16 | Are Your Thoughts Secretly Sabotaging Your Success? How to Rewrite Your Mindset for Growth featuring Laura Watson

Is Your Mindset Silently Sabotaging Your Leadership?

👉 Do you constantly push yourself—but still feel like you’re falling short?

👉 Are you running on empty, trying to do everything “right,” yet stuck in overwhelm or self-doubt?

👉 Ever feel like you know what to do to succeed… but something invisible is holding you back?

In this powerful episode of I’m joined by Laura Watson, founder of Venture Coaching International. With 25+ years of experience in coaching, counseling, and leadership development, Laura unpacks the mindset traps that keep high-achieving women stuck—and how to shift from stress to strength.

🔥 In This Episode:
✔️ The hidden mindset behind burnout and why "not good enough" thinking runs deep
✔️ How self-sabotage often disguises itself as perfectionism or productivity
✔️ The Chain of Change: how thoughts create results—and how to interrupt the spiral
✔️ Real-life examples of how one mindset shift can change your entire career trajectory

💬 Key Quote:
"The feeling is always the clue. Track it back to the thought—and that’s where the real change begins." – Laura Watson

🛠️ Try This Action Step:
Next time you feel anxious, frustrated, or stuck—pause. 

Ask yourself:
👉 What thought just caused that feeling?
👉 Is it true… or just familiar?

Awareness is your first step to breaking the cycle.

💼 Ready to Lead with Confidence & Calm?

🚀 Take the FREE Leadership Style Quiz to uncover your strengths and unique leadership path: https://theshannonfox.com/leadership-style

📩 Join the Career EmpowHERment Collective (Facebook Group):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/careerempowhermentcollective

🔗 Connect with Laura Watson: https://venturecoaching.ca

💡 New episodes drop every Tuesday! Subscribe and share if this helped you!

Kat and Tanner by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/

Transcript

Are your thoughts silently sabotaging your success? In this episode, business coach Laura Watson uncovers the invisible mindsets that keep career women stuck—and the one mindset shift that could change everything. Whether you're burning out or stuck in self-doubt, this conversation will help you rewrite the story and reclaim your power. Stay tuned—it's going to be eye-opening.

Welcome to the Shannon Fox Show, the podcast where we empower career moms to thrive. I'm your host, Shannon Fox, a career advancement coach dedicated to helping moms like you leverage your strengths to land your dream job, secure that well-deserved raise, or finally get that promotion—all without sacrificing time with your family. Each week, I’ll bring you actionable strategies, inspiring stories, and strength-based tools to help you align your career with your natural gifts and step into your full potential.

So if you're ready to stop feeling stuck and start building the career and life you deserve, you're in the right place. Let's get started.

Hello everyone and welcome. I'm joined here today with Laura Watson.

Shannon:

Laura is the founder and lead business coach at Venture Coaching International, where she helps business owners and executives improve their personal effectiveness, communication, and leadership skills. With over 25 years of coaching and counseling experience, Laura specializes in uncovering blind spots, developing mental and emotional mastery, and eliminating self-sabotage—all of which help professionals reduce stress, stay focused, and accelerate their results.

She's also a world champion country dancer, proving that mindset and discipline can extend beyond the boardroom. Laura, welcome! I'm so excited to have you here today.

Laura:

Thanks for having me, Shannon. It's awesome to be here.

Shannon:

So you've spent 25 years coaching business owners and executives. What led you to this path?

Laura:

Oh my goodness, well, you know, this is really an extension of a path. I’ve always been interested in helping people. Helping and being in service was role-modeled by my parents when I was growing up. When I looked into furthering my education, I considered a number of options and chose social work. That was my original career—I got a master’s in social work. I did clinical work, studied leadership, and was always focused on helping people be the best they can be.

That’s my passion. It’s what I want for myself, my family, and my clients. I worked in non-profit for years and then started to reevaluate. I hired a career coach at the time to help me think it through. Coaching 20 years ago was still a frontier career—there weren’t a lot of us.

My husband had his first business at the time and was feeling the stressors of entrepreneurship. He had a business coach, and I realized all these entrepreneurs were putting so much of themselves into their businesses—it was like another child. Sometimes it took them away from their families, their health, and wellness.

So I saw an opportunity to bring my helping skills to the table to help people lead themselves more effectively, so they can then lead others and their businesses more effectively. And I’ve been doing that now for over 20 years—and I absolutely love it.

Shannon:

I love that. I can see your passion. And I think especially for our listeners—mainly women—we often want to go that extra mile and end up facing burnout. So I love that you're here to help and serve.

What are some mindsets or blind spots that you think hold people back from reaching their goals?

Laura:

That’s a great question because there are different blind spots, but there are also common threads. The blind spots are a symptom of the mindset—they’re intertwined.

A common mindset is “I’m not good enough.” That drives people to push harder, do more, and sacrifice themselves. Whether it shows up as “I’m not a good enough parent,” “not a good enough spouse,” or “not a good enough business owner”—that’s a powerful and common one that manifests in many ways. And it leads directly into burnout.

Shannon:

Yes. And then I've also noticed too—there’s this pattern of self-sabotage in people. Have you noticed that in your coaching? Where they kind of lean into burnout or that “not good enough” belief, and then sabotage themselves before the promotion or opportunity even comes?

