The Moment Someone Feels Understood

I've had some really interesting conversations over the past couple of weeks, and interestingly, they weren't with clients but with ski instructors.

As many of you know, I’ve been exploring how best to support my clients beyond the work we do together - not necessarily by finding the most technically accomplished instructors or those with the longest CVs, but by connecting with people who instinctively understand what it’s like when confidence disappears.

Before I started reaching out, I wasn’t quite sure what sort of response I’d get. I wondered whether they might feel I was stepping on their toes, or whether they’d see mindset coaching as something that sits outside skiing altogether. Instead, something quite different happened.

Almost every conversation came back to the same themes:

Patience, Empathy, and Listening.

One instructor told me about a lady who had taken lessons with several different instructors. Technically, she wasn’t a bad skier at all, but she’d received so many different messages, so little understanding, and so much pressure to “just get on with it” that she’d almost given up skiing altogether.

Another instructor said something that really stayed with me: “Confidence needs to be built alongside technique.” I couldn’t agree more.

As I reflected on those conversations afterwards, I realised they had reminded me why I started this business in the first place. It wasn’t because I wanted to replace ski instructors - far from it. Some of the best instructors I’ve met have an incredible ability to put people at ease.

But I also know what it feels like to be the skier standing at the top of the slope, desperately wanting to ski while your body has other ideas. I’ve been that person, smiling while secretly hoping someone would suggest an easier run, questioning every turn, and wondering why something I used to love had suddenly become so hard.

Perhaps that’s why clients often say to me, “It’s such a relief speaking to someone who gets it.” Not because I have some magic solution, or because I’m the only person who understands confidence, but because they don’t have to convince me their fear is real, I already know.

That, I think, is the difference between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge tells us what to do, whereas understanding recognises why doing it can feel so difficult.

The more I reflected on those conversations, the more optimistic I became. Perhaps we spend too much time talking about mindset coaching and ski instruction as though they occupy different worlds, when in reality they are simply different ways of supporting the same person.

One helps them trust their skis, and the other helps them trust themselves, and when those two things come together, that’s often when the biggest breakthroughs happen.

Maybe that’s what I’ve really learnt over the past couple of weeks. It’s not about finding someone who has all the answers, but about finding people who genuinely care enough to understand the person standing in front of them.

Because once someone feels understood, everything else becomes a little easier.