Beyond The Clinic

084 Building a Courageous Mindset & Redefining Success in Business with Shelley Bosworth

• Sarah Almond Bushell

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In this powerful conversation, I’m joined by international mindset and business coach Shelley Bosworth to unpack the real work behind building a courageous mindset. We dive into the practical side of mindset growth — what it looks like day-to-day for ambitious clinicians in business, and how confidence isn't the prerequisite for action — it's the result of it.

Shelley shares her leap-from-corporate story, the link between mindset and burnout, why fear of success is more common than you think, and how to stop comparing yourself to others. If you've ever said “I just need more confidence,” this episode will help you reframe that thinking and offer a clear path forward.

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📌 What We Cover in This Episode:

  • Shelley’s pivot from corporate to coaching during the pandemic
  • Mindset and strategy (and why you need both)
  • Redefining success and what it means to you
  • The difference between courage and confidence 
  • The “Catch it, Challenge it, Change it” method to shift negative self-talk

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Sarah Bushell (00:00)

Welcome along everybody. I am delighted to introduce you to my guest today. Shelley Bosworth is an international business and mindset coach and keynote speaker with over 25 years of corporate leadership experience across renowned retail and hospitality brands. Now, Shelley took a bold leap launching her coaching business during the global pandemic. She's based in Dubai and she has since grown her practice


empowering hundreds of individuals to overcome self-doubt, imposter syndrome and limiting beliefs. Shelley specializes in working with women who have bold goals, but real lives to master their mindset and achieve their goals in life and in business. And she's known for her high energy, authentic, no-nonsense approach.


Shelley inspires audiences to take courageous action, proving that with the right mindset, success is within reach for everyone. And today we're gonna be talking all about the practical aspects of mindset work. So welcome, Shelley, it's a pleasure to have you here.


Shelley Bosworth (01:07)

Thank you so much for having me. It's a delight to be here. I listened to that and I'm like, oh, I sound quite good, don't I?


Sarah Bushell (01:12)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sounds really good. Yeah. And rightly so, and rightly so. So let's start off talking about your leap into this business, Shelley. So you said that business started in the pandemic, which I imagine it probably did for a lot of my listeners, actually. And I would love to know, you know, what was it that gave you the courage to decide to go all in and do that when the world was in a really uncertain place?


Shelley Bosworth (01:27)

It did.


It's a really great question. And actually what I'm going to do is go ahead step back from the pandemic and just give a little bit of context because I almost want to put the story straight in that I absolutely did go all in in the middle of a pandemic. And what happened was I actually made the decision to step out of corporate and into running my own business at the back end of 2019. Now, of course, at that moment, we did not know what was coming in 2020. And Sarah, if I'm really honest,


I'm not sure if I'd known in December 2019, what was around the corner that I'd have made the decision I made. And I think it's really important to be honest about that. So I wasn't someone who in the midst of a global pandemic said, you know what, I think I'm going to start a business. In fact, if I'm really honest, I could have gone back to corporate in 2020 and I considered it. So I came from hospitality and whilst the hospitality industry was a mess in the global pandemic, the role that I had and the...


relationship I have with my previous boss, I actually had a conversation with him in April, 2020 and discussed what if I just came back? It would have done him a big favor. And I thought in that moment of time, this is the only option. Like, what was I thinking? This is, know, all my plans are about to fall apart. I guess the courage came in, in that conversation of saying, do you know what, actually, I do have a choice to make here. I can still give this a go. I just need to change how I'm going to do it. And...


In that moment, my plan B went out the window because my plan B, like so many of us, I'm sure, was, you know, if it doesn't work out, I'll just go and get a job again. But the hospitality industry was a bit of a mess. And I think I knew then, actually, everything was about to change forever. If I go all in, there's probably no going back in the way that I'd thought there would be. I hope that makes sense. So that's where that first real moment of courage came from. And we've been, you know,


I guess my decision-making around building the business had come before a pandemic. I'd been through some life-changing stuff. My husband had lost both of his parents. And so we were in a real kind of what's it all for? And the pandemic, for so many of us, just added another layer of realization of how precious life is. And so I guess I just took that double whammy and decided, you know what, I'm in my 40s.