Laura:

Everything. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, and I've coached so many people through it. I have been very creative over the years in how I’ve sabotaged myself.

Shannon:

Well then what advice would you give them, since you’ve had experience?

Laura:

Well, a lot of self-sabotage comes from blind spots—things we’re not even aware of. Even if we do become aware, we don’t always confront them.

Here’s a powerful example from my own life: when I transitioned into coaching, I had to find my own clients. In social work, clients were handed to me. But coaching? I had to sell. And back then, coaching training taught us to offer a free session and people would “see the value” and sign on. That didn’t happen.

People would say, “Wow, that was transformative,” but then they wouldn’t move forward. My blind spot? Selling. I had a limiting belief that selling was pushy, awkward, slimy. I sabotaged myself for years—five years, actually—because I didn’t want to face it.

Shannon:

I get it. I didn’t want to be one of “those people” either!

Laura:

Right? I didn’t want to be salesy or sleazy. But eventually, I had to shift my mindset. Selling isn’t slimy—it’s helping. It’s a conversation. I wasn’t there to convince anyone. I just had to show up, serve, and help people see that coaching is a path to bridge the gap from where they are to where they want to go.

That shift changed everything for me. It took me out of that resistance. And I also had to let go of the idea that people buy coaching—they don’t. They buy solutions. Coaching is just the vehicle.

hannon:

Yes! I love that. I’ve heard that “selling is serving” and when I heard that, it helped me shift my own mindset too. People think “sales” and immediately picture a sleazy car salesperson or door-to-door encyclopedia guy—showing my age here!

Laura:

Haha, for me it was the vacuum cleaner guy! And yes, that’s the image so many of us have. But when I reframed it as serving—and just showing up to help—it took all the pressure off. Sometimes serving means realizing I’m not the right fit for someone, and pointing them toward a resource that is. Other times, the fit is perfect and it clicks.

Especially with coaching, fit and trust are huge. Now my conversations are all about service and alignment. If it’s the right fit, we’ll make it work. Because ultimately, I just want to help people be the best version of themselves and get more of what they want in life.

Shannon:

Exactly. So, when you’re talking to career women, and mindset is clearly a huge challenge—what else would you want to tell them around that?

Laura:

Well, it really is the core issue. A lot of personal development or change programs focus on “if you want different results, take different actions.” And yes, that’s true—but we have to go deeper.

I teach what I call the “Chain of Change,” which has four links:

1. Thoughts lead to
2. Feelings, which drive
3. Actions, which create
4. Results.

If you’re not getting the results you want, the problem isn’t just the action. It’s your thoughts and beliefs—your mindset. We tend to act based on how we feel. I feel like cake, not salad—so I choose cake. But what triggered that feeling? A thought.

So, we have to start with awareness. What are the automatic thoughts driving how you feel and act? Most of us go through life unaware. That’s why we keep repeating patterns that don’t serve us.

Shannon:

Exactly. I can totally relate. I’ve noticed those automatic thoughts in my own life too.

Laura:

Right? We all have them. For me, it used to be with my family. If something upset me, I’d get quiet and moody. I’d start slamming cupboard doors, stomping around, and expect everyone to notice that something was wrong. That was my go-to reaction—passive-aggressive, hoping someone would just figure it out.

But when I looked closer, it all started with a thought. Something happened, I judged it negatively, and it triggered an emotional reaction. That emotion drove my behavior. But once I became aware of those thoughts—those internal lenses I was viewing the world through—I could interrupt the pattern.

Shannon:

Yes! That’s so true. And even small mindset shifts make a difference. For me, it was with laundry. I used to say, “Ugh, I have to do laundry again.” And it just felt heavy. But now I say, “I get to do laundry for my family. I get to serve them in this way.” And that small change in thinking made laundry feel more purposeful.

Laura:

Exactly! I love that example. Just changing “have to” to “get to” or “choose to” changes the emotional tone completely. And when you change how you feel, you change how you act, and ultimately your results.

It’s about learning to notice your default thoughts and ask: “Is there a better lens I could be using here?” That awareness is the starting point for everything.

Shannon:

Yes, it really does. So I love this conversation. How can our listeners get more information and connect with you?

Laura:

I would love to connect with your listeners. I'm always open to having a conversation. The best way to find me is at my website: venturecoaching.ca. My phone number is there, and there’s a contact form if anyone wants to reach me over email.

I’m also on LinkedIn and Facebook—the usual spots. And right at the top of my website, there’s a “Free” tab. If your listeners are business owners and want to create a simple business plan that includes some mindset work, or if they want to improve their communication or feedback skills, there are a bunch of free eBooks available to download.

Each eBook also has my contact info if they ever want to follow up and talk.

Shannon:

Awesome! So make sure you check out her website. And again, it’ll be linked in the show notes.

Laura, I love to leave my listeners with an action step. So what’s one piece of advice that you would give to someone who wants to level up their mindset and leadership but doesn’t know where to start?

Laura:

The action step is: build your awareness. Next time you feel something—whether it's stress, fear, anger, or anxiety—pause and use that feeling as a clue. Ask yourself, “What was the thought that caused this feeling?” Then go one step further: “What event triggered that thought?”

That’s the process of self-awareness. Once you identify the thought, you can ask yourself, “Do I want to keep thinking this? Is there a different thought that would serve me better?” It’s a powerful place to start.

Shannon:

I love that. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Laura:

My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.