Stop Trying to Fix Your Clients' Mistakes | EP 107

Dr. Kasey Jo Orvidas breaks down why your instinct to fix your clients' worst days first can actually backfire, and shares a real story from an HMCC student who tested a "strengths-first" approach with surprising results.

In this episode, she covers:

• Why the "righting reflex" makes coaches jump straight to what went wrong, and why that instinct isn't a flaw
• A real case study where focusing only on a client's best step-count days led to every day improving the following week
• The psychology behind why leading with strengths builds self-efficacy, autonomy, and competence faster than leading with fixes
• A tangible "strengths-first question swap" coaches can use in their very next client check-in
• How to bridge back into setbacks and off days once trust and momentum are built

If you've ever caught yourself digging into what went wrong before acknowledging what went right, this episode is for you.

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Transcript

0:00

what you focus on grows. So if you're focusing on the negative, the weaknesses, the setbacks, the failures, trying to help your clients fix those things, and not focusing on things that they really are doing well or things that are coming e- more easily to them, the one good day out of 20, focus on that thing. Hello my friends, and welcome back to not another Mindset show. I'm your host, Dr. Casey Joe. My goal with this podcast is to take the science of mindset and behavior change and distill it down into actionable takeaways for you. Together we're gonna unpack research around motivations, self-sabotage, willpower, and so much more, and we're going to take all of that and translate it into strategies you can immediately apply to your health. Fitness, relationships, business, marketing clients, all of the things. But just to be clear, it's not all serious and sciencey around here. We're gonna have a ton of fun too, and I'm so excited to share all of this with you. All right, let's go ahead and get into the episode. Hello, welcome back to Not Another Mindset Show. Today's episode is really related to one of the most core skills that I teach to coaches inside the Health Mindset Coaching Certification, and really is something that, like, you gotta get this… I don't wanna say you gotta get this right, but it's something you gotta wrap your head around in order to use a lot of the other skills that I teach inside the program. So really what we're talking about today is just please, please stop. Please stop immediately going into fix-it mode with your clients. Please stop spending more time coaching them on their bad days, on their struggles, on their weaknesses, on their setbacks, on their failures, than you are focusing on the things that they're doing well, on their strengths, and helping them see what those things actually are. So I know that me even just saying this, and, and I… As I was, like, outlining this episode, I'm like, "Ugh, people are gonna hear the beginning of this and be like, 'Okay, yeah, duh. Like, focus on strengths. Like, strengths-based coaching, blah, blah, blah. Do I need to listen to the rest of this episode? I think I already got the gist.'" You don't. You don't, because listen, I would have thought that an episode like this may be something, I don't wanna say too basic, because, like, hey, as a health and fitness coach, you know that the basics are really the most important foundational things, right? But more so that, like, what am I gonna talk about beyond, like- stop focusing on weaknesses all the time. Because what you focus on grows. So if you're focusing on the negative, the weaknesses, the setbacks, the failures, trying to help your clients fix those things, and not focusing on things that they really are doing well or things that are coming e- more easily to them, the one good day out of 20, focus on that thing. I- I'm like, what else am I gonna talk about? Like, that's the gist, right? But there is, there's so much more underneath this, and also it's worth explaining why, the mechanism behind it. And then, and then I had a conversation with one of my students. I don't think I'm gonna name names, but he's great. He was an awesome student in our spring 2026 cohort, came to, I think, every single live discussion call. And he brought this up on, I wanna say, one of our… It's, like, our third to last call, because then on the second to last call, he came back and, like, reported on his findings. I will get into this. And he was so aware of this of this understanding that we shouldn't be just focusing on what's broken in our clients, what needs fixing. Focus on the strengths, point out the strengths, find the bright spots. I mean, he had already gone through the majority of HMCC at this point, but he came to me and said, "I have this dilemma because I'm working with this client, and one of his goals is to bring up his step count throughout the d- throughout the day to get just more movement throughout the day. So we've been tracking steps. And last week, he checked in, and two of his days were way above his goal. Like, I, I don't remember the exact numbers, but we'll use the 10,000 step goal as an example. So it was like 14,000 steps on those two days. But the other days of the week, his step count was below 10,000. Like, he didn't really even get that close. So I'm struggling with this whole focus on the good stuff, focus on the strengths, because I wanna dig in to the stuff that, yeah, went wrong. Like, what, what happened on those days that you couldn't even hit your goal when you got these other days that you, like, absolutely crushed? And he was talking to me, and this was, like, in our group