People often arrive at coaching describing themselves as “their own worst enemy.” They know what they want. They can articulate it clearly. And yet, something keeps pulling them back from it — a quiet, persistent voice that says they are not capable enough, not ready, not the right kind of person. If you recognise that pattern, working with a mindset coach in Birmingham may be the most useful thing you do this year.
I am Olive Pellington, a John Maxwell Team-certified coach and speaker with over ten years of experience working with adults, teenagers, and schools across Birmingham and the wider West Midlands. I have been featured in IE Today Magazine, on Connections Radio, and on The Sylbourne TV show. My practice, OVP Coaching, is built on one core belief: the stories we tell about ourselves are not fixed facts. They are historical narratives, and they can be examined, challenged, and changed.
What Does a Mindset Coach Do?
A mindset coach helps you identify the specific beliefs that are shaping your decisions and behaviour — often without your conscious awareness — and guides you through a structured process of examining, challenging, and replacing those beliefs with ones that are more accurate and more useful. The work is grounded in your values, not in scripts or techniques.
That is the answer you will find in any coaching directory. Here is what it means in practice.
Most limiting beliefs feel like facts. “I am not the kind of person who speaks up.” “I will never be good enough at this.” “People like me do not get that kind of opportunity.” These statements are not descriptions of reality. They are interpretations of past experience, often formed in childhood or during periods of significant stress, and then carried forward as if they were permanent truths. A mindset coach does not tell you those beliefs are wrong. The work is more careful than that: we examine where the belief came from, what it has been protecting you from, what evidence exists for and against it, and — crucially — what you actually value and whether the belief serves those values.
According to the ICF Global Coaching Study, clients who work with qualified coaches report measurable improvements in self-confidence, communication, and goal achievement. The research consistently identifies belief-level change as the core mechanism behind those outcomes.
How Is This Different From NLP or Positive Thinking?
This is the question I am asked most often by people who have done their research, and it deserves a direct answer.
Most of the “mindset coaching” available in Birmingham — and online — is grounded in one of three approaches: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), cognitive-behavioural hypnotherapy, or generic positivity coaching. Each of these has its place. But none of them are what I do, and understanding the difference matters if you are trying to find the right fit.
NLP works by identifying and “reprogramming” mental patterns using language and visualisation techniques. It treats the mind as a system to be reconfigured. The techniques can produce rapid shifts in how people feel about specific situations, and practitioners in Birmingham and elsewhere have had genuine success with it. My concern with NLP is not that it does not work. It is that it does not ask a prior question: reprogramming towards what? Replacing one pattern with another is only useful if you are clear on the direction. And that direction question — what do you actually value? what kind of person do you want to be? — is not what NLP specialises in.
Positive thinking approaches replace negative self-talk with positive self-talk. They are the most widespread form of “mindset work” available, and they are the least durable. If I tell myself “I am confident and capable” without doing any work on why I believe the opposite, the affirmation sits on top of an unexamined belief like a coat of paint over damp. It looks better briefly. It does not hold.
The John Maxwell framework starts from a different premise entirely. Rather than asking “how do I change this pattern?”, it asks “what do I actually believe, and does that belief align with what I genuinely value?” Maxwell’s approach treats mindset change as a values clarification process. You do not replace one belief with another because a technique prompts you to. You change a belief because you have worked out, carefully and specifically, that it contradicts something you care about more than the comfort of the familiar.
The result is mindset change that holds under pressure — because you understand the reasoning behind it, and you can defend it to yourself in difficult moments. That is what makes it sustainable in a way that reprogramming techniques often are not.
What Mindset Coaching Is Not
Let me be direct about what mindset coaching is not. It is not standing in front of a mirror repeating affirmations. It is not toxic positivity dressed up as professional support. If you search “mindset” online you will find a great deal of pop-psychology content that reduces the concept to motivational slogans. That is not what I do.
Mindset coaching is also not therapy, and it does not treat mental health conditions. It is a developmental process for people who are functioning and want to function better — to close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. If you are experiencing significant mental health difficulties, I will always refer you to an appropriate clinical professional. My post on life coaching vs therapy explains where the two practices sit in relation to each other.