This is where I want things to go. Yes, I've got to, I hate the word pivot, but I did have to do some pivoting of how I was going to do things, but let's go for it. What's the worst that can happen? And that is kind of a mantra I now live by. What is the worst that could happen? And I'm pleased to say here I am now in 2025 and the worst didn't happen. It was not easy by any sense of the word, but it's been worth every single step of the way. So yeah.


Sarah Bushell (04:15)

Awesome, yeah, that's brilliant. And I think lots of people can resonate with that because in our profession, I think exactly the same, know, the pandemic made you realize that actually, you know what, life is too short, what else can I be doing? And for us, it can be quite easy to just go back because...


Shelley Bosworth (04:28)

Yeah. Yeah.


Sarah Bushell (04:35)

you know, in the NHS, there's often lots of vacancies, there's often lots of locum work. If you didn't want to go back into a permanent job, you could, you know, sidestep into something just to pay the bills. And I think some people probably did do that. And I think other people, you know, stood the course and, you know, went through it all. And yet probably very much had to change the way that they anticipated delivering services because clinics weren't a thing for a long time, were they? You know, people


had to actually do the online work. And even in the NHS, they were running online clinics for quite a long time. And I think actually some trusts still have those online clinics. So yeah, I think a of people can resonate with your story there as well. So when you were working in corporate, were you still in mindset coaching or was that completely new?


Shelley Bosworth (05:20)

So my corporate role, I started out in the operational world. And so I started in retail, I ran stores. But when you run any business for another business, and I kind of say now I used to run other people's businesses for them. But of course that involved people. So the people part was where I learned very early on that I had a strength when it came to people, understanding people and kind of seeing something in people that they didn't see in themselves.


So my transition into coaching was actually very organic and very natural. My entire corporate career was, was built on building great teams. And I don't say that lightly, don't get me wrong. I've also had all the people challenges along the way. but my, my last role in corporate to give some context was I worked for a big holiday company in the UK. I had a team of people in the central office and I had kind of dotted line responsibility for several thousand employees around the UK.


And so I did a lot of work around kind of on the ground operational, but engaging people to deliver operationally and people development. And that stood me in really good stead. So the coaching part, I was a coach because I had, was a leader of teams. And then I also had an awful lot of really practical experience around operationally, how do you run a business? And I think that's how so much has organically grown for me in the business because


fellow founders saw me kind of taking quite naturally to the business running part of running business. And I'd also had lots of not only experience, but I was also fortunate to work in businesses that really put self, put development of people on the radar. And so I got involved in a lot of that. So it's, it's been a really wonderful bringing together of all those skills and learning a lot along the way of running my own business.


Sarah Bushell (07:03)

Yeah,


yeah, great. So, so clearly the operational side of stuff, the strategic side of stuff alone isn't enough, is it? So, you we do need that courageous mindset work as well. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? Yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (07:14)

room.


Yeah,


yeah. So there's a brilliant, I don't know if it's someone's quote. I've definitely seen it on somewhere on Instagram and it says it says exactly what I want to say. And so, and I, and I use, I give my own iteration of it. You can have a brilliant plan. You can have a brilliant strategy, but if you have a poor mindset, you're not going to do the plan. You're not going to implement the plan. You're not going to do the things you need to do. Now, conversely, I will say that you can have an incredible


mindset, you can have like a really positive mindset, you can have great belief in yourself, but if you do not know what needs to be done and how to do that, then you're just throwing spaghetti at a wall or kind of, you know, running along with a smile on your face, but not actually doing anything. And so that is why the work that I do is bringing from my corporate work, the operational piece, but alongside that, yes, a little bit of what I'd already started to learn, but I've layered upon that and learned.


over the last five years and kind of studied even further. You have to bring mindset and strategy together. And yes, I talk about courageous mindset, which we can talk about in a second, but my belief very strongly for myself and for every woman that I've met who's running her own business is you cannot have one without the other if you want true success, whatever success means to you. I know people that have brilliant mindsets.


but they haven't got a Scooby on, forgive me, but it's not easy running a business. And if you don't know some of the things you need to do, I also know people who know exactly what they need to do, but they're stuck in their own heads or getting in their own way. And so yeah, you need to bring strategy and mindset together to get the results you want to get.


