#181 - What If It's Not? Julie Bell on Rewiring Fear, Anxiety & the WIIN Method

What If It's Not? Julie Bell on Rewiring Fear, Anxiety & the WIIN Method

What if the thing you're scared of… just isn't true?

In this episode, I sit down with Julie Bell — a former Scottish primary teacher and headteacher with 26 years in education, four of those as head of schools for a mental health therapeutic service. Julie's now the founder of WIIN with JB, a coaching method built around one deceptively simple question: "What if it's not?"

We get into how fear and "what if" thinking quietly drive so much of our anxiety and behaviour — shaped by moments like 9/11 and the isolation of the pandemic. Julie breaks down the evolutionary role fear plays, why anger so often masks vulnerability (especially in young people), and why one of the most powerful things you can ask a child — or yourself — is "what are you predicting will happen?"

She walks us through the four steps of the WIIN method — recognise, pause, reframe, respond — and shares a simple practice for tracking your "what if" thoughts to see just how rarely they actually come true.

We also get into Julie's own career leaps, and what's next for her: working with parents to build self-belief, create opportunity, and break generational limiting beliefs.

Timestamps:

00:00 Meet Julie Bell

01:02 Fear and the What If Loop

04:03 9/11 Memories and Time

08:07 Tracing Fear to Its Roots

11:13 How the WIIN Method Works