Joy as a Strategy: Tips From a Mindset Coach

---

What I’ve learned is simple but life-changing – joy isn’t a bonus. It’s a strategy. And when you bring joy into your health journey, everything shifts.

What Is a Mindset Coach — and What Do They Actually Do?

People often ask me, “So…what is a mindset coach?” And I get it — the title can sound abstract. I usually start with why I became one. I spent nearly three decades trapped in the all-or-nothing cycle — dieting, quitting, trying again, feeling defeated, and repeating the whole thing over and over. I thought something was wrong with me. But what was really happening was this: my mindset was working against me, and I didn’t have the tools to understand why.

A mindset coach helps you understand the beliefs, stories, and patterns driving your behavior — and in my work, I focus on how that applies to your health journey. Instead of focusing only on what to eat or how to exercise, I help clients explore the subconscious inner narrative that shapes how they show up every day. We move past the surface level stuff to something deeper: nourishing your relationship with yourself so your health journey becomes rooted in freedom, not fear.

My own training includes the Martha Beck Wayfinder Life Coach program, Positive Intelligence coach training, and Eating Disorder Intuitive Therapy training. But the heart of my work comes from lived experience: decades of fighting my body, and then finally learning how to work with it.

Mindset Coach vs. Therapist: How to Know Which You Need

This is a common and important question. There is overlap, and many of my clients work with both a therapist and me at the same time — but our roles are different.

• As a coach, I help you understand how your beliefs are playing out today – either derailing or supporting you. Then, we focus on how to move forward with new awareness, new tools, and new confidence.
• A therapist is trained to help you process trauma, heal the past, or work through clinical mental health concerns.

When deeper healing work is needed, or when trauma is involved, I refer out without hesitation. Coaching is powerful — but it’s not a replacement for therapy. It’s a complementary tool for people who want to reshape their patterns, rebuild trust with themselves, and create sustainable change.

Mindset Coaching for Health, Wellness, and Lifestyle Transformation

The most common phrase I hear is:
“I know what I should do…I just can’t seem to make myself do it for the long-term.”

If you feel this way, nothing is wrong with you. Truly. You’re not unmotivated — you’re simply operating from outdated programming that was never yours to begin with.

Mindset coaching unravels that programming. It helps you:

• release all-or-nothing thinking
• understand the stories driving your behaviors
• access internal motivation instead of relying on guilt
• shift toward a health journey that feels natural, nurturing, and sustainable

This work doesn’t force change — it enables change. Because when you understand your mind, your habits finally make sense — and they finally become changeable.

How a Mindset Coach Can Support Your Personal Growth

Coaching helps you return to yourself. I guide clients in:

• naming the subconscious beliefs shaping their choices
• understanding where those beliefs came from
• discerning whether those stories are actually true
• and replacing them with beliefs that feel spacious and freeing

The shift from “I should” to “I genuinely want to” is subtle — but it changes everything.

My Frameworks for Mindset Coaching

The Missing Piece: Your Paradigm

A health journey is like a coin with two sides:

1. Your plan — what you eat, how you move, your routines
2. Your paradigm — your beliefs, identity, values, and subconscious programming shaping how you think and who you believe you are that determine how you show up

Most people focus solely on the plan. But your paradigm is what decides whether the plan will last.

How Paradigms Form (and Why They Matter)

Our paradigms form early — often from childhood, cultural conditioning, diet culture messaging, or experiences we didn’t even realize shaped us. Those beliefs become the “default settings” that influence how we think, behave, and show up.

In my coaching, we explore:

• shifting from suffering → freedom
• embodying choices rather than forcing them
• noticing what feels “open” vs. what feels “clenched”
• tiny experiments that help your brain rewire
• shifting from your Social Self to your Essential Self

This is where real change happens — not in the plan, but in the paradigm that finally supports it.

Using Joy as Your Compass for Life and Wellness

The Turning Point in Jamaica

Joy wasn’t something I prioritized. If anything, it felt like a luxury. But on a trip to Jamaica, something unexpected happened: I felt like myself again. Spacious. Open. Present. When I headed back to the airport, I realized I didn’t want to return to the life I had created — not because it was bad, but because I wasn’t in it. I was living from obligation, not alignment.

That moment changed everything. It became the beginning of using joy as a strategy.

Joy: The Shortcut to Your Essential Self

Here’s the truth I wish I’d learned sooner:

Joy is the gateway to your Authentic or Essential Self — the real you beneath the roles, rules, and expectations.

Most of us operate from our Social Self:

• The version of us shaped by what we think we “should” do
• The part always trying to be good, responsible, acceptable
• The self who is busy performing instead of listening

But when something brings genuine joy — peaceful joy, grounded joy — it’s the Essential Self speaking.

Joy is the compass pointing you back to what’s true for YOU.

It’s not frivolous. It’s foundational.

Practical Ways to Find More Joy in Daily Life

Joy doesn’t require a vacation. It begins with presence:

• noticing what lights you up
• soaking in the beauty around you
• savoring your food
• taking one deep breath
• moving your body in a way that feels good
• celebrating what your body can do today
• choosing what feels open instead of obligatory
• giving yourself permission to want what you want

Joy isn’t frivolous. Joy is data.

Finding Joy in Fitness, Nutrition, and Overall Health

Exercise used to feel like punishment to me—something I did to “make up” for what I ate. It was tied to shame and a weight loss mindset that told me my body needed fixing, not honoring. No wonder it was so hard to “make time” for it.

When I began reframing it as ‘joyful movement,’ everything shifted.

I started asking:

• What movement do I actually enjoy?
• What brings me energy, not dread?
• What supports the future I want to live?

Now movement feels like:

• Celebration – of what my body can do (without comparison)
• Strength – that protects me and helps me move more freely
• Longevity – to live a full life where I say “yes” to adventure
• Freedom – to exercise in a way that works for the unique ME

One of my inspirations is my grandmother-in-law — who was riding her bike at age 95, hands in the air, grinning from ear to ear. That image is pure joy to me. It’s why I lift weights now with a sense of celebration rather than punishment. It connects me to the full, joyful future I want, and it feels good today to be making decisions that will get me there.

Overcoming Fitness Setbacks and Injuries Through Mindset Coaching

Fear after an injury is normal — your brain is doing its job. But sometimes the story your brain tells (“I’ll hurt myself again”) is outdated and no longer true.

Mindset coaching helps you:

• uncover the protective belief underneath the fear
• differentiate between discomfort and danger
• take small, safe steps that rebuild trust
• re-enter movement with confidence, not force

This is where embodiment, curiosity, and compassion come together. You don’t bulldoze your fear; you walk with it until your body remembers it’s safe.

Finding Mindset and Joy

If there’s one thing I hope you take away, it’s that your health journey doesn’t have to feel like a fight. You’re allowed to choose ease, alignment, spaciousness, and joy — not after you hit a goal, but now. 

In fact, doing so is part of the secret sauce that will allow you to reach your goal.

Mindset coaching is the path back to your truest self.
Joy is the compass that keeps you there.

If you want support in creating a health journey that feels like home, you can find me at jamifassett.com, where you can:

• book a complimentary 30-minute consultation 
• explore 1:1 coaching
• join the waitlist for my next Reset From Within group program cohort coming in early 2026

You can also find me on Instagram at @jamifassett.

Here’s to choosing joy — and choosing yourself — one small moment at a time.