73: Removing Limiting Beliefs

Episode 73 Limiting Beliefs.mp3

[00:00:09] You're listening to the Time to Level Up podcast. I'm your host business life coach, Andrea Libros. I help women in business commit to their own growth personally and professionally. Each week, I'll bring you strategies to help you think clearly. Gain confidence. Make your time productive. Turn every obstacle into an opportunity. And finally overcome the overwhelm so that you can make money and manage life. Let's create a plan so you have a profitable business, successful career, and best of all, live with unapologetic ambition. Are you ready to drop the drama and figure out the how in order to reach your goals? You're in the right place. It's time to level up. Let's do this. Hey, time to level up, listeners. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you're having a great week if you're listening to this exactly when it goes live, this is the week we are doing achieve more due less. So I will report back after the event and let you know how it went. All right. So we're going to continue our discussion this month about what we experience is really what we expect. We tend to experience in life, what we expect. So last week we talked about kind of completing the past or seeing your past as if it were just the first part of a movie. Right. So half the movie is over. Actually, for me, I don't know. I'm turning 50 this year. Maybe half the movie is over, half the movie's over, but you've got another half to live.

[00:02:18] But if we look at that past half of the movie and we kind of make peace with it and understand what has gone on, we actually can twist or pivot what the next half will be like. But in order to do that. We have to set aside our limiting beliefs, and that's what we're going to talk about today. How do you set aside limiting beliefs? So many people, they just simply do not believe that they can be happy in multiple aspects of their life, that they can be satisfied with their finances, their relationships, their health, their profession all at the same time. They kind of think, well, I mean, if one thing is going right, something else must be going wrong. So they they're bought in to the kind of hustle fallacy that they can't see beyond. So their belief is, well, if one thing is going right, something else will go wrong. All right. And that's what I call a limiting belief. And there are lots of limiting beliefs. Here are a couple I don't have time to pursue my biggest goals. I failed in business before, so I probably won't succeed this time. I don't have the willpower to make good habits or choices, and I never make good decisions. I'm a procrastinator. I do better under pressure. I'm not good with money. I've tried this before, so it definitely won't work.

[00:03:57] Those are all limiting beliefs. These thoughts are not objectively true. Like in a court of law, we could not prove that they were true. But if you believe things like this, they limit your ability to achieve anything in the future. Okay. So sometimes my kids will just say nothing's going right. Okay. And when they're in that kind of mood, yeah, nothing is going right. Or sometimes when I can think, oh, my gosh, it always takes me 100 hours to fold laundry. Right. That limits my belief that I actually could fold laundry in less than 100 hours. Now, everyone has the power to control their own thoughts, and it is possible to replace some of these limiting beliefs with what I might want to call liberating truths. All right, now, liberating truth. How I'm going to define it is the power that comes from having a solid, positive, true thought about one's self. You have the power to control your mindset. You get to decide what thoughts take root there. You decide which ones to uproot and throw away. I'm about to launch a new website and I have a quiz on there, and I think by the time you're listening to this, it will be live. But the name of the quiz is Reveal the Root. Okay. So we have thoughts that usually are at the root of our problem, but we can't uproot the root and throw it away. So here are some examples of liberating truths.

[00:05:51] I can develop skills I need to succeed. I believe in myself and I believe in the power of transformation. I've learned from my mistakes and I will achieve my goals. So those are all liberating truths. And I'm going to now share with you, I think, the six steps to setting aside limiting beliefs. Now, the first one we kind of already mentioned, which is really identifying your limiting beliefs. That's the first step to overcoming them. So here's another example. This belief might be something like, I don't have enough experience or I'm not very disciplined. Okay. So we all have our own challenges. It could be anything. And I think if you can try to jot down the belief or the thought you're having word for word, you can externalize it. You can see it not internally, but externally. And then once you see it on paper, it actually makes it really easy to evaluate it. So this kind of goes into some of my beliefs that thought downloads are super important. So this is like identifying your limiting beliefs by downloading all of them or downloading all of your thoughts. Now, number two, step two is recognizing that they are just thoughts or beliefs or really opinions. So you've got to recognize what are the facts. But most of the time when we're writing down these things, they're not facts, they're thoughts or opinions or beliefs. And what if? That belief was wrong.

[00:07:45] What if you're wrong? So when you recognize it as a thought or an opinion, then you kind of are giving yourself the privilege or the opportunity to challenge your own beliefs. Could it be wrong? What if I was wrong? What if I have all the experience I need? What if I'm amazing with money? What if I can be disciplined? What if I have all the time in the world to pursue my biggest goals? So step two is recognizing that they're just thoughts and then challenging them. Could I be wrong? It's a really powerful question. Okay. Third step, step number three is recognizing that some of these thoughts. Have potentially damaging consequences. So is this belief enabling you to accomplish the outcome you want or is it holding you back? Is it empowering or draining? To be honest, because honest evaluation is really the key to freedom, right? Honest evaluation of your thoughts is the key to creating some freedom. So are these beliefs? Are these thoughts moving you in the right direction or not? Are they aligning with where you want to go or not? Are they helping you or hindering you? So that's number three. The number four is. Adopting a new belief or reframing the old one. All right. So let's talk about reframing first. So reframing requires actually probably more work than adopting a completely new belief, because limiting beliefs really often have a seed of truth to them. A seed. But you don't have to surrender to the limiting belief or give into it, even if it is partly true.