Sarah Bushell (08:51)

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you there. And you just touched on there about defining your own version of success. So let's talk a little bit about that. And I'd love to know why, you know, why that's quite hard for people, because I think there's a lot of stuff out there about what you should be doing. Yeah, let's talk about that, we?


Shelley Bosworth (08:57)

Yes.


let's talk about that because that is the first challenge we face when we use that word success. Now, first of all, I think that word success gets bandied around a lot. And we are living in a world where we see everybody else's version of success. And we've got a lot of people telling us exactly as you just said, that word should, but sends a shudder through me. You know, we are being...


kind of fed almost our brains are being infiltrated on a minute by minute, day by day basis of what we should be striving for. And I think what that means is so many people have lost sight of what they actually want for themselves. And you almost get into this place and I think we've all been there and I'm really clear about just because this is what I do for a living does not mean I don't have some mindset challenges. I've definitely got into, God, I want that? Should I be trying to get to there too? So first of all, I think success has been


I don't know what the right word is. I don't know if it's been amplified, stretched. I think it's got muddy because so many people out there are, for all the right reasons, not always the right reasons, but there's a lot of kind of sharing what their success looks like and indicating that's what we should want. I think the other part is so many of us have got a lot of conditioning around what success is. So from our parents, from our own experiences, but also an awful lot of us carry a lot around.


gratitude, humble, bragging, you know, all the words. And so all of that means so many people really struggle to define what does success really mean to you? Because I think we carry a lot of, you know, I can't really say what I really want. And second of all, I'm not even sure what I really want because there's so much noise out there. I've lost sight for me of what success is. And I guess the question I would say to anyone is maybe just let go of the word success and just ask yourself,


How do you want your life to be?


Sarah Bushell (11:02)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that takes it away from being something in the future that you're striving for to something that's actually here in the here and now. Yeah. Yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (11:03)

because it's a really good starting point.


Absolutely, yeah. And I


think that's the other part around this elusive success piece. It becomes almost bigger and bigger and then it feels further and further away. And then all we do is feed our own negative self-taught because we're not there. And actually, if you take a really good look at where you are now, you might realize that...


your old version of success is actually the life you're already living, you know, and give yourself some credit for that. And that doesn't mean you can't want more, by the way. You can absolutely want more, but you might be surprised at just how much you've already achieved and where you're at.


Sarah Bushell (11:48)

Yeah, and I imagine, you know, I'm just thinking of my own situation. And actually, that's a huge weight off your shoulders, I think, when you recognise that actually what you've got now is great, is success. So I'm somebody who's always set goals, know, like five year goals, 10 year goals, not longer than that, because I'll be retired by then.


Shelley Bosworth (12:11)

I love that.


Sarah Bushell (12:13)

Yeah, always


like looking, striving for the next level, looking for the next version of success. And this week we've had, my daughter hasn't been very well. spent six hours in A &E on Monday night. We spent all day in hospital yesterday, know, sitting waiting for doctors and tests and all this kind of thing. And, you know, it's only now as we're having this conversation that I'm thinking, isn't it great that I can do that? You know, in my business, I can, I'm my own boss. I can, you know, move things around. I can be there.


and not have to worry about it. You when I was working for somebody else, when I was working in the NHS, I would have to, I would have this feeling of huge guilt because I was having to leave a clinic behind, ask my colleague to cover who was already stressed out, knowing that I was going to have to return the favour at some point. You know, how lucky am I to be able to live that life now? That has got to be a version of success, hasn't it?


