@aciampa, you are undoubtedly much more than a teacher who is competent in your content area - you lead by example, you put out expectations higher that your trainees might ever have considered for themselves on their own and simply expect them to be met, and without a doubt, your strength of character serves as motivation and inspiration for your students. And in doing this, you change lives for the better.
Still, there are times when a student can't meet you somewhere in the middle and you have to start where they are, or where _they_ think they are.
Pavel offers that wonderful Bruce Lee quote in PTTP, about how (I'll paraphrase), when he started, a punch was just a punch, then he realized how complicated it was to do correctly, and finally how he came to think that a punch was just a punch again. That third stage, although it makes for very nice reading to use the same words to describe it as the first stage, is actually a long, long way away.
I don't think one can always look at all people - it's not just women - who are afraid of strength training and say, "Just don't be afraid of it - you can do it," and leave it there. In exercise, we have a baseline, and we move forward with progressions but we bring people to that baseline with what we call regressions, which are nothing more than progressions starting at a earlier point on the path. I think attitudes need to be treated like that, too. Sometimes we can progress towards strong, but sometimes we have to first move from "I'm weak and I'm supposed to be," to "I don't have to be weak," before we can move to "I want to be strong." Not everyone is ready to, in one fell swoop, bypass, as
@Anna C succinctly put it, all that "mental crap."
Related to this, an article someone pointed out to me recently.
13 things mentally strong people don't do
My wife and I had a great discussion about this after we'd both read it. She comes from a very "you can't do anything" upbringing; my sister and I joke that the only reason our mother didn't encourage us to think outside the box was that our mother didn't even know there _was_ a box that you had to think outside of. She would just look at us whenever we'd boxed ourselves in and say, "Why?" It worked with us as children - would that it would as well with adults.
I have undoubtedly rambled pompously on past my welcome here so I'll stop - thank you for indulging me.
-S-