The best laid plans...often never happen. Why? In the case of women, it's often a combination of leaving the workplace/passions to focus on childcare, and feeling a lack of confidence at 'getting back out there'.

But, says life and business mindset coach Debi Haden, you can make your dreams come true. You just have to work at them.

Debi, whose clients include start-ups, and those in senior positions at large organisations, says: "My role is to enable people, particularly women, and empower them to get over limiting beliefs and help them to live the life they want, because a lack of confidence holds people back."

This, she says, is a big issue for women in business. "There's often a lack of self-belief they can run their own business, and achieve what they want to achieve, and that someone will want to buy what they're selling or take on a service they're offering," she explains.

"For a lot of women, that bit of selling themselves as part of the business can feel out of their reach sometimes. That feeling of not doing everything well is something I think women struggle with particularly."

Debi's work all starts with the individual. "One of the things I get across is that they ARE the business and they have to do the work on themselves first. You can go and do a business plan, but if you don't have the confidence and self belief, it's really hard to take a business forward.

"When you're self-employed you have to step out of your comfort zone an awful lot. To begin with you're the sales and marketing person, you do the finances, you're juggling a lot of roles, when you may not be used to doing all that. Then you have to juggle it alongside all the other things you're doing in your life, such as running a home and family, which a lot of women still feel mainly responsible for."

When Debi begins working with a new client, she asks them to look at themselves, examine what their strengths are, and how they see themselves. This can sometimes throw up a lot of issues - things from childhood, and being bullied at school, for example, can all affect confidence as an adult. So Debi does what she calls the "groundwork" first.

For some, it doesn't take a lot of time, then it's Debi's job to act as more of a mentor. With others, she has to look more deeply at some of those issues and work to get rid of their limiting beliefs, or "gremlins" before they move forward.

"We almost create their gremlin as a character because it's easier to deal with something you see as an external thing," she explains. "Half the time we would never say to someone else what we say to ourselves, and we've got to get to a point where we can counteract those thought processes."

Using practical exercises which she often combines with NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming, a technique which examines the connection between thoughts, behaviour and goals) Debi can find that she needs to do a lot of subconscious work with clients if beliefs are very inground.

Debi invites clients to visualise what they want their life to look like.

"Once we've got the vision of the life they want to create for themselves, we then go into the practical mode, creating a business plan, how they'll market themselves, what they'll do in terms of technology. I then put my mentoring hat on in terms of helping them move their business forward."

Debi will then often do a monthly check-in to evaluate a client's progress and how things stand - agreeing goals for the following weeks, which come from the client, championed by Debi.

"I'll push them harder than they would push themselves, often that's outside their comfort zone, a bit at a time," she says. "You don't push them so far that they'll lose their confidence or get scared, but enough that they can achieve the success they want and it feels safe."

Part of Debi's work is to support clients who work for established organisations in senior roles, encouraging them to be good leaders - someone who will listen to advice, their staff and managers, but who will be able to take the hard line and make tough decisions.

"We don't know everything as leaders, and it's important to bring people along with you. It's important to take onboard feedback, but there are times when you have to be confident to make a decision that's right for your business, so you've got to get the balance right."

Ultimately, says Debi, letting go of unhelpful beliefs is key. "One of the things I explain to people is that every doubt you have in your mind takes your energy, and we only have so much energy. Once they clear that out you see them fly."

debihaden.co.uk