Harry Mansfield: Powering Up Minds Before They Power Us Down

For more than two decades, Harry Mansfield has helped people overcome fear, rebuild confidence, and unlock their full potential. Known as The MindPower Champion, Harry has transformed her experience as a sports coach into a mission to teach people how to train their minds before challenges become crises.

Through her innovative VIPMindNGLAND® methodology, corporate training, and The Saving Lives Podcast, she is changing the conversation around mental wellbeing by focusing on prevention, resilience, and practical mind skills. In this interview with Global Woman Magazine, Harry shares the inspiration behind her work, why mind training is different from traditional mental health support, and how empowering the mind can lead to greater success, stronger resilience, and even save lives. 

“Train your mind before life tests it.”

What inspired you to become “The MindPower Champion”?

Great question! This goes back to when I was a sports coach for over 20 years. I coached both as a Rugby Coach and a Riding Coach, and in both these sports, when it goes wrong, it hurts! I became known as the “go-to” coach when people had an accident or, lost their confidence and had a spiraling mind, and when I was helping them, I wasn’t focusing on teaching them how to tackle/scrum or, how to ride the horse, instead, I was managing a client’s mind to overcome their anxiety, lack of confidence, thinking that the accident was going to re-occur and so on. It was one of my riding clients whom I had helped who then said she had taken those skills into her personal life; both at home for children in the family who had become anxious about going to school, and for herself, using the mind skills around the board table in the corporate world that she worked in when she had a challenging meeting. She described me as having helped her champion her mind, to know what to do to have a powerful mind, and in us joking about it she put the two phrases together and said I was The MindPower Champion!

Following on from this I, and everyone, could see that very sadly mental health figures, and suicide figures, had been going the wrong way for a very long time, and at great speed. It was clear to me that the mind, being taught as a separate subject in its own right, is the solution, and so I decided to make that change; teach the workings of the mind solely, beyond conscious and subconscious, for goals and prevention, to corporates, the education sector and families.

Can you explain what VIPMindENGLAND® means and how it helps people?

Victorious: A mind that achieves goals

Ignites: A mind that ignites the right way and does not work against you

Protects: A mind that protects you and attains correct boundaries when needed

Your mind is the foundation for absolutely “everything” you do:

• how you act
• your behaviour
• the results you get
• whether or not emotions control you or not
• how you think.

When trained to have a VIPMind, it allows you to control all of this. VIPMindENGLAND® is one set of training with three amazing outcomes, saving both time and money.

Mental Health is different from Mind Training. Nobody should give up what they do to help their mental health; perhaps they go for a run, a dog walk, a pilates class or, sit in nature, but when they have finished doing these things, their mind will still be facing their challenges, and it works the wrong way unless cycles and habits are broken, and you can only achieve this through training the mind. Your mental health activity is also more successful.

Why is it so important to train our minds before mental health problems begin?

One thing that is important to highlight here is that the mind is separate from the brain. If you train your mind, you change your brain. This is often forgotten, and as such, turning to medication is the first port of call when it should be the last. Training the mind alongside medication when needed prevents you from needing it again, as you have the mind skills to help yourself.

Training your mind is not only there to help prevent mental health problems from beginning, but also to be successful in your goals, both personally and professionally. When you single out the mind, train it, you achieve success, and you know how to use it to prevent mental health challenges from escalating.

The mind learns in two ways: firstly, through repetition and secondly, through an emotional impact, a shock, such as a car accident or a sudden death in the family, and because of this, your mind is, without you knowing it, being trained often the wrong way from the day we were born. By training your mind, you break that cycle and also prevent physical symptoms in your body created by mental health problems when our actions and results are not successful.

What does your message, “Power Up Your Mind Before It Powers You Down®,” mean?

The contrast between “power up” and “power down” makes the phrase memorable by comparing the mind to a device that can either be charged and optimized or run out of energy and shut down. Invest in your mind and your mental agility before mental strain or stress begins to negatively affect your life.

Every company needs a strapline to explain the outcome of their work, the message they want to give when someone chooses to invest their time and effort in their services. I felt this message does exactly what it says; our training gives you and your team the ability to power your mind up before it powers you down; to prevent dragging you into the challenges around you, to the detriment of yourself.

A simple interpretation is:

• “Power Up Your Mind” learn the skills to strengthen, train, and support your mind beyond conscious and subconscious.
• “Before It Powers You Down” before mental fatigue, stress, anxiety, burnout, negative thinking, or other mental challenges drain your energy, motivation, or performance.

What are the biggest mindset challenges people face today?

Sadly, the word “mindset” has become a word that works against people regarding mental health, and because of this, I teach in my training NOT to use it. This is two-fold.

