Petra Cancola, MSc
Mental Coach
NLP Resonance Master
Dipl. Life and Social Consultant
Neuromental Trainer
Psychosocial Counselor
ISO-Certified Specialist Trainer
Petra Cancola in three words:
About Petra Cancola
Petra Cancola is a passionate empowerment coach. Her interest in people and their unlimited potential has accompanied her since her childhood. She studied consulting sciences and management of social systems, is an NLP master, neuromental trainer and life consultant. She was multiple state champion and member of the Austrian National Team in Rhythmic Sports Gymnastics.
She lives and works in Vienna, Austria and Grado, Italy. She has been married for 25 years and has two children.
Before she became self-employed with goodmind coaching in 2011, she worked in the area of personnel development and management in an international company in Frankfurt and Munich for many years.
By becoming self-employed, she fulfilled her dream of using and connecting her two homes, Vienna and Grado, professionally.
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Success is a state of inner satisfaction in achieving external goals.
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My Mission
My passion is to empower people and encourage them to live their full potential.
As a former competitive athlete, I know how great our potential is and how often we do limit ourselves. I live and work with the inner conviction that we have everything within us. It takes courage, self-confidence and the right coach at the right time to face the challenges and get the best out of any situation.
My strength as a mental coach is to bring people into their power and personal responsibility, and thereby strengthen their emotional resilience and stress competence. My goal in coaching is that my clients believe in themselves and their effectiveness self-confidently and act both goal- and solution-oriented.
Areas of Focus
Change Processes
Empowerment
Crises of Meaning and Purpose
Personality
Relationship and Partnership
Stress Competence
Resilience
As a coach, I know that crises and conflicts are part of life and challenge us. At the same time, they are also opportunities for development and growth, and can bring about positive changes - which we often only recognize as such in retrospect.
It is not about what happens.
It is about how you frame it.
Interview
Ms. Cancola, as a mental trainer and potential coach you also work with competitive athletes and people who want to achieve their personal best every day, but who increasingly fall into the burnout trap?
That's right. I myself was a competitive athlete for many years and a member of the National Team for Rhythmic Gymnastics and know the mental laws of winners. My father lived his football career, and my 22-year-old son is right in the middle of it. You could call my husband a "workaholic" and my daughter has equally large professional ambitions and is following my husband’s footprints. So, my target group was not a coincidence.
By the way at this point I would like to say something about the use of the term 'burnout':
There are situations in which it would be advantageous not to call things by their name, especially when it comes to such diagnoses. Just repeating the word 'burnout' all the time is enough to start a programming that does nobody any good. Let us just talk about exhausted people.
Sounds understandable. So, what do competitive athletes and exhausted people have in common?
To be successful in competitive sport, you need great enthusiasm for what you do. Those who carry this enthusiasm within themselves are supported by body and mind with sufficient endurance to achieve great things.
Even clients on the verge of collapse have almost always "burned for” their work before they "burned out" in the truest sense of the word.
In general, enthusiasm and commitment is a central topic in my coaching: In the positive sense as motivator and guarantor for success, in the negative sense as a "trap" for exceeding one's individual limits of resilience.
The advantage that competitive athletes have is that they know their body better, interpret signals faster and - because their body is their capital - react faster.
Why does exhaustion seem to be the new widespread disease of the Western World?
The answers are numerous and complex.
In a nutshell, one could say: because we have lost our balance.
Or the other way round: we are not centered anymore and so we cannot connect with our instincts and true feelings.
This means that not only the number of totally exhausted people is increasing, but also the number of so-called “Messis”, people with a cleaning addiction, eating disorders, various other addictions and compulsive disorders.
For me, this is all evidence that many people are not grounded and centered anymore and (must) act in an "extreme" direction.
But why?
Constant stimulus flooding brings too much input.
Our attention is on the external all the time, and so we don't even feel how we are and how overwhelmed we might be. The connection to ourselves is no longer intact, the communication between body, head and heart is disturbed. We are freaking out.
This is a pure survival strategy of the body, a healthy reaction to unhealthy conditions.
However, the collapse usually comes as a surprise to those affected.
How do potential candidates notice that they are at risk?
There are reliable tests that can also be found on the internet.
I have also developed an "express test" that - although used with a twinkle in the eye - shows accurately, quickly and unbureaucratically when action is needed.
Are you already as exhausted on Mondays as if it were Friday?
Does brushing your teeth cost you as much energy as a conversation with your partner?
Can you also with great difficulty no longer say whether you prefer your breakfast eggs scrambled, boiled or sunny side up?
(... from the film "Runaway Bride" ... when Julia Roberts finds out that she was so far away from herself that she didn't even know what she liked and didn't like anymore)
If you answer “Yes” to all three questions, you should treat yourself to a coaching session with me.
What possibilities do you have as a mental trainer and coach to protect your clients from an emotional breakdown?
Already in the first conversation I quickly get to the status quo with the goodmind® method and know where to pick up my clients. From then on, my basic motivation as a coach is to get the clients to make their own decisions that they can stand behind.
A constructive approach would be to define personal values together and see if they are lived. This is the only way to develop an individual 'work-private balance' that counteracts a collapse.
I deliberately avoid the expression 'work-life balance', which is completely absurd to me, because this would mean that I would have to choose between work and life.
The process of finding values creates a kind of commitment to oneself; this is the key to consequence and discipline.
An example: If my primary value is family, then as an enthusiastic and successful foreign journalist I will sooner or later reach my limits as a result of this conflicting with my values.
Or vice versa: If my main values are independence, success and recognition, then I should consider giving birth to five children just because it might be what my partner values.
The next important step to prevent a collapse is to take a closer look at your own recovery record. The greater the pressure is, the more important it is to know how I can recharge my batteries in the shortest possible time, without outside help (e.g. medication), so that the pointer never goes towards zero. For most of us the holiday is no longer sufficient to really fill up the "tank". Here we can learn from Eastern cultures on how it works to integrate relaxation into everyday working life - e.g. through autogenic training, meditation and breathing techniques.
As a coach, I quickly know what type of stress or reaction I am dealing with (see Sympathetic Tonic and Vagotonic) and can head for the appropriate "petrol stations" together with my clients.
Once we know the individual source of power, the next step is to work on the "power robbers", inner sabotage programs and beliefs that bind valuable energy.
How many coaching hours does it take to be prepared for a breakdown?
Although this differs individually, after 3-5 goodmind® coaching sessions, clients usually know exactly what they need to get into their 'work-and-private-balance', which enables them to achieve long-term success. Furthermore, they now know and live their values, which provide them a sense of direction and give their actions the often underestimated meaning. In my experience, both are essential points in prevention, as well as the prerequisite for victories and successes in our lives... and they will definitely know how they prefer to eat their breakfast eggs again.