5 steps to take control over your limiting beliefs

Unhelpful beliefs are very powerful and not only can stop us from using our potential and achieving our goals, shape our decisions, but also can make us feel powerless and can be devastating to our confidence, self-esteem and state of mind.  There is no one magic formula of what to do to beat your limiting beliefs as different solutions will work for different people but there are some steps you could take to start taking control over them. Here are 5 steps that I and my clients often follow:

Recognise it

Building awareness of what your limiting beliefs are and when they creep up is a starting point. You can’t change something you are not aware of. Once you bring to the front of your mind what reoccurring thoughts are having negative impact on you, you will most likely start catching yourself subconsciously the moment those beliefs appear. When you do, try to make a record of how often during the day you talk yourself down.

Strip it down

Limiting beliefs all stem from fear and are simply a mechanism to try and protect us. Even though they can be unhelpful, they often serve us a higher purpose. Although we might want to let go of them, there might be a reason (often we are not aware of) that makes us hold onto them.  Sometimes we hold onto them because we believe they protect us from disappointment, criticism, hurt or failure.  Wanting to let go of the limiting beliefs and at the same time holding on to them can cause ambivalence, discomfort, an internal conflict and frustration therefore it is useful to build understanding and establishing what is the reason behind it. Take a moment and ask yourself:

What is the purpose of that belief?

What does this belief give you?

What impact letting go of this belief would have on you/ your life?

Letting go of beliefs that have been with us for a long time, especially those deep rooted beliefs formed in childhood is not easy and can take a lot of time.  You can however learn how to manage them and use strategies to prevent them from holding you hostage.

What is the trigger?

So you’ve established what and why, now let’s look at when...

What is the trigger that makes your unhelpful belief pop up? Is it a thought, a person, an action, a place or something else that activates your belief? When does it usually happen? Is there a pattern or a cycle you fall into? What would be the first step you can take to change it? 

Look for evidence

How old is your belief?

What is the evidence it is true?

What is the evidence it is NOT true?

Often, when we strongly believe something, we tend to look for things that confirm we are right rather than looking for things that prove us wrong. If you have been sabotaging yourself or established a habit of looking for things that prove you right, then I encourage you to think twice as hard about as many situations and evidence that prove that you may be mistaken.

Reframe it

Once you find evidence that have shaken up your old beliefs, create new positive beliefs in place of your old unhelpful ones. If your belief is “I am not good enough to ... (for example) get this job” you may change it with “I have a lot of skills and strengths  I can offer” or “The more I learn / prepare / believe in myself, the more chance I have got to get this job” or “other people can do it, so can I”.  Choose a new, personal statement that works for you. Repeat it as much as you can. If you are a frequent “talking myself down” person, then it is likely it may feel unnatural and fake to suddenly change your talk and habits (even if backed up by evidence) but in order to get results, you have to put some work in. It’s all good to have a positive statement but if you don’t do anything with it, then don’t expect great results.

It is totally natural to have believes that limit us and work against us but no belief has any meaning until we give it a meaning so be mindful of not falling into the trap of creating beliefs that hinder your potential.

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Share your thoughts or your tips for taking control over unhelpful beliefs. Also, feel free to share this blog with others who might find it beneficial. 

“Prioritise your priorities”

 

You know how it works... at this time of the year people make half-hearted New Year resolutions through some sense of tradition and thinking that it is “the done thing”, without fully committing to making the necessary steps to achieve their goals. Therefore most people allow these goals to quickly fall by the wayside.

Goal setting shouldn’t be restricted to your January to-do list, but instead should be on your agenda throughout the year. It doesn’t have to be about one big fresh start, but it can be about attainable goals and taking small steps to help you actually achieve what really matters to you.

With too many things on our mind, it is often hard to know what to focus on and it is easy to lose sight of what is important to us. You cannot hit a target you cannot see, so to help you figure out your goals and priorities you might want to ask yourself the questions below. Before you do though... grab yourself a pen and paper, sit in a quiet corner with no distractions and off we go!

