting her clients to smash through their anxieties and mindset blocks to create a life they love free of mental struggle.

Trained to a Level 5 Diploma in Performance Coaching and, as a Certified DISC Behavioural Trainer, she coaches a wide range of professionals, business owners and celebrities from the UK and Internationally from her established Coaching practice in the north-east of England.

As seen on MTV Geordie OG’s.

www.judedauntcoaching.co.uk