Firstly, it is scientifically incorrect. Whilst everyone’s mind is different, a fast mind can change up to 5 times per second! To demonstrate this further, if you are walking down the street and your steps are being made roughly once every second, in just eight steps, your mind could have changed up to 40 times. This shows that the mind is extremely agile and not set. We teach our clients and licensees to use a different phrase, and that phrase is “Mind Reset”. This opens the door to a solution.

Coming to this world from the sports industry; whilst a sports person might go into their competition with a mind thinking that they are going to be victorious, perhaps they see themselves winning the gold medal or, at the very least on the podium, numerous factors could prevent that from happening for example on the day; they are not the best competitor, they, or a team member could become injured, a referee’s decision could go against them. In all these cases, if their mind is set, they cannot then use their mind to adapt and jump into action to manage successfully whatever situation they find themselves in to reach their goal or manage failure.

The one certainty in life is that change is inevitable and is always happening. The number of mental health illnesses and suicides is continuously increasing because people have not been given a solution to manage ongoing change. A prime example is an NHS advert which has recently been aired: The advert shows OCD (managing a work dishwasher that is untidy), Social Anxiety (meeting friends in public), and PTSD (from a car accident). It only talks of TAKING ACTION with talking therapies to help someone recover in these situations and NOTHING about how to TAKE ACTION to prevent these mental health conditions in the first place.

“A strong mind turns challenges into opportunities.”

How is your approach different from traditional mental health support?

To date, all mental health qualifications in this country are in place to react and support once things mentally are going wrong. Whilst these amazing people, from Mental Health First Aiders and Counsellors, to Psychiatrists, are incredible at their work, they don’t need to be needed as much as they currently are IF the mind is isolated out, trained, and seen as the solution to how to manage everything in someone’s life.

Our training becomes part of day-to-day life, allowing you to train your mind to:

• Achieve goals
• Prevent mental health problems
• Prevent suicide

A very important point to make is that we do not deal with memory at all; this is for the current qualifications/clinicians in the mental health industry.

What inspired you to create The Saving Lives Podcast, and what do you hope listeners learn from it?

I felt that “The Saving Lives Podcast” was a good way forward to bring some light to people in a subject that is thought of as very dark. I wanted to create conversations around a topic that has historically been a taboo subject. To educate, in the right way, and raise awareness about suicide.

I also wanted to get the right information out there regarding suicide: that the majority of suicides CAN BE AVOIDED. To build the knowledge that it is possible to use the mind to help you on those extremely dark days, and when your mind is spiraling at great speed.

Telling true life stories from survivors and their messages of hope from their own experiences always helps someone, and helping someone is always worth it if it saves a life. I also wanted to guide those left behind if you are bereaved by suicide, as it is very different to other deaths and types of grief.

When tackling a huge subject such as suicide, it is important that people listen and talk about it more freely when they need to, or if they want knowledge at their own pace.

• Share mind skills.
• Interview psychologists, doctors, coaches, and other experts.
• Build a community focused on resilience and personal growth.
• Encourage proactive mental health habits through stories and practical advice.

What simple advice would you give to someone who feels stressed, overwhelmed, or stuck?

Take a moment and stop. Know that their mind is the solution to how to manage the situation that has given them this stress, overwhelm, or the feeling of being stuck, and to know that their mind has the skills to be the solution to how they get through it successfully.

It is also very important for them to look at what their mind is doing at that moment in time, not in the past, or what will happen in the future.

If you know how to use your mind, you can absolutely avoid developing a mental health problem from your repeated stress and overwhelm. A great way of doing this is to think of three positives. Ideally, for the challenge you are facing, as there are always positives in everything, or, if it is really tough, just three positives to do with anything. We forget how lucky we are! The technology we have, light, heating, food readily available in supermarkets, health, not waking up in a war zone, etc. A lot of these examples will be applicable.

What message do you hope everyone takes away from your work?

The mind has been used and taught in both the world of professional sport to achieve success and manage sporting challenges. These skills can be taken and transferred to everyday life, both professionally and personally, regardless of age, ethnicity or circumstance. It is hugely successful because of:

• The Ease of the Training
  • Practical foundational skills can be given across the board; from a 6-year-old child with behaviour challenges, to a CEO of an international company
• Speed of Implementation
  • An individual can learn the foundational skills in just 3 hours;” Three Power Hours” CPD accredited. This is because this system does not deal with the memory and/or the trauma, part of the mind
  • To train a suitable member of staff in a place of Business and a place of Education, takes just three months, instead of the (very necessary) years of training needed in the current reactive system to support someone when their mind has started to work against them
• Cost Savings
  • Whilst they will always be needed, (roughly) a quarter of a million pounds is spent each year on antidepressants
  • To train a trainer to give these life-saving skills in both the business sector and the education sector is just a few thousand pounds

By training the mind, we ABSOLUTELY CAN prevent a vast number of mental health conditions and suicides, alongside giving people the ability to successfully go out there and get their goals.

Originally published by Global Woman Magazine on 6 August 2026. Republished with permission.