If you've ever worked with a personal development or business coach, you know that many are sincere about helping their clients reach their fullest potential. However, many also fail to get to the root of the problems their clients are facing. Instead, they work only at the level of the symptoms their clients are experiencing.

Shama Hyder, founder and CEO of Zen Media, says this doesn't make sense because what amounts to symptom management doesn't lead to sustainable change. Hyder became curious after hearing about a business coach named Jim Fortin and his Transformational Coaching Program. She saw his clients experience lasting personal change and wanted to know more. We share what she discovered in this issue of Promotional Consultant Today.

1. Brainset over mindset. Many peak-performance gurus focus on changing your mindset, an established set of attitudes you hold. While this is important, the real question is how this happens in a way that sticks. She says that our mindset corresponds with the neocortex— the part of the brain responsible for our conscious thought processes. Cognitive neuroscience, however, shows that 95 percent of everything we do comes from an entirely different, older part of the brain that is responsible for our subconscious habits. This is the part of the brain where your survival mechanisms are housed, and it works from predictability. For example, since you can't predict what will happen, you are likely to be fearful of change, so you choose to stay in your comfort zone. But if you can retrain the older part of your brain to be comfortable outside of your comfort zone, you can establish new habits that can help you be more successful.

2. Being over doing. Hyder says that if you're looking to achieve deep-order, permanent transformation (and not just temporary change), you have to work at the level of identity, self-image or what Fortin calls "ways of being." The Harvard Negotiation Project has found that our most change-resistant problems and conflicts originate at this level. Without working directly with (and from) this place in ourselves, we mistake changing our mindset (which amounts to rearranging our mental furniture) for actual transformation (which involves rebuilding our house— our identity— from the ground up).

3. Abundance over scarcity. The Law of Attraction (LoA), or at least some version of it, is something that almost every coach in the business espouses. Any psychologist or social scientist worth their salt can show you reams of research demonstrating how our beliefs, assumptions and expectations tend to create self-fulfilling prophecies, says Hyder. According to Fortin, the problem here is likely that you were trying to "think" your way to abundance using mental effort to overcome your subconscious identity-level experience of scarcity. In order to use the LoA to create your best life, you need tools for approaching it from an identity of abundance rather than a hidden mindset of scarcity. As Fortin explains in his podcast , this is really a matter of transforming your life from the inside out. For example, stop personalizing your bad habits. When you exhibit a bad habit recognize that it is just the older part of your brain in action and doesn't mean anything about you. Stop and use the analytical part of your brain to move your attention to a supportive thought instead.

If you feel that you're stuck in a rut or not living up to your potential, try focusing on brainset and being, rather than mindset and doing. According to Hyder, this is the key to living your best life.

Source: Shama Hyder is founder and CEO of Zen Media, a new media communications firm. She is also an international speaker, author and a regular media correspondent for major networks ranging from Fox Business to Bloomberg.