call, so other people were chiming in and had a great discussion around this. he's asking me, like, "So you're saying, like, I really should just focus, just talk about those two really good days and not even get into, you know, what were the barriers? What, what came up on those days? What made those days harder?" And I said, the point is not to just totally ignore when things are going wrong, when setbacks happen, pretend like they weren't there, and only focus on the good stuff. Like, no, that's, like, just delusional, right? So I did say, however, if you're finding yourself immediately, like, wanting to go into and dig into those bad days to figure out what went wrong, like, what can we work with here? Like, and I know, because he's gone through HMCC, that it's not just gonna be like a, like, what'd you do wrong on those low step days, right? It would be, hey, there's probably some information here that we can learn from. Like, there's HMCC angles to go that direction with But he was still kind of grappling with that. And I said, "Okay, how about this? You go respond to his check-in, and just for the next week," give it, like… I think we did, like, two check-ins, I guess it worked out to be. If, "With this step count goal specifically, I do want you to only focus on those good days and ask what went well on those days. How were you able to make that happen? Like, this is such a higher amount than even your goal that we have set for you. Like, that's really impressive. Can you tell me more about those days?" Just focus on that. It was sort of like a challenge for him, and also to show you how this stuff works. so he did that, and then he came back The, The next week, and was like, "Okay, I gotta tell you." Like, I so badly wanted to ask more about those bad days and what happened so we could, like, get into it and, and I was like, "And try to fix it?" And he's like, "Yeah." So… And he said, "But I, I stuck with it. I stuck with the experiment," and I was honestly so surprised. Like, I know inherently that this is important, and, like, it kinda makes, like, common sense, right? Like, point out the good stuff, don't heavily focus on the bad stuff. But I didn't e- expect the outcome. He was like, "I didn't even mention anything about those low step count days," just asked him to tell me more about the good days, and in the next week, his overall step count for every day improved. Every day improved. And it was the coolest thing for him to come back, and he was so excited to share the results of this experiment. So that is why I decided I wanted to talk about this more in an episode, because it was really cool to see. And, like, again, this is someone who is, right now, as we're, as I'm recording this, is graduating from HMCC. Like, has a really strong foundation when it comes to mindset and behavior change and communication with clients, was still feeling this, like, what's called in motivational interviewing, the righting reflex, just, like, this urge to provide solutions and fix things as a coach. Even when he knows that, like, doing that may not be the best direction, it's still hard, and he was still surprised by the outcome. So in general, this is something that a lot of coaches struggle with. I would almost argue that every… 99.9 99.9 percent of coaches struggle with, and they don't even realize it, because this righting reflex, this, like, immediate instinct, this urge to fix and, like, provide solutions and do all of this stuff, it is so instinctual because we're in a helping profession. You're trying to help by doing this. It's obviously not malintended. I would assume it would never be malintended, at least not the people that listen to my podcast. So one thing to note with this is that your instinct to fix This is not a flaw. Like, I don't want you to feel like right now that you're like,"Oh my God, I've been doing something wrong this whole time." it really is just a reflex, and it's coming from a place that you care, and you know that this person hired you, and you want to help them. And when you can see like, okay, these are the things that are going wrong, so that's what we need to focus on, when the reality is that may not actually be the best approach. So why this righting reflex? Why it's so strong? Really, I think culturally there's a component here. In school, in sports, in work, we're trained to hunt for the weaknesses. I mean, I'm literally picturing, like, getting a school paper back with the red, red lines, red pen all over it. That is… You're literally being taught, like, here's all the bad things in bright red on your paper, and then there might be, might be a note at the end that's like, "This part of your paper was really strong" Okay, but you literally now my pieces of paper look like they're bleeding to death with all of the things I did incorrectly, but thanks for telling me that, like, my paragraph structure was still solid. So we, I think in general, strengths are ta- taken for granted. That's, goes for everybody. I mean, raise your hand if you have a hard time recognizing your accomplishments and celebrating those before you dive into something else, or try to justify why you were successful with other things. I mean, this… Yeah, societal norms. And also, it really feels like the responsible and expert thing to do to fix things and offer solutions, because it feels like that's your, how you help this client. You're being paid to help them. And so fixing feels like helping. So the reframe I have for you is understanding that examining those setbacks or the off-track days first in your client check-ins, those, like, that focus first, and leading with your perspective of things often backfires. And I know you've