Shelley Bosworth (13:08)

100%. I mean, I do wanna just kinda go, that's not luck, you did that.


Sarah Bushell (13:13)

Yeah. Thank you.


Shelley Bosworth (13:14)

But I


think that's really important. And I guess that in itself is about acknowledging success because you've created that. You've worked hard to be in that position. I have no doubt about it. But you're absolutely right. When you were talking, it's so interesting, isn't it? When you have these conversations, things kind of pop in. And there's a great book to anybody that's listening. This is a highly recommended book and it fits in this success piece. It's called The Gap and the Game. It's Dan Sullivan. I'm sure I'm quoting correctly. We might need to go and check that.


the gap in the game. And the whole principle is that so many of us spend so much time focused on the gap, i.e. where we are and where we want to be. And don't get me wrong, we should absolutely, I know I used the word should, I fully believe in goals. Like you, I've got goals, I've got one year, I've got three months, one year, five year, 10 year. And it's great to have, you know, something that we're aiming for. But the point of the gap in the game is actually we also need to recognise the game.


actually really looking at where we were and where we are now and how much we've gained. Because if all we ever do is focus on the gap between where we are and where we want to be, all we ever feel is that we're not enough and we're not doing enough and we haven't got there. And if I look at, you we started this conversation with, I kind of went all in on my business in 2020. I look at where I was, where my life was, who I was in January 2020 versus who I am now, where I am now.


living in Dubai, the business I have now, you so much of the life I have now is what I dared to dream of in 2020. And yet, yes, I still want more. And yes, that, and as I said, it's great and it's okay to want more, but please everyone listening, take a moment now and recognize where you are versus where you were, because that fuels the mindset of where you can go next.


Sarah Bushell (15:08)

Yeah, brilliant. love that. And I'll source that book and I'll put the right link in the description.


Shelley Bosworth (15:11)

It's a brilliant book, it really


is. And it's one that you, you know, I share it with my clients a lot. I share the principles with my clients, with my community. I often bring them back to that and come on, let's, you know, gap and gain thinking, what are we doing? Because sometimes we all slip into gap thinking. And it's having one eye on both, right? It's having one eye on the future, but a reminder of how far we've


Sarah Bushell (15:34)

Yeah, yeah. And so is part of gap thinking, is comparisonitis part of that? So looking at like colleagues or perhaps people who are a few steps ahead of you and thinking that, you know, they're doing better than me. Is that part of it?


Shelley Bosworth (15:49)

100 % because if you think about what we're doing in comparison is we are looking at where we are not and where we think they are. And so it is fueling gap thinking. It's fueling the mindset of I'm not enough, I'm not far enough forward, I'm not where I want to be, should be, think, you I need to be. It's also them feeding.


And a mindset, let's remember what mindset is. Mindset is all in our minds. And I often say to people, quite bluntly, we have to remember that a lot of what we're thinking is all in our heads. It's not necessarily true. And the piece with comparison is there's two parts to comparison. First of all, we don't really know the truth. What we see is not necessarily the truth. And so the first piece I always say to people when they're in a spiral of comparison is, what do you know to be true? I really know to be true. How do you know for that to be true?


But the second question is, what are you making that mean about you? Because that's what we're doing. When we look at others and we start comparing, what we're actually doing is making that mean something about us. It's not really about them. It's what we're telling ourselves about us. But it feeds straight into, because actually what we might be telling ourselves is that I'm not good enough, which is then feeding into gap. So yes, it's absolutely part of gap thinking. And there are a couple of really simple questions.


I say simple. This stuff is always simple, not necessarily easy.


Sarah Bushell (17:06)

Yeah.