[00:09:57] Okay. So you can rewrite sometimes you can rewrite your own narrative. So that goes back to the movies, right? You can write that second half of the movie. The movie can pivot. The narrative does not have to continue. And if you've evaluated the genre of the movie and decided you don't like the genre that you're living in, you can rewrite it, you can reframe it. So maybe you're currently thinking, I'm not creative. And you could just accept that install out or you could reframe it like this. I'm not a creative person, but I can always collaborate with someone who is. See you. See how that works. So maybe there's a little grain of truth in it. Like you're not creative. It's not your. Your best quality or your best thing, but you can collaborate with someone who is creative. All right. So that's kind of reframing things. I have to do that a lot in my business. Okay. For example, like with marketing. All right, I don't love marketing. I'm going to be honest, but I don't have to love it because I can find people who do love it. And enjoy doing it. And I can either learn from them or just let them do it. I don't have to love it. So I don't love marketing and I don't have to love marketing. I can find people to help me.

[00:11:32] That's kind of reframing the belief. All right. Ready for step five? So now kind of comes another tough part, which is reorienting your thinking to the new belief. So this is kind of not telling yourself the same story over and over again. It's telling yourself the new story. And this isn't just about simple affirmations. I'm about I love affirmations. I'm happy if you have them on your mirror or dangling from your car or your computer. But this isn't what I'm talking about. What I'm really talking about is reorienting your thinking around that new or liberating truth. So this is like the GPS system recalibrating the route. So it's still is going to get you to the same place. It's still going to get you to Target, but it might take you on a different route. I love how when my GPS gives me options and if it says similar time and I'm like, Huh, do I want to drive on the highway? Do I want to go in the back roads? Right. So this is just reorienting. Or recalibrating your thinking. So here's an example you might tell yourself I don't have the exact experience necessary for that job. Instead, you could say, I have different experiences that will make me more of a unique candidate. The old thinking if you kept thinking I don't have the exact experience necessary for the job, holds you back, but now you have a foothold for some real progress.

[00:13:06] If you think that I don't have the exact experience, but it would make me a more unique candidate. So I want you to, just like you did the thought download and found all of your limiting beliefs, I want you to write down your revised beliefs. So this is in past podcasts I've talked about doing models and putting your thoughts into a model, your thoughts that come from your automatic thinking or your kind of unconscious thinking, and then reframing it and doing things with intention or on purpose, which is what you're doing when you're reorienting yourself to your new belief. And then the last step to setting aside these limiting beliefs is putting them into practice. So you've got to start living that second half of the movie. You have to begin living into the narrative of a new, liberating truth, and you might not fully buy into it. You might even feel like you are faking it. And that, my friends, is fine, even normal. But if you keep telling yourself the truth over time, you'll feel more comfortable with it. Isn't that so true that over time things become more comfortable if we start pushing ourselves to do something different or to think something different, you feel more comfortable with it. So this just happened this weekend. My daughter decided that she was going to IU for college next year and when we were debating and she was talking about making decision, there were some things that she found attractive at other schools.

[00:14:44] And although she finds lots attractive at IU, there were a few thoughts that were kind of holding her back, and we had to reframe those thoughts so that they would give her a feeling of confidence in making the decision to go to IU. So she said to me, Well, it's not going to be as new as an exciting as, say, going to Wisconsin because lots of people around here go to IU and that's where her brother is and she's been on that campus. And I said, Well, you can think that that it would be more exciting to go somewhere, but you can also think, isn't it great that there's some familiarity with being in Bloomington? That's what you've got to start to believe. Isn't it going to be more fun? Knowing a little bit before you get there. Isn't it going to be great that you're going to see some familiar faces as you walk across campus? That's all just reframing. And this weekend, once she made her decision, she started to put this into practice, living that new narrative she put on her Indiana sweatshirt she posted on social media, and she started believing in her new truth, that liberating truth. So. The first step to achieving success is to really master your mindset by setting aside those limiting beliefs and embracing the fact that you can achieve your goals and be happy in multiple areas of your life.

[00:16:24] So I can be successful in my career while I enjoy a rich relationship and deep personal satisfaction. That could be a goal that can happen, my friends. If you adopt some new limiting, limiting new liberating truths. So that's what I wanted to share with you today. And interestingly, I've been kind of reworking my website and I went into Apple Podcasts and I started to pull up some of the reviews of this podcast. And what I found was so interesting is that some of the reviews mentioned how by listening to this podcast, for example, people have started to think differently. Think differently because they borrowed some of these new truths. Okay. They've borrowed the fact that they don't have to be an expert at everything. And I've talked about that on the podcast, but they can find someone who is. So I'll read you I'll read you one of them that says, My biggest takeaway from Andrea and her podcast is to start with mindset. Be ready to get uncomfortable. Doing. The next right thing, because on the other side of that is success. So sometimes it's uncomfortable as we reframe our limiting beliefs. It is uncomfortable. But on the other side of it is success is truth, is happiness. All right, my friends. That is what I have for you today. Next week, we're going to talk about another step in kind of mastering your mindset.

[00:18:17] And the thought are we're going to keep exploring how we tend to experience what we expect. So between now and then, I want you to do a thought download. That's your homework. Share it with me. Message me. Let me help you work through that to create some new liberating truths. All right. And also, feel free to reach out if you just have a question. I am happy to offer coaching if you DM me or message me. I love coaching women and that's what I'm here to do. Have a great day, my friends. Remember. Now's the time. There is no better time to level up. See you next week. Thanks for listening to the Time to Level Up podcast with me, your host, Andrea Libros. If you know someone who could benefit from listening to this episode, I encourage you to take a screenshot and share it with them. Okay, now what about you? You've listened to the podcast and if you now know that you're ready to upgrade your life, upgrade your business, upgrade you, then stop being only a listener and start being a liver living that upgraded life. Head over to my website and schedule a call right there on that call. We'll start changing the way you think and act so that you can have the freedom to achieve the impossible in life and business and have the resources to do it. You deserve an upgrade. Let's do it.