Where Limiting Beliefs Come From
Most of the beliefs that limit adults today were formed long before adulthood. Childhood conditioning plays a significant role: what you were praised for, what you were criticised for, which emotions were considered acceptable, and which parts of yourself you learned to hide. Formative experiences — a teacher who dismissed your ideas, a parent who equated worth with achievement, a peer group where being different carried a social cost — leave deposits that persist well into adult life.
Comparison culture amplifies this. Social media has created an environment where people constantly measure their internal experience against other people’s curated external presentation. The result is an epidemic of “not enough” — not successful enough, not confident enough, not together enough.
What makes limiting beliefs so persistent is that they feel like facts. They are familiar. They have been with us so long that we experience them as descriptions of reality rather than as interpretations of experience. A person who grew up being told they were not academic does not think “I have a limiting belief about my intelligence.” They think “I am just not that clever.” The belief and the identity have merged, and that is where the work happens.
The John Maxwell Approach: Values Before Techniques
My coaching is grounded in the John Maxwell leadership and personal development framework, which approaches mindset change as intentional growth rather than incident-driven recovery.
Maxwell distinguishes between knowing better and doing better — and identifies the gap between the two as a values question, not a motivation question. If you know you should speak up in meetings but you consistently do not, the answer is not more confidence-building techniques. The answer lies in clarifying what you value more than the discomfort of staying silent, and then examining the beliefs that are keeping you from acting on it.
In practice, this means our sessions work through three connected areas:
Belief identification. What do you actually believe about yourself, other people, and what is possible for you? Not what you wish you believed, or what you know you should believe — what you actually believe, as evidenced by your behaviour and your automatic responses. This requires honesty that is sometimes uncomfortable.
Values clarification. What do you genuinely care about? Not what sounds good or what other people value — your actual priorities, in your actual life. The Maxwell framework treats this as foundational, because beliefs that contradict your values are the ones that cause the most friction and the most pain.
Habit of thought. Once you have identified a belief that is limiting you and clarified the value it is contradicting, the work shifts to building a consistent new habit of thought — not through repetition of a script, but through deliberate attention to moments when the old belief surfaces and a practiced, reasoned response that you have developed and understand.
This is meaningfully different from generic “positive mindset” work. It is also meaningfully different from reprogramming approaches, because the goal is not to feel differently — it is to think more clearly, in alignment with what you actually care about.
What a Mindset Coaching Session Actually Addresses
Here are the types of beliefs I work with most frequently.
“I am not the kind of person who…” This is one of the most common and most limiting belief structures. “I am not the kind of person who speaks up in meetings.” “I am not the kind of person who starts a business.” “I am not the kind of person other people take seriously.” These statements feel like self-knowledge. They are usually self-protective patterns formed in response to early experience.
Imposter syndrome. The persistent sense that you do not deserve your position, your success, or your credentials — and that at any moment someone will notice. This is extremely common among high-achievers and is rooted in a set of beliefs about what success is supposed to look like and whether you fit that image. I explore this further in my post on career coaching in Birmingham, where values alignment plays a central role.
Fear of failure as a belief system. Most people think fear of failure is about the failure itself. In my experience, it is almost always about what the failure would confirm — “I am not good enough,” “I was right not to try,” “people will think less of me.” The fear is not of the event. It is of the verdict. Coaching unpacks that distinction.
People-pleasing patterns. Chronic people-pleasing is not a personality trait. It is a learned survival strategy, usually developed in environments where approval was conditional or unpredictable. Understanding its origins does not excuse it, but it does make it possible to change.
Perfectionism as a belief system. Perfectionism is often framed as a high standard. It is more accurately a fear of exposure — if the work is not finished, it cannot be judged, and if it cannot be judged, you cannot be found wanting. Naming that belief is the first step to releasing it.
You can read more about the confidence dimensions of this work in my post on how to build unshakeable confidence.
Mindset Coaching for Adults vs Teenagers
I work with both adults and teenagers, and the approach differs in important ways.
