Just like opinions, we all have beliefs. Like them, love them, loathe them – they are a part of who we are. But how is it that our beliefs shape our experiences and our attitudes and therefore our outcomes? The more important question to be asking though is how do we replace the ones that are not working in our favour? Let’s dive in …
A belief is basically just an idea we have adopted and therefore have collapsed the field around. For instance, I grew up and was therefore taught and programmed to believe that all Germans and Japanese people were bad. And this came from my Grandfather who lived through two World Wars. His firm belief was that Germans and Japanese can’t be trusted and I never questioned this belief until I obviously was an adult and started to question its validity. Had I continued to adopt this belief and collapsed the field around it, I would have not recognized the wonderful opportunity of hosting a gorgeous German guy who lived with us for 6 months’ as an Au Pair and the subsequent friendship and travel experiences that eventuated from that decision. He was a tremendous support to our family whilst here and we maintain this relationship to this day. This is obviously an extreme example but hoping I’ve made a strong point here.
We learn beliefs typically from our parents’, school teachers and other role model figures from our childhood and tend to carry them through into adulthood. It’s rare that anyone really questions their belief systems and in many contexts, people will defend them rather vehemently. The most important thing to understand though, is if a belief is not serving you in supporting you to achieve the outcomes you want in life, it’s probably time to address it.
In the words of one of my Mentors Kain Ramsay – “As humans, we are experts at constructing beliefs in our minds and do not like other people telling us that we are wrong or that our beliefs might be harming us. Most people are quite unaware that beliefs are merely ideas, not truths, and that they can in fact be deconstructed in a very similar way to that which they are constructed.” Sounds way too simple doesn’t it? But it’s absolutely true. Delphi was known to say “know thy self”. And that means YOU – not your parents’ or your teachers or your tennis coach or whoever made a strong impression on you growing up. The difficulty in addressing one’s beliefs is that the majority of them are subconscious. But I guess the easy thing about that is to look at your results. Are they what you really want and if not, time to critically examine what you believe. Your belief is not a truth – it’s purely an idea and we can come up with ideas just as easily as we can wash our hands. But this is important work! Remembering that your business will only grow as you do – and once you truly realize that – it makes addressing your negative belief system a bit easier.
The process is a little more complex in practice. Firstly, if you are not succeeding in your business, you are going to need to start peeling back onion layers as to why that is. Do you believe that success and money is only for greedy people? Do you believe that you are not worthy of success? Do you believe that only people who are dodgy and crooked make money? If this is a bit of a theme for you, then it’s definitely time to critically address this belief system. I can absolutely bet that you heard things growing up like “money doesn’t grow on trees” or “rich people are so greedy and selfish” or “money doesn’t make the world go around”. Or something similar. And at the end of the day, those beliefs are those of the person who shared them with you. They are not necessarily YOUR beliefs – you have merely adopted them. Perhaps subconsciously but they are there and therefore every single decision you make about something financial, these statements come up and you therefore collapse the field on what is possible. You won’t make the calls, you won’t share your opportunity, you won’t do the work because you will feel tremendous guilt and a huge amount of internal conflict. I hope this is resonating because this is deep and powerful work here.
So without going deeper into this, I’m going to leave it there. This is work only you can do. Really peel back those layers and look at what your beliefs are that are holding you back from the success and money you deserve. That’s right – you deserve it! I too grew up inside of a poverty mindset household, surrounded by family members on welfare. I had MASSIVE work to do on my poverty mindset. I recognized how many beliefs that were passed on to be that were absolute BS. Maybe true for whomever said them to me over and over and over again but NOT true for me. I am the first millionaire in my family. I chose not to retire on welfare with nothing. I chose to believe that success is possible for someone like me and put that poverty crap out of my psyche. And seriously, if I can do it – so can you. Do the work. It’s worth it.