Do you have any idea of what you are truly capable of or have you given up?
What is your view and generalisation regarding your own life? Do you constantly tell yourself: I’m just not made for anything special or, I’m just really unlucky, or that’s just the way it is.
We are amazing creatures who are capable of such amazing feats, but we can become trapped by our mind. Our mind is what makes us so amazing, our ability to learn, create, have emotions, but at the same time it is our mind and our beliefs that keep us trapped.
Most people don’t even know the sort of beliefs and narrative they have about themselves. But if you constantly tell yourself, I’m just unlucky or I’m just not made for that then that is what you believe. This becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Most people don’t consciously choose their beliefs. They are imparted on us through our lives; from what we see, experience are told and learn.
Our mind wants to take care of us, so throughout our life it is constantly assessing for danger. And every time we feel pain it will store that away and use it as ammunition for when we want to try again. And of course in some cases this is needed. This is how children learn to wait for their food to cool down rather than burning their mouths. But often our mind is over cautious. If we don’t complete a goal and we feel disappointed, then it wants to protect us from that, but that would mean never setting goals again and that isn’t useful for us.
We have an ongoing dialogue that is telling us who we are and what we are capable of. The internal conversations we have in our head are at a speed of 4000 words a minute which is around 10 times faster than everyday speech. To give context an inaugural speech of 9000 words took 90mins. Just think about that for a minute. 4000 words a minute; a minute! And we are not conscious of this. It is just an ongoing internal dialogue.
So how many beliefs and insults do you think you throw at yourself during that minute?
I was recently coaching someone and they said several times during our conversation; I don’t follow through with my goals. She didn’t even know she was saying this, it was just something that rolled off her tongue.
I said to her: Do you realise how many times you have said ‘I don’t follow through with my goals’. It was the first time she stopped and really dug into this. We looked at whether this was really the case. Have you really NEVER completed any of your goals?? Any of them?? Of course she had. There was plenty she had achieved, but there were just a few she hadn’t. But the few she hadn’t stuck out like a sore thumb in her mind and all she had achieved was pushed to the back of her mind. So she walked around with this belief that she can’t follow through on goals. Which meant she didn’t push herself anymore as she was trying to avoid the pain of disappointing herself.
When you dissect it like this, it seems so obvious, but this all happens in a millisecond in your head. Remember 4000 words a minute.
So what do you do with this information?
If you go around telling yourself constantly ‘you can’t’ then that is what you believe.
If before you even give yourself a chance to explore the possibilities you are already subconsciously telling yourself that you can’t achieve it, that you don’t deserve it, that it’ll never work, what chance do you have? You’ve shut it down before you’ve even given it a chance to breath.
You need to change the story. You need to change your internal dialogue. You need to know and believe deep down that you can. You need to have unwavering belief. Once you have done this, you will be able to push yourself further as your mind will fully believe you are capable.
So how do you do that:
- Assess your belief system. Think about the different areas of your life;
- Career
- Future career
- Relationships
- Money
- Health
And any others that come to mind. What are your beliefs in these areas? You need to take some time for this. Really dig deep. What do you truly believe?
- Are these empowering or limiting beliefs? For example, you may have a belief that you just can’t run. You like doing weights, but running is not your thing it’s just not how your body was made. This would be a limiting belief as it is stopping you from even trying to run.
- Is it true? Really assess if the statement is true? Is your body really not made for running, or have you just given up too fast? Maybe you never invested in someone to help you achieve this goal? But is your body really not made running? Unlikely.
- Change the story. Change the story you tell yourself. Picture yourself running, really visualise it. Change your mindset to complete belief that you are capable of running and nothing is going to stop you. Write a new story, of how you will achieve your goal, you will run a marathon, whatever you want that new story to be and then start to believe.
- Believe it. You can’t just tell yourself the new story once and expect everything to change. You need to do this everyday. Write down your new beliefs, and everyday you need to read them to yourself. Keep reading them to yourself everyday until you know with unwavering certainty that you believe what you are saying.
It may only be 3 steps, but it takes time to make the change especially depending on how ingrained the belief is. All changes start with the mindset, so do this now and see how it starts to change your life.