Adult beliefs tend to be more entrenched — they have had longer to calcify and are often deeply embedded in identity. But adults bring something equally powerful: life experience that serves as counter-evidence. An adult who believes they are not capable can usually, with support, identify multiple examples from their own life that contradict that belief. The evidence is there. The coaching work is about making it visible and making it credible.
Teenage beliefs are more malleable, which is both an opportunity and a responsibility. A fifteen-year-old who develops a healthy relationship with failure, a realistic sense of their own strengths, and the ability to question self-critical narratives is far better placed to navigate early adulthood. Early intervention in mindset does not just help young people in the short term — it shapes the architecture of how they will approach challenge for decades. That is why I also work directly with schools, delivering workshops and programmes that reach young people before limiting beliefs become fully embedded.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a mindset coach do in a typical session?
A typical session begins with a check-in on what has shifted since the previous session — where the old belief surfaced, how you responded, what you noticed. From there, we work with whatever is live: a situation that triggered the belief, a decision you are avoiding, a pattern you keep repeating. Sessions are structured but not scripted. The direction follows what is most useful for you at that point in the work.
How is mindset coaching different from CBT?
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a clinically regulated therapeutic model delivered by mental health professionals, typically used to treat diagnosed conditions such as anxiety, depression, or OCD. It works within a clinical framework and is accountable to professional regulatory bodies.
Mindset coaching is not therapy and does not treat mental health conditions. It is a developmental process focused on helping people who are functioning well to function better — to close the gap between where they are and where they want to be. If you are experiencing significant mental health difficulties, I will always refer you to an appropriate clinical professional. You may also find my post on life coaching vs therapy useful for understanding where the two practices sit in relation to each other.
Is mindset coaching the same as NLP?
No. NLP is a set of techniques designed to identify and reprogramme mental patterns. Mindset coaching, as I practise it, is a values-clarification and belief-examination process. The two can overlap in what they address, but they differ significantly in how they work and why. NLP does not, as a rule, ask what you value before it begins reprogramming. That prior question is where my approach starts.
Can mindset coaching help with imposter syndrome?
Yes. Imposter syndrome is one of the most common presenting concerns in my practice, and mindset coaching is well-suited to addressing it. The work involves identifying the specific beliefs that underpin the imposter experience, examining the evidence for and against them, and building a more accurate and stable sense of your own competence and value. This is not a quick fix, but it is work that produces lasting results.
How many sessions does mindset coaching take?
I will not make promises I cannot keep. Belief change is not instant, and anyone who tells you otherwise is overstating what coaching can do. That said, most clients notice a meaningful shift within six to eight sessions — a noticeable change in how they respond to familiar situations, less automatic self-criticism, more willingness to act despite uncertainty. Deeper, more entrenched patterns tend to require longer work. The pace of change also depends on how willing you are to examine uncomfortable things outside of sessions.
How is a mindset coach different from a life coach?
A life coach in Birmingham works across a broad range of goals and life areas — career direction, relationships, confidence, purpose, transitions. A mindset coach focuses specifically on the belief structures and thought patterns that are limiting progress, regardless of which area of life they are affecting. In practice, most of my work as a mindset coach sits within a broader life coaching relationship, because beliefs do not exist in isolation from the rest of someone’s life.
Do you offer online mindset coaching as well as in-person sessions in Birmingham?
Yes. I offer both face-to-face sessions in Birmingham and online sessions for clients across the UK. The online format works well for mindset coaching — the work depends on conversation and reflection, not physical presence. Many clients prefer the flexibility of online sessions, particularly those balancing work and family commitments.
Ready to Start the Conversation?
If any of what you have read here sounds familiar — the sense of being your own obstacle, the beliefs that feel like facts, the gap between what you know you are capable of and what you are actually doing — then I would like to talk.
I offer a free initial consultation with no obligation. It is a straightforward conversation about where you are, what is getting in the way, and whether coaching is the right fit for you.
Get in touch through the contact page, call me on 07505 784546, or email info@ovpcoaching.co.uk. I work with adults and teenagers across Birmingham and the West Midlands, and online across the UK.
You can also explore more about what I offer on the mindset coaching page.