seen it. I know you, I know you've seen this happen, where you start going in on, like, "Okay, looks like you had, like, a decent week. You mentioned that it was pretty hard for you to hit your step count goal. So I'd really like to get into that, and I have some questions for you around that. I also am wondering if maybe you've considered parking at the back of the parking lot when you're walking into work every single day. Like, that's where we tend to go." And when you do that, they may come back and say, "Yeah, cool. Got it. Thanks." But they're not even really in a place to hear it, because you didn't bring them into a place to hear it. So- Based on… I guess we can get into, like, a little bit of behavior change research around this, because it's, it's so, so well ties into a lot of the driving components of behavior change, like self-efficacy. And self-efficacy being, like, I feel like I can continue to work towards things, even in the face of challenges and obstacles, things like that. So one of the absolute strongest sources of belief in your ability is mastery of experience. That sounded like a bunch of just, like, lovely words. But what I mean is, you've done the thing successfully. That is the thing that will be most likely to help you believe in yourself, because, like, you have evidence, you have proof, you've done it already. So when you focus attention on the days or specific behaviors that went well for your clients, like, that's where your first and immediate focus goes. Asking them things like, "How did you make that happen? What s- what was the situation?" Like, "Tell me more about what went on on this day,'cause it seems like you didn't mention anything about it, so, like, tell me more about how you got 14,000 steps that day." You're already helping them just register what that evidence is, the proof that they are capable of doing this. So that boosts self-efficacy, which we know from decades of research that self-efficacy, very strong, very strong indicator if you have that, that you can make the changes, you can stay motivated, you can do the things. So we know that. And then also, I've talked a lot about the ABC psychological needs on the show before. So we have autonomy, belongingness, and competence. And when we, as human beings, have those things, we're more motivated to do something that's related to that, and we're really motivated to get those needs met. So autonomy. So a lot of what we're talking about here, with even just asking these questions instead of, like, immediately providing solutions, that you are asking them, like,"Tell me more about your experience." Like, don't be coach-directed. You want the client to lead. So that plays a role here. And also competence, hugely If you just focus on the low step count days and what went wrong, and yeah, sure, like what can we learn from it, that is very growth mindset oriented, how do we learn from our setbacks? But if you're doing that and not spending ample time on the 14,000 step days, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to help them build that self-efficacy and help them build competence, that they feel like they're capable of doing this thing. Okay? All right. And I, like, I wanna hammer home too that I'm not saying that you should ignore the low days, brush off the off-track weeks, and just focus on the good stuff. That's not necessarily what I'm saying here, so don't take this and run with it, okay? But when I'm saying strengths first, I don't mean strengths only forever, okay? So instead, we're just like really kind of like changing the sequence and the source inside our client conversations, inside our check-ins. So start from what worked. Let the client drive the conversation. Let them drive the problem-solving, and now they can anchor their own story, their own perspective, their own actions to what is going on and to what they're going to do next, versus you directing all of it Okay, really quick break from the episode because I have something brand new that I developed, and it's totally free, and I know you are going to love it. And honestly, I think it's one of the best free resources I've ever made, which is why I'm making a point to pause the episode and tell you about it here. This is a free guide with the psychology-backed questions for the three conversations that are happening before someone makes the decision to hire you or to buy from you. The direct conversations with prospective clients, like on sales calls and in the DMs, wherever, that's only one important conversation, and there are two more conversations that heavily influence whether someone says yes before they even get on a call with you. And this free guide, I'm giving you questions supported by behavior change science, of course, for all three of those most important conversations. What to ask in your content, what to ask your prospective clients, and what you need to be asking yourself. And that last one, most coaches try to skip, but it's arguably the most important one, so please don't. The questions you're asking and the ones that you're not asking really do shape everything. So head to the link in the show notes and download it right now, and let's get back to the episode Okay. So I would love to leave you guys with, like, some more tangible things here. Like, I'm hoping at this point you do-- You got the idea. Hopefully, it, it did bring you a little… Like, a few steps further than just, like, what I was saying at the beginning of the episode of, of course, I'm supposed to focus on the good stuff, Casey. Like, ugh, what is the purpose of this episode? So tangible things. In your client check-ins, try the strengths first. God, that's difficult to say. Strengths