And I guess that if you are comparing yourself and you're not identifying that this is gap thinking, you could strive to do more and more and work harder and harder and then, you know, burn out potentially. Is that often what happens? Yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (17:22)

Yes,


absolutely. mean, I look burnout is a subject all on its own. And I am very, very conscious that there are forms of burnout. Okay. There is, you know, and I'm, I'm certainly not in the medical profession. So I'm not about to diagnose burnout, but what I see in terms of the symptoms of burnout and mindset, I think very often we think burnout is a really physical piece. And I, my belief, my experience and my belief is that it's


Sarah Bushell (17:29)

Yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (17:49)

Often the output of burnout is very physical, but it starts more often than not from actually the mindset because it's fed by us not believing we're not doing enough, fed by believing we are not enough, we're not where we're supposed to be. And so what we do, and I say we, you know, I have experienced burnout and I would be lying if I said, I haven't got dangerously close as a business owner as well, because I've definitely been in that camp and wanting to do more. And now I absolutely keep it real. I just have the tools on hand now to manage it better.


But that, if you're thinking then about gap thinking comparison, what that can drive is a belief we need to do more, that we're not doing enough. That if we just, you know, show up more, do more, give more, potentially for less, then it'll all be okay. But all that does is wipe us out physically and mentally. Burnout is very often an outcome of...


Sarah Bushell (18:39)

Yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (18:44)

I don't want to use the words poor mindset, but mindset challenges, mindset struggles, and mindset struggles are fed by comparison, imposter syndrome, limiting beliefs, et cetera, et cetera.


Sarah Bushell (18:54)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that so often these sort of, I would say the common mindset challenges that I see in my colleagues are lack of confidence and that can manifest itself in different ways. So it's lack of confidence in terms of things like putting themselves out there, sharing opinions, maybe being on social media, that kind of thing, but also lack of confidence, which


manifest more like imposter syndrome, disbelief, not believing that they can do it they're not worthy or they've got thereby luck more than anything else. So I see that a lot. And also, actually, interestingly, it came up recently in one of my group coaching calls, fear of success.


Shelley Bosworth (19:36)

there's


a good one.


Sarah Bushell (19:37)

Yeah, absolutely. I think it was, came out of the blue, it was unrecognized, but it was very much, know, if this works, I'm going to have to give up all these, you know, positive things, freedom, not being able to go and take the dog for a walk at three o'clock in the afternoon, not going to be able to do my yoga class, you know, all of these kinds of things, if this works. Yeah, do you see that with your clients?


Shelley Bosworth (20:03)

Yeah, so there's a couple of things there. Let's quickly grab the fear of success one, because I think one, I often say fear of success is like the silent fear, because we all struggle a little bit with how counterintuitive fear of success is, because we all want these things. We say we have these goals, we say we want to achieve these things, but actually, very often we don't realise how we are blocking ourselves from achieving them, because we have a fear of success. Success brings change. Success, so if we go back to, I'm really conscious we had a conversation about defining what success is.


Sarah Bushell (20:10)

Mm-hmm.


Shelley Bosworth (20:32)

But if we take the dictionary definition of success, it is the achievement of a goal. It's the attainment of something, right? Which means we achieve the thing we don't currently have, which means things are gonna change or potentially change. And that in itself brings uncertainty and fear. And that is often what feeds a fear of success. So really it's about managing the fear of success or identifying if there might be a fear of success is actually asking ourselves,


what do we think might happen if I achieve my goal? And then how will I handle that? Can I handle that? And so kind of being able to face into that. So that's the piece around fear of success, which is a really interesting one. Now you talked also about imposter syndrome, but you led him with confidence. And actually I want to kind of pick up on that if I can. So I talk a lot and you've mentioned it already. I talk about courageous mindset. I mean, if I had, know, forgive me, I live in Dubai, so I work in so many currencies. So we'll go dollar for a second. If I had a dollar for every person that has ever said to me,


If I have more confidence, I just need more confidence, help me be more confident. And for the first couple of years of my work, I talked a lot about confidence. I used to do confidence workshops, et cetera, et cetera. And I've shifted into courage because what I realized was actually confidence is the result, not the requirement.


