Category / growth

by Nathan Coumbe

Act “as if”

Acting “as if” is the only way to change. 

Reading, studying, thinking—none of that will create change without action. 

People are afraid to take the actions necessary because they don’t feel like they’re “THAT” type of person yet.

But you don’t become “that guy” until you start acting like that guy.

So act as if.

…As if you ARE patient, kind, and understanding.

…As if you ARE lean, strong, and healthy.

…As if you ARE a confident entrepreneur.

…As if you ARE a loving spouse or parent.

Acting as if, a little bit each day, will eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

by Nathan Coumbe

Build your way forward

Imagine a web designer sitting at her desk.

There’s this nasty problem plaguing her current project. For the life of her, she can’t figure it out…

What does she do? She sits and thinks and thinks and thinks until she comes up with a solution.

Right?

Wrong!

She’s a designer—she builds her way forward. 

She writes a line of code and runs it. Does that fix the problem? No. Did she fail? NO! She just learned something about her code. 

So she writes another line and tries again. She builds her way past the problem one line of code at a time. 

Maybe we should approach more of our problems like designers. 

Instead of trying to think our way forward, we build.

by Nathan Coumbe

There is no such thing as failure

There is only feedback. 

People who develop a growth mindset view every failure as a learning opportunity, not an end result. 

Either you succeed or you learn. But you never fail. 

Of course, something might not work out like you planned. But as long as you learn from the incident and improve, did you really fail?

by Nathan Coumbe

Change your story, change your results

Each of us has an internal narrative constantly chattering about who we are. 

But what we don’t always realize is that internal narrative influences how we behave.

If you tell yourself the story that, “Overeating makes me feel happy,” that story might be a stand-in for the real story—“I’m unhappy with different aspects of my life and overeating gives me a small dose of pleasure.”

Until you realize this, you’ll continue to overeat and live on greasy fast food multiple times each week.

(I know this because it’s a story I’m trying to rewrite myself). 

If you tell yourself a story that says, “I’m not skilled at sales or business,” you might never realize your unresolved dream of starting your own venture and working for yourself. 

The first step to overcoming many of our chronic issues is to start telling ourselves a different story. 

Changing what you do starts by changing your identity—who you believe yourself to be. 

Change the story, change the person.

by Nathan Coumbe

Life is a miniseries, not a one-off movie

Most of us feel like we’re living out the movie of our life with expectation of some grand finale… A giant dance number at the end to celebrate all we’ve done or accomplished.

But at the end of the movie, don’t you feel just a little bit empty? A little lonelier because it’s finally over?

But life isn’t a movie. If anything, it’s more like a mini-series—multiple episodes and multiple seasons. And each one has its own stories, cliffhangers, and resolutions.

When you finish an episode of a mini-series, there’s anticipation and excitement for what comes next.

We should think about our lives in the same way.

When one story in life ends—when the credits start rolling—start working on a sequel immediately. Start filming the next episode or risk feeling lost.

by Nathan Coumbe

Who’s your Zig Ziglar?

Zig Ziglar (a native of my very own Mississippi) is practically the grandfather of all motivational speakers. 

He spent years of his life giving incredible speeches on stage. But he also recorded dozens of audio programs to help people change their mindsets and learn his signature theme:

“You can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.”

Seth Godin used Zig Ziglar as a mentor when he started off as a book packager in the 1980s. He had multiple Zig Ziglar audio programs that he listened to on repeat for 3+ hours a day. And it helped him overcome 900 rejections in a row!

Seth is a huge advocate for listening to the same people over and over again as often as you can.

But it’s not necessarily because “positive thinking” can help you get everything you want in life.

Instead, it’s to help you rewire your self-talk so you can…

  • Be more effective in your daily life, 
  • Overcome obstacles and setbacks
  • Be positive when the bad stuff inevitably happens

His advice: find someone who speaks to you in the right way and listen to their messages over and over again… Until you come to believe it yourself. 

Seth Godin is MY Zig Ziglar. 

  • I’ve listened to all of his podcast episodes (200+) at least twice, if not more
  • I’ve watched all his TED talks multiple times 
  • I’ve tried to find every podcast he’s ever been a guest on
  • AND I own just about every one of his books

I wonder: who’s your Zig Ziglar?

Who is someone whose message resonated so much with you that you can’t get enough of them? 

If you’ve found someone like that—in a podcast, audiobook, TED talk, or YouTube channel—I urge you to put them on repeat and rewire your self-talk. 

And if you haven’t, find someone who could do that for you… Seth Godin. Zig Ziglar. Buddha. Tony Robbins. Robert Kiyosaki. Jesus.

The “who” doesn’t matter all that much.

Just find someone and adopt them as a mentor from afar.

by Nathan Coumbe

Are you flip-flopping? Good.

This is the primary sign of being a mature, well-balanced adult:

The ability—AND WILLINGNESS—to change your mind about something you believe or hold dear in the face of new information.

You’ll be ridiculed for it. You’ll be called a “flip-flopper“. But so what?

You’re growing and learning, adapting and changing. That’s all that matters.

by Nathan Coumbe

“Form” follows “function” for a reason

Anyone who’s creative will tell you they often get lost in the weeds of their project. But the “why” and the “what” behind your work are much more important than the “how”.

And yet, we often get stuck trying to fit our message into a medium that it might not be well-suited for.

“I’m a writer,” we say to ourselves. So when we get to a piece of content that might better serve our audience in a video format, we balk. Or we turn a blog post into a book…

“I’m a drummer,” a musician might say, so she believes it’s the only way she can create music… No need to pick up that guitar or try to pluck out a melody on the piano, thank you very much!

The form doesn’t matter as long as it serves the content and the audience. That means you don’t have to be a blogger, a writer, a podcaster, or a coach forever.

As long as you are doing something to spread your message, how you do it is irrelevant.

by Nathan Coumbe

Self-growth is tender

by Nathan Coumbe

You’re an imposter! (And so am I)

When you feel your imposter syndrome kick in, run towards it. Don’t run away from it.

That feeling means you’re doing something right—something worthwhile.

By definition, we are all imposters when we do something new. Because we’ve never done it before…

Of course we’re imposters!

A growth mindset requires us to embrace imposter syndrome. The only way we can grow is to put ourselves in situations that we’ve never been in.

But it hurts! A life full of growth will naturally have some pain points, just like the growing pains a child feels in her growing body.

It’ll hurt a little bit to reach our full potential. But there’s no better way to live.