Maybe, But You Need a Belief Plan Too.
Action Plans. To-do Lists. Calendar Tasks. You know that I believe that our thoughts create our results. So, what if instead of doing this – a belief plan? I think it’s especially important at the beginning of any journey, the beginning of any business, beginning of any new role within a business to do belief work. It’s important so that you can plan everything that you’re actually going to do around why you would even do it. AND you need to create that belief plan from the place of the person who already has the result you want – your future self. If you are taking actions from a place of not really believing, then you’re probably taking the wrong actions.
When you’re growing your business, I find that my clients focus on staying busy so they can feel productive and good instead of focusing on what really matters, which is becoming that next version of themselves.
When you do this belief work, it allows you to speak as if you’ve already become the person you want to be. That you’re already the millionaire. You’re already the leader. You’re already the Olympic athlete. You must believe that in order to get there.
In the same space, a belief plan is the set of beliefs that will inspire you to take actions that align with your goals and create the results you want. This belief plan is based on the identity of this person who has already achieved the outcome.
So when my clients say, “oh, my gosh, I’ve just been so busy,” when I dig a little deeper, sometimes I notice that they’re keeping themselves busy by taking actions that they think are necessary for them to achieve the goal. Like they build the website or write 100 blog posts or prepare for the meeting. The results they want are to serve clients and make money to support the lifestyle they want. The website and blog posts won’t get you there. All that stuff seems productive and it feels really good to accomplish and check off your list, but those aren’t the things that actually contribute to achieving the goal and to becoming that new version of you. While you’re doing things, you completely forget that it isn’t the action alone that creates the result. It’s the belief that does the thinking that creates the result.
Ask yourself this: What is it that you spend time thinking you need to do, and you spend a lot of time doing that isn’t time spent believing that you’re the million-dollar person or leader that you are? Maybe you’re taking lots of action. Putting yourself out there through willpower and motivation and determination. And you’re also courageous and bold. But if you’re coming from the place of being the person who had not yet achieved her goal or who had not yet gotten to that next level, then you haven’t yet experienced the identity shift to take action as the version of the person you want to be. You need to become someone different, go out and do things that the person who achieved the goals would do and do them in the manner she would do them. So all of that time that you spend doing all this busy stuff, it’s just wasted time. It’s like spending effort that you don’t actually have to spend or it’s like focusing just in the complete wrong direction.
It’s almost like driving your car the wrong way. You’re not going towards your goal. You’re busy, you’re still driving, but you’re not going towards your goal. And that’s why so many women get burnt out or frustrated or overwhelmed or anxious. They think it’s never going to happen because they’ve been driving in the wrong direction for five miles. And that’s super frustrating. And when you find out you’ve gone the wrong way, especially for a long time, you want to scream.
When we are so focused on staying busy, we fail to focus on what really matters. We fail to incorporate the identity of already having what we’ve set out to achieve. And then we embody being the person who already is the next version of ourselves, who has and does the things that we desire, not just the person who is on their way, not a person who is working to achieve. If we show up as the person who has already achieved the goal in every situation we find ourselves, if we are taking action from that position, it doesn’t matter what we do because we will get the results we want because we are in belief.
So think about how much effort and time you spend that isn’t believing that you are a success. I want you to ask yourself, is there anything I did today that grew my belief?
A belief plan
The belief work creates the belief plan and all the things you need to think in order to create what you want. So, the belief plan is a to-do list for your brain. Let’s call it a “to believe list.” This is what I want you to do instead of writing a to do list, which would include items like go to the gym, eat a salad for lunch, complete the application, sign up for the job fair, send the email, etc. Instead, write a list of what you need to believe in order to create success today, not six weeks from now, not by the end of the year, but today in this exact moment. What would shift in you if each morning you woke up and asked yourself, what do I need to believe to lose a pound? What do I need to think in order to secure the job? What thoughts do I need to have to write the book?
With the belief work that leads to the belief plan, I am suggesting, instead of giving importance to what you think you need to do in order to achieve your goals, I want you to give importance to what you need to think in order to achieve them.
You have to go work on it as if it were an action plan. You have to measure your productivity on a day-to-day basis, based on whether you developed a stronger belief in yourself or not, whether you can feel it in your body or not. And when you self-coach or you get coached, you have a plan and you say, “these are the beliefs that I’m specifically working on.”
What you should be working on is what you need to be thinking in order to create the success you desire. What can you think right now in this moment that will fuel your inspiration and excitement and motivation and certainty? What will make you feel at ease about moving towards your goal? I want you to write those thoughts down and keep that paper so you can look at it every day. That’s what’s on your agenda for the day.
Make it Measurable
Decide on a measurable result to prove that you believe these thoughts. For example, how I know I’m doing the work and believing in myself is that I will schedule a consult call or sign a client today. So for my clients, they’re setting goals each month and achieving them and they have a long list of what is working for them and they know exactly what they need to believe in any given moment.
We can’t solve a problem with the mind that created it. And if you are self-coaching, make sure you’re coaching yourself from a place of who you want to be, the one who has already achieved success. If you’re stuck in the same belief and you’re constantly coaching yourself on the same things over and over, you’re not letting go of the belief, you’re just staying the same. And if you get up from coaching yourself as the exact same person who sat down, then you’re not self-coaching in a productive way and you’re not shifting. Your beliefs are actually wasting time. And when you’re coaching yourself or getting coached on new beliefs, you should leave feeling inspired and compelled to take action. You should feel a shift inside you. And if you do that consistently, you will get results. And if you have that plan, you’ll always know that this is exactly what I need to work on because I believe in the person I am becoming. I can create success.
To help you start creating a belief plan, download my free Belief Thoughts and Plans worksheet.
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Want to explore this topic more in depth? Listen in to Time to Level Up Podcast Episode 17.