What we need is courage to do the thing. Confidence comes through showing ourselves what we can do. Confidence is the output. Firstly, confidence is a feeling, and it's a feeling we get when we do something and realize we can do it. When we do something and we get the success. When we do something, we realize that actually, even if I don't quite get it right, it's okay. That's how we build confidence. But what so many people are doing is saying, I need confidence to do. Actually, what we need is courage.


What we need is courage to do and then we get the confidence because confidence comes through the repeated behavior. So that's really important. just wanna kind of call that out. Now mindset is all about what do we believe about ourselves? What have we learned and therefore what has become our current truth? And when we start to notice what we are telling ourselves about ourselves, if we can then just be a little bit courageous and face into that,


and maybe question some of what we've believed for so long, we can do something differently and get a different outcome. Does that make sense? So, yeah, and I guess I just want to like picking up because imposter syndrome, I mean, gosh, that label don't even start me on that conversation. But you know, it's a real thing. I am not invalidating the feelings of imposter syndrome. I've experienced them. In fact, I could very honestly say I've had a conversation with my own coach.


Sarah Bushell (22:54)

Yes.


Shelley Bosworth (23:06)

about imposter syndrome in the last three weeks. But what I know is that imposter syndrome is a feeling and the only way to stop feeling like an imposter is to stop thinking like an imposter. So it comes back to what am I telling myself about myself? Because those are my thoughts and they might not actually be true. The stories I'm telling myself are myself is what's feeding the feeling of imposter syndrome. And so it's that piece around


getting really honest with ourselves about what we're thinking, because it's what we're thinking that creates how we feel and it's what we feel that we label.


Sarah Bushell (23:41)

Yes, yeah. often, well, 95 % of our thoughts are subconscious, aren't they? often you have to start with the feeling and then try and peel back the layers of the onion to identify, yeah, yeah, yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (23:48)

Right.


Yes. Yeah. Yeah.


In that feeling, it's then being able to, and it's not like I say, we make it sound so simple, right? But actually I do fully appreciate it's not necessarily easy. just see if you can notice what you're actually thinking. What's the little conversation you're having with yourself? What's, because we've all got an inner voice, right? So can you just tune in and see what is it you're actually thinking right now? What's going on?


Sarah Bushell (24:03)

Yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (24:20)

and what's the little story you're telling yourself. That's what we need to tune into because if we don't start addressing that, we never change the outcomes.


Sarah Bushell (24:28)

Yeah, absolutely. So are there any sort of practical tools or things that people can do when this happens?


Shelley Bosworth (24:36)

So there's lots of different ways. I guess what I think is the best way for me to share is my go-to tactic, right? And it's a really nice, easy one to remember as well. So I've just talked there about kind of awareness really, and it all starts with tuning in. It starts with getting honest and listening to yourself. And I say to people quite a lot, like just really tune into your inner voice and


Don't be afraid to almost speak to yourself out loud. So I will often kind of go, I will actually out loud say to myself, stop Shelley, because what you're doing is starting to, because you know, we all have this by the way, but you've got to start tuning in and noticing. So my phrase, if you like, is catch it, challenge it, change it. So catch it is the awareness piece. Really start to notice what you tell yourself. Now you can do this at a really like top level as a starting point.


Sarah Bushell (25:19)

Okay.


Shelley Bosworth (25:29)

Anyone listening right now, here's my question to you. What are the things you constantly say to yourself? So even if it's as simple as, I'm always late, I'm just really rubbish at times. Where are the things where you go, I'm just no good at, I'm really rubbish at, I could never? They're the things to start with and we've all got them. And if you notice one of those that actually is one you say quite often, the first thing to do is just go, okay, let's just notice that. And now, so catch that.


Sarah Bushell (25:44)

Yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (25:54)

Where are you saying constantly, I could never, I could never, I'd never be able to do, I'm just rubbish at. There's probably, we've all got lots of these, okay? So just pick one to start with, particularly if you notice it's coming up a lot and in your business. Challenge it is really simply just ask yourself a different question. Here's the question to ask, is that absolutely true? So when you say I'm rubbish at, what's the example I always use? Let's use one that's not business related, because it's easier. So I run.


