This past week, I led a web-learning session on the “Power of Beliefs,” and this is the theme of this month’s article. As entrepreneurs, we usually start a venture with a healthy dose of trust! We also need to believe our venture will succeed and go well.
However, when the going gets tough, we begin to doubt, question ourselves, and maybe even wonder why on earth we started this business to begin with.
Our beliefs get rocked when our goals, hopes, and dreams don’t manifest. Our beliefs can determine our success and our failure. Let’s dive deeper into our beliefs:
- They are feelings of certainty about what things mean.
- Beliefs also create the maps that guide us toward our goals and give us the power to act.
- Our limiting beliefs can cause us to miss out on the things that we want most, and our empowering beliefs can drive us toward the life we want to live.
Our limiting beliefs can cause us to miss out on the things that we want most and conversely our empowering beliefs can drive us toward to the life we want to live.
What is a goal that you have always wanted to achieve and haven’t?
One reason you have not achieved your goal is that you have an underlying feeling or belief about it. Other reasons why you have not moved forward are fear, doubt, and possible shame/guilt that prevent you from working towards a better you. Whatever your reason, there’s always a limiting belief. You may need to dig deep to let go and change the inner dialogue.
The first step in replacing old, disempowering beliefs with new, empowering beliefs is to understand the five places our beliefs come from.
1. Our Environment
Beliefs come from our environment — beliefs from school, friends, social circles. These beliefs come from our past. You may have a religious belief, or a belief based on something that happened to you growing up. For example, maybe you failed math. Then you felt bad or embarrassed about that, and you adopted a belief about you being “bad at math.” Work to let go of or free yourself from the stories that you are a product of your environment.
There are some wonderful examples of people who have overcome their environments:
One example is Jim Kwik, author of Limitless, who was told he had a learning disorder when he was young. He also came from a new immigrant family and eventually, he re-programmed his brain and overcame it. He is now an author, speaker, coach, and a super person, too!
Another example is the female speaker and “pilot” Jessica Cox, born with no arms, who could fly an airplane! Jessica is amazing, and her belief is that she can do anything with what she has going for her! She even can open and drink out of pop can with her feet and toes! She had to bust through beliefs and how others judged her limitations (physically) to live the full amazing life that she has now!
2. Life Events
Beliefs also come from events in our life: the day you got married; the birth of your child; that big promotion; the death of a loved one; or from even the bad news. The bottom line is that life cycle events affect our lives profoundly causing us to form beliefs, often unconsciously, which affect our entire worldview. Can you think of an event that has impacted you in a positive or negative way?
3. The Past
I lost my father at a young age, and I formed beliefs about how unfair life was and that God didn’t care about me. As I grew older, I held that belief and it stopped me from truly believing otherwise. I still fear how life can be pulled out from under you at a moment’s notice. As I heal that belief, I can now forgive it and choose a new pattern to adopt with new life-affirming actions to take.
We all create beliefs around the results of past achievements or failures. However, past results do not equal future results. Build certainty and confidence by building on successes ― even small ones. Succeed at baby steps and begin to stack positive results in order to believe you can achieve what you set out to do.
4. Knowledge
Our beliefs also come from knowledge or what we have learned as well. There are so many theories, lessons, books, and classes we have learned along the way, and we come to accept and believe these. For example, the world is round, or is it? Alternatively, the law of gravity, or in business the Pareto Principle comes to mind, that is the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of our business comes from 20 percent of our customers. This a law that we have accepted as truth. It is something learned that governs our thoughts and actions!
5. Visualizing
Lastly, our beliefs also come from visualizing. Have you ever visualized something happening in future? You must believe that visualization for it to come to be.
Phil Jackson, the former coach of the Chicago Bulls, (NBA) led his team to six championships in the ‘90s — yes, six. Unheard of, isn’t it?
What coach Jackson did was he would lead a practice; however, he was dubbed the “Zen” coach, because he would also lead the team in meditation and visualization. The team bought in to the idea of seeing themselves as winning the NBA title. However, they also did the work, practiced hard, and had this person on the team, named Michael Jordan.
The key is that their visualization also led to their beliefs in themselves as being good enough to win all of those titles!
Shifting Your Beliefs
As I begin to wrap up, here are a few things to take on to shift your beliefs:
- Watch what your beliefs are telling you.
- Question the beliefs, examine them, and check in on the guilt and shame that governs your beliefs.
- Let go of the ones that don’t serve you.
- Forgive yourself for having them and the persons, places, or things that shaped them.
- Empower yourself with new beliefs.
- Finally, be flexible with your beliefs, as they are changeable and adaptable. Choose life-affirming beliefs. You deserve to succeed at everything in your life: your health, business, relationships, money, etc.
Therefore, I have challenges for you this month:
- You must shift your self-talk if you are going to shift your reality.
- Take the 1-day challenge: Every time a negative thought comes through, replace it with a positive “life-affirming” thought. Just watch your words or self-talk for one day.
Let me know how these challenges go and send me a message.
Have a good month ahead. I believe that you will!
David Cohen
