109: How Your Beliefs Affect Your Behavior

Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast, I’m your host Andrea Liebross.

Each week I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level are you ready? Let’s go!

Okay, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm on a roll today. I'm recording a bunch of podcasts, which I think is a great way to do it. It's kind of like the batching method, and that's what's happening today. As we head into this new year, a lot of us are thinking about planning. As you know, I love business plans. I'm all up for a good business plan. But what I love about the kinds of business plans that I do with my clients is that they don't just focus on the actions they need to take, but we spend a significant, probably more, definitely more time figuring out what they need to believe—beliefs are thoughts—what they need to believe and think in order to accomplish what they want to accomplish.

They say to me, “Yeah, but don't we need to know what to do?” What I always say is that your beliefs are going to tell you or guide you on what to do. It doesn't go the other way around. If you have the right beliefs, if you believe that something is possible, then you will automatically take the right actions. If you believe, for example, that you are capable of growing your business in 2023, then you're going to take the actions necessary to make that happen. It is only when we start to question our beliefs, throw them out the window, or look to the path for evidence of what to do in the future, when we do those kinds of things, then we don't take the right actions.

My clients are always intrigued when I say “I want you to throw out your to-do list and focus on creating more of a thought list.” Here is why. Our thoughts create our results, not our actions alone create our results. Our thoughts create the results. Our actions alone don't create our results. Instead of spending so much time and energy creating an action plan or a lengthy to-do list, what if you created a belief plan to get the results that you crave?

Now you can go back and listen to my episode about belief plans. I think it's a really powerful episode. The reason I think it's a powerful episode, the reason I think this concept is powerful is that you have to commit to spending significant and specific thinking time about how to become the person who has achieved what they're trying to achieve or the entrepreneur who has grown a business that they love and the business they want. You've got to spend significant and specific thinking time before you take any action.

Again, “Andrea, what do I need to do?” No, you're spending endless hours perfecting your websites, your offers, or your marketing material and zero time believing in you or your business. In order to become an I've Got This kind of woman, in order to have a Runway to Freedom in your business, you have got to spend endless hours believing in you and your business. You have to go out into the world and do the things that the person who believes they are successful would do and then take the action the way that person would take the action.

If you're not shouting from the rooftops about what you do, then you are not spending enough time believing in what you do. For example, I love always relating this back to our personal lives, you have to be a fit and healthy person in your mind first, and then take action as the fit and healthy person would do in order to become that fit and healthy person. You have to live in a no-judgment zone. You have to be free of judgment and full of belief. You have to be the highly-paid entrepreneur and then take action as a highly-paid entrepreneur to get paid as one.

Creating fancy spreadsheets, reading about it, or watching videos online about the best plans will not get you there. That's why I say that listening to podcasts, I'm all in but it's passive. You're not taking action from the person who believes what's being talked about on the podcast is possible. Remember what it was like to exercise when you didn't see yourself as an active person.

I've done that. I've exercised when I didn't see myself as a strong fit person. But I have had so much more success when I thought of myself as the strong fit person and tailored my behavior on how that strong fit person would work, would eat out, would think, would drink. I want you to consider what goals you've set for 2023 and ask “What could I think today to go out and create what I want in this moment? What would I need to think to fuel me into clarity, motivation, excitement, and action?” Write down these beliefs and practice these beliefs every day.

Someone asked me in a consult call yesterday, “Well how does this happen?” I said practicing. The more action you take from a belief plan, the more the beliefs solidify. This is more important than your to-do list by far. Most of the things on your to-do list are not going to help you believe. I practice believing and it happens. I have two completely full coaching programs that serve my ideal clients in a way that they cannot be served otherwise. I believe that my clients want what I offer. I believe that maintaining a weight loss is easy.

What is on your belief plan? I'm kind of in the belief business. If you're struggling to get a result, then we need to create a belief plan together. It's going to change everything. You already know what actions to take. You have a general idea, but it is the belief that's going to help you achieve it. This is really about aligning your behaviors and your beliefs toward what you actually want to create because if you continue to operate from old program beliefs or old actions, you're just going to continue to get the same results you already get.

If you want to achieve things that you've never achieved before, you have to start believing new things. You have to increase your level of thinking. If you're about to turn this off and say, “I've already heard this. I've already heard this message,” that means that you need this message even more because it really comes down to, as much as I love marketing, websites, and all of that, as much as I love to teach you how to create more wealth and more contents that guide your clients, what it really comes down to is you believing you can achieve it or not.

What are your belief patterns? Because everything else is driven from those belief patterns. The concept of a belief plan is that by working harder on your thinking than you do in your actions, you will get the result you want. Thinking is way more important than actions because thinking is what fuels action. So what I find most often again, and we're all guilty of this, is that I am constantly having to shift my focus and remind myself here that this is a huge, huge, huge if you don't get what you want, then you need to shift your thinking.