Okay, running is my thing. But I also say that I'm no good at strength training. Now, I tell myself I'm not strong enough. And ironically, if you don't do any strength training, you don't get strong enough, right? But my story is I'm just not strong. I've just got no upper body strength. That's actually the story. If I now say it out loud, I've got no upper body strength, right? So I have this limiting belief, basically. And so that holds me back from doing things I want to do.


So my question then to me is actually, is that true? Have I really got no upper body strength? Well, let's be really honest. Of course that's not true. If you really take the statement, I have no upper body strength. Well, you I'm holding my body up right now. mean, I know I'm being, but it's being able to kind of even lightheartedly show your brain that what you're saying is not completely true. It is not 100 % true and it's not 100 % true 100 % of the time. That's all you need to start to change a pattern.


And that's what challenging is about. Just really asking yourself is what I'm telling myself completely true. Has it always been the way? there any evidence at all that maybe I do have some upper body strength? Because if you can start to introduce that, you can then start to have a different conversation with yourself, which is, if I got a little bit, maybe I could have a little bit more. that's where I say this stuff is simple. I'm not saying it's easy. Now you can work this at very different levels, but


Sarah Bushell (27:25)

Yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (27:39)

The Catch It, Challenge It, Change It is about not just carrying on, not just keeping going with that label that's holding you back right now. It is if you want to do something differently, you're gonna have to think something differently. And the way to do that is to catch what it is you're currently thinking that is stopping you doing the thing you say you want to do, challenge the thought, and start to introduce the possibility of a different way of thinking. That is my...


That is a game changer once you really start to work with that. And it is as simple and practical as that, but it all starts with noticing and being honest. Now you can write that down as well. you know, I often say to people for the next couple of days, just write down every time you say something that's an I'm not, I can't, I'm not able, I'm rubbish at, the negative and then notice and maybe just pick one and work with


Sarah Bushell (28:31)

And the change it part is the new behaviour, the new thing that you want to do and reinforced you have to do that on a regular basis in order to.


Shelley Bosworth (28:41)

Yeah,


yeah. And so this isn't about kind of going, right, and now every day for the next 30 days, this is, so I get it, which, you know, again, let's have some realism here, but it's, if you catch it and you challenge it, you've already brought it out into the open. So the changing it is, yeah, do one small thing that actually flies in the face of what you've been telling yourself. Because, and so then when I said about confidence earlier, know, confidence is showing yourself what you can do.


And all you need to do is one tiny thing and you've just given yourself a new piece of evidence. And you can add another tiny thing and another tiny thing. And so, yes, it's then, and the repeated part, soon enough, you are able to go, that's actually not true anymore. So this isn't about me going from no upper body strength to, you know, strong woman in three weeks. It's about me, but it is about me being able to say, it's not true. Stop telling yourself that if you want to do something about this.


then you need to tell yourself something differently and do something differently. And so most people will have seen somewhere on social media or on the internet, the, I don't even know what it's called actually, your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your actions, your actions create your reality or your behavior creates your reality. I use the BEAR acronym. So literally, BEAR, think about BEAR, B-E-A-R. What you believe and tell yourself is what you feel and what you've...


and that's emotion, so it creates an emotion in you, you act upon your emotions and your actions create your reality. So it's all about starting. Most people think I just need to do something differently and I'll get a different outcome. But you know what? You won't, because you won't do something differently because you don't have the belief that you can. So you just got to start chipping away at your current thought process because your current thought process is what you believe to be true. What you're telling yourself is the truth. If you start chipping away at that one tiny piece at a time,


you'll have tiny different feelings, which will mean you'll take tiny different actions, which will give you a tiny different reality. And that all adds up. So bear, belief, emotion, action, reality. Work with that.