first question swap. Oh my gosh. instead of opening with what made the low step count days hard, what barriers came up, open with what made the high step count days work. Tell me more about how you made that happen. Start there. Open with that. And obviously, this isn't just-- This does not just apply to tracking your steps, okay? Like, I hope that's clear. This can be applied to anything. And reflect the strengths that your client doesn't necessarily name out loud to you. If they're not picking up on it, but you are, say it. Show them. Shine a light on that for them. Like, "I, I want to point out something that I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit for." Please do those things. Make sure, make sure that you are always sitting on your hands first. That's something that I say all the time to HMCC students with this writing reflex idea. Sit on your hands. Don't immediately provide anything, jump to solutions, conclusions, assumptions, and resist the urge to fix what's wrong. Like, keep that in mind. Literally, just try that for the next week to the best of your ability and watch what happens. And then, then, then, then, then, only then, you can bridge into those hard days, those low days, those setbacks that were happening. And you can do that right away, or you could do something like my student did with the story that I was describing, and give it a full week and then see what happens first. Then you can bridge into those setbacks, failures, obstacles, whatever. For instance, like, " You said that walking after dinner was something that was helpful for you to hit those higher step days. Reflecting on the low step days, I'm wondering, do you think something like that, maybe it's exactly that, maybe you just happened to skip that after dinner walk on those days? Or is there something that could have been included, if you reflect back, that is similar, that would have helped you?" That's the bridge The problem, in this case, it still gets solved, it still gets worked on, but now it's coming from a place of strengths and what's going well, and just general feeling like I can actually do this in your client's case, right? Okay. All of this probably makes sense to you in theory, right? And I'm telling you, it's a lot harder to keep yourself from jumping into fix-it mode than you think. And please do not let this episode go in one ear and out the other, please. Because I really want you to test this out in full. I would really encourage you to do this so you can really try to experience the same result that my student did when he just, like, went all in on that one specific behavior for one client and did not bring up the low days, did not bring up the weaknesses, did not try to fix anything. So that said, of course, this student had already gone through, like, ugh, at that point, 10 weeks of teaching, learning from me inside of HMCC, so he did have some other things at his disposal and knew how to communicate with the clients, whether he was talking about the strengths or the weaknesses. Like, he was well-equipped, so he did have that prior leg up, I suppose. But that doesn't mean that you, if you have not been through HMCC yet… I'm so sorry for those of you who are watching on YouTube. I've hit my microphone with my hand, like, 17 times. I'm apparently very animated with this topic today. Um, if you have not been through HMCC yet, you can absolutely still implement this and see results. But, you know, we are getting close to enrollment for our fall 2026 class of the Health Mindset Coaching Certification. So if you are feeling like, "Hmm, maybe I could use some more training in this. I would like to be a success story on Casey's podcast," then please make sure your name is on the wait list for HMCC. When you're on the wait list, you also get five free lessons in mindset and behavior change coaching right away, so you can get started, like, uh, today. You don't need to wait till August until we open doors for enrollment. So that's all I have for you. Thank you for listening. I hope this was helpful. Again, this was something that I was like, "I don't really know if this is gonna give me enough substance to talk about on the pod," but then I had that conversation and that, like, test experiment with my student, and was like,"I, I, I wanna talk about this more. I think it's important." So I hope you felt like it was important. If you don't feel like it is, just go try it. Do it first, and then come back and tell me what you think. Okay, goodbye. And that's a wrap for today's episode of Not another Mindset show. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you get notified of the next one. Because if you're anything like me, if the episodes aren't popping up for you automatically, you'll keep forgetting to come back to the show even if you really, really enjoyed it. So go ahead and hit that subscribe button and make it super easy for you and of course. If you wanna see more episodes just like this one, I'd love for you to let me know by leaving a review. I know, I know it's super annoying to do, but the few seconds that it takes means the world to me and also ensures that I can keep providing free education and value to you. And just to sweeten the deal, I am going to be picking a random reviewer every single month to receive a free workshop or product from me. If you're looking for more free resources or just wanna connect, hang out, chat a little bit, come find me on Instagram. I'm Coach Casey, Joe over there. That is where I hang out the most in the land of social media. Alright, my friends, that is all I have for you this time. I so appreciate you being here and love to see you prioritizing your growth. I'll see you next time.