Time To Throw Away Outdated Belief Systems That Aren’t Allowing You To Thrive

“Your B.S. is stopping from growing your business to the next level.”- Keep Going BookB.S. – or your Belief System – has been running the show of your life and you may not have even been aware of it. Belief system can be thought of as your identity.

Brain researchers now know that we store beliefs in our subconscious mind and they impact every decision you make. For example, did you grow up with a fear of money? Now you’re growing your business and a belief surfaces that causes you to think that proposal you sent is “too much?” Is it truly too much or are you limiting yourself because of a belief you’ve been believing for your entire life that was false?

Don’t let limited beliefs stop you from going to the next level of your business and your life.

Our belief system (BS) influences our lives in two major ways:

1. Establishes rules for survival and coping. One of our brain’s main jobs is to help us survive. When we’re stepping outside our comfort zone or we’re trying something new, a lot of times we’ll feel afraid because our brain doesn’t know what it is we’re doing. We haven’t ever done that before.
2. Sets the tone for our self-talk, which is how we interpret events and evaluate our performance. Most of us have self-talk or an internal dialogue. For example, I’m writing this in a coffee shop and am having an internal dialogue about the temperature of the room, my latte being almost gone, how much time I have until my next appointment, whether I am hungry, and about the person across the room that looks familiar. All of this different self-talk is how we bring ourselves to the world. All of us do it and it’s absolutely okay.

Beliefs are powerful and as soon as we can understand how they are setting up to succeed -or fail – we can hack our brains into changing those beliefs.

But our belief systems, or our identity, shape how that self-talk happens.

For example, when I started running, my core belief was that I hated exercise, which led to self-talk to confirm that through the application of the core belief, and I’d tell myself while I was running, “I hate running, I hate running, I hate this!” Can you see how important it is for us to observe the belief system (BS) we’re holding onto? Obviously, some beliefs will serve you, but others will not.

“Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously. Left to my own devices, I am always looking for ways to become more and more psychologically impregnable. When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it. My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them.”  – Josh Waitzkin

In my book, “Keep Going: How to Create a Champion Mindset,” I outline how to take control of your mindset. I’d like to share a simple and effective process to help you identify your limiting beliefs and rewrite those beliefs so they serve the best version of you and your business or career.

Step 1: Brainstorm Your Beliefs

What are the beliefs limiting the growth of your business or career?

Write down everything! Imagine this is a brain dump of all of the false beliefs that have been living inside of your head, for sometimes decades. Some examples may be: I’m clumsy,  I’m not great at negotiating, I’m great at leading people, I am flexible, I am creative, I’m healthy, I’m a great parent, etc.

Step 2: Observe Your Beliefs

Without judgment ask yourself if these limiting beliefs are really true of who you’re becoming.

Are these beliefs showcasing the best version of yourself? Are they giving you confidence and strength? Are they courageous? If not, observe the belief and recognize it for the lie it actually is.

Step 3: Rewrite your beliefs

You’re a badass and you have the power to rewrite those limiting beliefs.

Right now, change the script of those beliefs. Rewrite them all as positive beliefs. Use your creativity to come up with amazing beliefs about yourself and your capabilities.

Step 4: Use these new beliefs daily

The trick for rewriting the old limiting beliefs is that you now have to use them every day to rewire your brain. I like to suggest that you choose a handful of powerful positive beliefs that you read each day. For example, I have a sign in my bathroom that says: I am, strong, intelligent, confident, funny, amazing, and enough. I’ve read that sign over and over again for years and now it’s hardwired into my subconscious.

It may feel weird and uncomfortable at first. What you’ll want to do is each time you observe a negative, limiting belief you’ll replace it with your positive belief.  Do this over and over again until you are no longer giving energy to limiting beliefs.

High achievers are in the habit of practicing constant improvement in every area of their life. The number one thing I hear from people when I’m coaching is that they want more confidence to go chase their dreams. Confidence is a critical piece of success in any area of your life and if you don’t have it, you want it.

How can I help you build up the confidence to go chase those crazy huge dreams and goals in your life? How can I help you believe in yourself long enough to make it work? How are you going to build up your own confidence muscle?

It is going to take imperfect action. It is going to take you to recognize where you’re stuck and then start taking massive, imperfect actions in that area of your life. Friend, if you want to grow your business, sitting around thinking about what you could possibly do to grow your business is not going to help you. You must figure out the next step and take action.

At first, your confidence will be low, especially if you have been holding on to negative beliefs about yourself in growing to the next level of business. After you start practicing taking action each day, what you’ll find is that you’ll begin to retrain your mind to put it into motion. You’ll show your mind – through action – how to get closer to your goals. You’ll start to achieve results, whether it be a new client, product, or revenue goal. You’ll recognize your strengths in an area you had false-negative beliefs that were holding you back.

Too often I hear of people overthinking things and then never taking action. I was that person! I call myself a recovering perfectionist. For too long I overanalyzed everything and I never accomplished my goals.

Then one day, I started to just take action, even if I knew it wouldn’t be perfect. You may want more confidence. But as you really dig into the issue, you realize the problem is not lack of confidence, it’s that you don’t put yourself in the mindset to be confident or you don’t allow yourself the freedom to fail.

For a long time in my life, I let perfectionism hold me back from achieving anything. Eventually, I wrote a book about it called The Art of Imperfect Action: All Success Comes From Daring to Begin. The book is about the art of imperfect action, because for too long, I let perfectionism hold me back from having confidence. I said, “I can’t do it because it’s not going to be perfect, and if it’s not perfect, then I can never start it.” Then I would never start anything, and I felt stuck.

After reflecting, I realized that’s where I was stuck. I needed to let go of some of that and just do things good enough.

Have you ever given yourself permission to get something done good enough? The first time I tried it, I felt so uncomfortable. After it was completed, I was thrilled!

Too many of us hold ourselves to a perfect picture of what we think we should be. It’s awesome to have high standards, but it’s not awesome to hold yourself back from serving the world with your gifts, strengths, and abilities. If you’re holding on to a false-negative belief that you can’t do, be, or have something in your life and it’s stopping you from moving ahead, it’s your job right now to be honest with yourself.

Think about one belief you’re holding on to right now. It may be that you’re not enough, don’t have the experience for the promotion, can’t achieve your health goal, can’t have a loving relationship, etc. You need to be honest with yourself and ask yourself if it’s true. Even if it’s something you’ve always believed about yourself or the world around you but it’s not true, why are you holding onto it? Why are you letting that lie or belief hold you back from your greatness? My friend, you can choose right now to be completely honest with yourself and deal with it. Or you can continue your life, feeling stuck, feeling not enough, giving yourself excuses, and feeling frustrated. It’s your choice, but my guess is that if you chose to read this article, you are ready for a change.

You can launch your business to the next level. And if you stop believing the B.S. that has been holding you back from reaching that next goal you’ll get there so much sooner. What if you started to recognize the strength and power of the beliefs you hold about yourself? What if you started to intentionally change your beliefs to serve that next version of yourself and your business? What if you did that for 30 days? Do you think you’d experience a change in your life and business? I bet you would blow your mind. So today, I’m challenging you to throw the B.S. out! As Joan of Arc said, “I am not afraid, I was made for this.”

Take back your power and go kick ass in your business, because you were made for this!

This was written by Allison Liddle and originated on  Women 2.0.