Sarah Bushell (30:42)

Awesome. That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. And that's a really easy one to remember as well, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. So Shelley, before we wrap up, do want to tell us about your self leadership quiz?


Shelley Bosworth (30:46)

special.


Yeah.


Yes, I would love to. So I've obviously talked a lot about


Get honest with yourself, get to know yourself. I believe self-awareness is the biggest gift we can give ourselves. And as I mentioned, was really fortunate and I don't say lucky, I think I was fortunate. I chose some good businesses to work for who invested in development of their people. And so I was exposed, that sounds like a strange word to use now I say it out loud, but I was fortunate to be exposed to various personality profiling tests. I have worked with coaches in my time in corporate.


So you name it, I've done it. Disc, insights, MBTI, et cetera, et cetera. I'm disc qualified. So when I came out of my corporate role, I decided to train in disc so that could use that in the work I did. But what I realized was so much of that is about the workplace. And I mean the workplace, i.e. the employed workplace. It's all very corporate driven and it's very corporately written. And so I started to think about what could I do to help?


Sarah Bushell (31:47)

Yeah.


Shelley Bosworth (31:54)

women in business. And I started with a business facing quiz, but actually then I did a little bit of work with that and I was like, this isn't just about business. And I say all the time, like the work I do, I love helping people in their businesses make more money. But what I really love is helping people make more money in their businesses so they have the life they want to live and they're achieving the life goals. So the self leadership quiz is taken from my experience and my depth of understanding of disc profiling and all the profiling tools.


my experience of life and my work as a mindset coach. And what I've done is I've created a more realistic version. So this quiz, and it's a top line, you this is about a starting point where the quiz takes you through a series of questions that ask you about how you respond, behave, react in certain situations. And what it does is it spits out at the end, a personality profile, and it's about helping you understand strengths.


Sarah Bushell (32:27)

Okay.


Okay.


Shelley Bosworth (32:48)

as well as how do you mitigate some opportunities? Because we've all got strengths, but we've all got opportunities. And so the profiles, I've now got to this off by heart. What I've created are profiles called the achiever, the performer, the thinker, the supporter, the juggler, and the dreamer. Now, nobody is just one of those things. The way that the quiz works is it actually says, this is your strongest profile, but you have a bit of this too. And so just helps you understand a little bit about


how you probably think and behave. And then there are opportunities to take that to the next stage of kind of really understanding what can I do with that. But it's the first stage of understanding that and it gives you some tips around how could you leverage this? And these might be some things to look out


Sarah Bushell (33:30)

Amazing. I do love a personality test so I will be doing that. The more you can learn about yourself the better you can be. So yeah, I love that.


Shelley Bosworth (33:38)

Absolutely. Yeah.


And this is not about changing you. It's, you know, none of this work is about changing who you are. There is nothing wrong with who you are. I want to be really clear about that. You know, I can't change people's past. I can't change the beliefs you have. What I can help you do is understand how to leverage your strengths, mitigate your opportunities and work with what you've learned and build new beliefs about yourself because there's a


whole bunch of stuff I promise that you're not even realizing.


Sarah Bushell (34:09)

Yeah, amazing. And I'll make sure that I grab the link for you from you and stick it in the show notes as well. Awesome. Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time, Shelley. Where can people connect with you?


Shelley Bosworth (34:13)

Yes.


So my favorite place to hang out is Instagram. I do love a bit of Instagram. I'm very easy to find, Shelly Bosworth Official, that's with an E before the Y, but again, we'll put that in the show notes, I'm sure. If you prefer LinkedIn, I am over there too, but come over and say hi. If anything that I've said has resonated or raised a question, just drop me a DM. I'm happy to answer anything more or help if I can.


Sarah Bushell (34:41)

Thank you ever so much for your time today.


Shelley Bosworth (34:44)

Thank you for having me. It's been absolutely brilliant to chat with you.


Sarah Bushell (34:46)

Yeah, awesome.

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Sarah Almond Bushell

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