I would love for you to at least get this when you start to learn how to focus more on how you think, why you think what you're thinking and build that skill that your success will be inevitable. Example, if you are creating a webinar, holding an event, sending out postcards, or upping your social media as core methods of getting clients, I want you to spend that same amount, if not more energy, on believing you will get more clients. You are so focused on mastering these tactics you aren't getting the results you want. You're seeing low engagement, people aren't showing up. They're not opening your emails. They're definitely not buying your service or product.

What I see again and again is that we need to do more here in the thinking, we need to figure out how to think or create beliefs that will get more people to watch your videos. If we go right to working on the strategy itself and spend no time on the strategy, meaning the actions themselves, and spend no time thinking, then that's the problem. What is missing most often is that there is no recognition or awareness of the thoughts that are creating the results you're getting.

I see this played out again and again. If I ask the right questions to my clients, they will get the results that they want because what I'm doing is I am triggering new thoughts and new beliefs. If we don't understand what we're thinking during the time we're sending out the email or creating the webinar, whatever we're doing, or having a consult call, whatever you're thinking is going to drive your action.

If we are not believing that this person is a yes or this person is the perfect client, then you're not going to show up in the way you want to show up. You're not going to show up with the energy you want. That means that you're not going to be successful. We go down this spiral of fixing a problem that really isn't a problem.

Example, doing a consult. I think I did a little Reel on this earlier this week. Consult. She is telling me all the things she thinks she needs to do. After I probed and asked more and more questions, what she really needed to do were the things she wasn't mentioning. They were the things that she believed worked, but she wasn't focusing on them because she was focused on something she thought she was missing. I said, “No, let's go back. Let you focus on the things you believe work, the things you know create success, let's do those. Those are what is driving your results.”

We don't need to fix or create the actions. We need to create new beliefs, beliefs that you know exactly what you need to do. If we constantly operate on thoughts that don't serve us, like she was, like the thought “Was I missing something?” it's going to send a spinning. The same thing goes if you're a creator, if you're creating content with the thoughts of nobody is going to look at this, then nobody's going to look at it.

If you have a thought “What will people think? Will they think I'm annoying?” then you're going to be annoying. You have to go to work to change the thoughts, your thoughts before you change any actions or any strategy. This was huge awareness for me several years ago when I was constantly pivoting my strategies, thinking that I needed to do something different. I'm changing up my business this year a little bit, like I mentioned in the last episode, because I believe this is a better way to serve my clients, or I believe my clients need what I am offering here. That's what's driving me to take the action to change things up.

Changing things up is really a lot, my friends, it’s a lot of work. I wouldn't want to do it if I didn't believe that this is the right way to go. Consider what are the thoughts that are going to get in the way of you creating success. When you can see those thoughts, what happens is that you then get to create new thoughts that will drive your actions to success.

I know a lot of you are probably thinking this is easier said than done, it's so hypothetical. But it's not. It's just a decision. Every moment you shift, every moment you make the decision to believe something different, you will create a different result. But it does take sort of that pause to create or to assess your thoughts and to create new ones. If you're not used to this, it's going to take some practice to become aware of your thoughts and create new ones.

That's why I invite you into one of my coaching containers. Doing this work alone is challenging and I will pretty much bet you won't do it because there are so many other things that your brain would rather be doing. You'd actually rather be taking the actions because then you can check them off. There is no checkoff on creating new beliefs. There's only a checkoff on actions. I want you to think about having an entire belief plan of thoughts that are aligned with where you want to go and only operating off of that belief plan.

Identify thoughts that are going to help you create what you want. Those thoughts are going to guide you to take the actions. They're going to tell you what to do every day. They're going to give you the blueprint. You don't need a to-do list. You just need some thinking. This is such a powerful exercise. Whether you're going for something big or not, or you just want to change how you show up for your kids, always go back to the thoughts you're having. This is so important.

I just want to caution you before you change anything about your actions or your strategy, before you create anything new in your business, really make sure it's out of the right thoughts, that they're in alignment with where you're going. If you love this kind of thinking, I encourage you to share this episode with someone else. Tell them that you're listening. Tell them that you're fueling your brain with new thinking and you want them to do that too. Tag me if you share on social media, that always makes me super excited.

But even more, the thought I want you to have is that I deserve the support, I will get through coaching in order to create the business and life I want to love. Having a guide, a Sherpa, or someone challenging my thinking is exactly what I need and I am willing to go after it. If it is exactly what you need, then you will take the actions and go after it. I will be on the other end waiting for you. I will be there.

If you want to be part of a community of female entrepreneurs, if you want to have accountability and growth, if you want to not have your business duct-taped together any longer, and believe it is possible, it will drive you to take the actions to get the support you need and I am here for you waiting on the other end. Okay, my friends, until next time, focus on your belief plan, focus on it more than any action plan. If you need help creating a belief plan, if you need help with infusing belief into your business plan, believe that you are worthy of seeking the guidance you crave. Remember, now is the time to level up. It’s a new year, it's going to be a new you. See you next time.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great but you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to Andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.