You are early, because that’s how you do business. The right way. Anything less is poor standards and not worth your time. You sit there, occasionally glancing at your phone as the time clocks past the hour… they have not arrived yet. As the minutes tick past you mentally allow a buffer of what is acceptable. Saying to yourself, I’ll give it five minutes and then maybe I’ll call them. You start to offer yourself possibilities as to what has held them up: Perhaps they are stuck in traffic? Maybe their dog died? Could they have forgotten about the meeting? Ten past has come and gone, yet still nothing. And then you feel it, the slow familiar heavy sensation building in your gut. This the signal to form a belief about the person who has just let you down.
A belief is a convenient assumption
A belief is something we deem as being true. Beliefs are reliable. They are convenient, accessible and rarely change as often they are inherited. But, what if we have been wrong? What if everything we believed true about ourselves and others is in fact not true. What would happen then? How would you choose to live your life? What you allow yourself to begin doing or stop doing, if anything at all?
Famous American Entrepreneur Jim Rohn is often quoted saying something along these lines:
“You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with”
So many people in life and business are guilty of something called cognitive dissonance. This is where we experience discomfort from holding two or more inconsistent beliefs, attitudes or values. As humans we aim to be consistent and will do more to avoid the discomfort or pain. Often in these moments we will reject any new information that conflicts with our existing beliefs. The discomfort may show up as stress, anxiety, regret or feelings of low self-worth.
For some of us, where being uncomfortable with tough negative emotions has been a pattern holding us back most of our life, we may hear ourselves saying out loud, this always happens to me. Perhaps as a child, there was not enough room for failure. Perhaps you grew up in an environment where, despite feeling loved, your parents or siblings were more quick to point out your weaknesses, than your strengths. As a sensitive child you then formed a belief of not feeling good enough unless you had approval from those people in your life. Perhaps you still do this? You may be asking how is all of this a problem? It is in experiencing these negative emotions, feelings or memories where we are more likely to seek safety.
For some of us we will seek safety distraction where we procrastinate or invest in addictions that give us short-lived highs. We may than look to those we care about to help us. We may talk over what we are feeling with friends or family only to hear back that we shouldn’t worry about it. That we should forget about it, that whatever it is we are choosing to do isn’t worth the stress or pain. We start to question why we would allow ourselves to feel this way? What’s the point? It is in these moments we are vulnerable to quitting.
Think about this for a moment. Even close your eyes and allow yourself to form a picture in your mind of who these five people are right now for you? As you do this, remind yourself of your business or life goals. Even check in on your results: are you experiencing the success you want right now? Are you taking action that moves you towards these goals or are you beginning to realise each day you are moving slowly away from them. It is at this point we can ask ourselves, do the people I am spending time with have the results I am looking for? Are they encouraging me to understand what it will take for me to achieve what I say matters?
We know success in business comes as we connect with like minded people. Sometimes where we are attempting to scale and reach new heights we realise we need something more.
Despite consistently following all the best advice and networking, reading every day, and forming new positive daily habits we realise something is in the way.
Working with a transformational coach can help you discover what the block is and you can begin to explore all you have come to believe about yourself, the limits you place on your ability, and what you are valuing more in life. A good quality coach will not coach the problem, they will coach the thinking causing the problem.
Three ways to bring awareness to limiting beliefs:
1. NOTICE HOW YOU REACT
Let’s use the example of being late for this one because it is one where most people seem to have an opinion. As a society we are driven by time. Mostly everything we do runs to a schedule or lasting an amount of time. A recently poll here on LinkedIn asked for opinions on whether someone being late was disrespectful, returning a 79% yes : 21% no response. This article on The Psychology of Lateness helps remind us there is an emotional reaction happening within the person choosing to feel disrespected from someone being late. The person may feel annoyed and either choose to let the person who is late know this, or they may choose to not tell them (and yet tell everyone else they meet that day how annoyed they were).
Reasons offered in the article for why a person is late can be concious or unconcious. Perhaps they are poor at self-management where they find it hard to say no and as such often over-commit themselves. Or, there could be something on a deeper emotional level where they use lateness as a means of expressing anger through passive-aggressive behaviour. Often these people are unaware of their core need for significance not being met and run a story in their head they don’t matter; that its ok if they are late, and that being late is not their fault as they have so much they have to deal with in life. In choosing to be late they often draw attention to themselves, making apologies or giving excuses in a bid to gain control.
Any strong belief we form from an emotional experience that prevents us from seeing what may be going on for the other person can mean we are coming from a place of judgement. We may also stop ourselves from exploring all possibilities. What if the person who is late is in fact the team member you need to change the direction in your business? All they need is someone to notice this?
Whatever kind of person you are – punctual or late – knowing what you have now read, as you react to someone else’s behaviour, ask yourself, what do you believe to be true about yourself in that moment?
2. WHAT OUTCOME ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
Getting clear on our purpose, goals and values is so important as we consider the outcomes we want to achieve. For example, perhaps you have come to realise they way you are currently doing things in your business is not sustainable, or how you are used to doing business has changed. For the latter, perhaps it is noticing what used to work in the past, is not yielding the same results you used to get. You realise a need for change and to adapt and yet the thought of doing things differently brings feelings of not being as good as your peers. We can experience crippling fear believing the worst as we compare ourselves to others. Some of us know this as Tall Poppy Syndrome where the unconscious question is, who am I to succeed?
Exploring the origin of these fears can help bring a new perspective to what we have been telling ourselves and allow us to think about events from the past in different ways. We can allow ourselves to get excited about our business goals, and realise its ok to not get things right first time around. We can remind ourselves fear is a necessary emotion designed to warn us of danger. We know the reptile brain will chose one of three ways to behave as it recognises fear: fight, flight (run) or freeze, where we do nothing. Learning how to feel into our emotions and doing work to understand how the body processes emotions teaches us the emotion itself is fast! Its the belief or story we attach to experiencing the emotion that stays longer and impacts on our choice of behaviour.
Perhaps you have been here before, working towards similar outcomes, where you were given feedback of not being great at something. Again, working with a coach you can explore the beliefs formed in those moments of failure and how they are now stopping you from achieving the outcomes you know are needed right now.
3. ARE YOU WILLING TO DO WHAT IT TAKES?
When exploring belief change, one of the most important questions to ask ourselves is how committed we are to change? For any good coach will tell you, change is not possible unless we commit to it fully. Unless we realise in order to change, we must prepare ourselves to move away from what is comfortable and safe to what is unfamiliar, uncomfortable and risky. We may fail. We may get feedback. And there will be moments where we may not enjoy all what we are choosing to do. We are likely to experience emotions and feelings we have spent a lifetime trying to suppress and avoid.
In making the commitment to taking new action, to see new results on levels never experienced before takes us embracing uncertainty, where we let go of controlling what comes next. To do this we give ourselves permission to form new beliefs about ourselves. We stop looking to others for all the answers or approval and instead we give ourselves approval to succeed.
Rewiring our thinking to form new beliefs takes practice and it certainly helps to check in with those who care about us, for support. Perhaps allowing yourself to form new connections with people who can cope with the level of new conversations you are needing to have. Sometimes we can expect too much of those closest to us where they are not on the path we are on. Having purpose and balance in life where we can bring in what is fun, for example, reminds us why we do all that we do in the first place.