1) Think about your life. What things matter to you right now that you would like to change?

Write them down and put them in order of priority. Tackle each one at a time.

2) What actions do you need to take to draw you closer to your goal?

Be realistic and specific with order, dates, time of completion etc.

3) Which action will have the most impact or contribute to your success the most?

4) Write down: “The consequences of me not taking this action are..."

5) What obstacles are in your way and how can you overcome them?

Now that you thought about your goals and priorities all that is left to do is to take action. Action speaks louder than words. Before you know it with a little bit of commitment and determination, taking small steps will lead to a bigger goal and the change you want.

 

10 confidence killers and how to avoid them.

 

Some people are blessed with natural confidence, but the rest of us sometimes need to work on it. Below are 10 possible confidence pitfalls to recognise and avoid.

Negativity around you

 What I mean by that is things we are exposed to, things we read, watch, people we hang out with.  Unless you are very resilient, staying positive and confident around negativity can prove a challenge in itself. If you restrict seeing people in your life that make you feel negative, that doesn’t mean that you don’t like them. It just means that you respect yourself.

Language you use

There is tons of evidence that language can impact how we feel and behave. If you feed your mind with negative language, don’t expect to feel positive, motivated and confident. Build your awareness of what language you feed your mind with. Is your language generally empowering and positive, or weak and disempowering? Do you say to yourself “I am not good enough”, “I don’t deserve it” or alternatively “I know I can do it” and “I feel good about myself”.  Once you are aware of your narrative, you can work on improving it and increase your confidence.

Body language

You can tell a lot from looking at someone’s body language. You don’t have to be an expert in body language to tell just by observing someone’s body posture, eye contact or lack of, and handshake whether they are self conscious or confident. Similar to language, body language has a huge impact on how we feel and act. If you want to feel more confident, change your posture to reflect confidence. Take your eyes off the floor, smile, breathe deeply, have upright posture with shoulders back. Making these small changes can make a huge difference to your confidence as well as how others perceive you. 

Worrying about things you have no control over

It’s normal to worry sometimes. Unfortunately most people worry about the past and future and things you have no way of controlling. I even know people who worry about worrying. You are not going to feel good and confident if you worry, especially about things you have no control over. You have no control over your past and future (to some extent) but you are the only one who can control your emotions and how you react to a situation. Your attitude determines your aptitude!

Not treating mistakes and failures as learning

Going back to the previous point, how you react to a situation will determine your results. Let’s say you’ve just received a phone call saying that you didn’t get the job you had interviewed for. You have two choices. You either can react by saying: “I am such a failure”, “I am just not good enough”, “I am never going to get this job” etc. Or by saying: “Never mind, at least I had a chance to practice my interview skills”, “Next time I will be better prepared”. Failure is an on going process and if we are growing and taking risks, then failing isn’t abnormal. Your mistakes, but most importantly your attitude can either break you or make you stronger. The choice is yours alone!

Beliefs

Some people are more confident than others and one thing that distinguishes confident people from those who lack confidence are their beliefs about themselves and their capabilities. They take responsibility for their thoughts and don’t allow negative beliefs compromise their confidence. Those who lack confidence often react to their limiting beliefs with feelings and emotions rather than react rationally. They talk themselves into believing in whatever they choose, even when it’s harmful rather than helpful. As Henry Ford used to say “Whether you think you can, or you can’t – you are right” so pay attention to which beliefs are getting most of your energy.

Perfectionism

There is nothing wrong in striving for perfection. It only becomes a problem if you can’t move on or take action because you are bogged down with details and things that you think are not good enough. When do you stop listening to your inner critic? Where do you draw the line? If you don’t trust yourself to do something because of your perfectionism, then you are not going to feel confident. Confident people take action not because they think they are always right, but because they are not afraid of being wrong. Don’t let the fear of taking action prevent you from taking any action at all.

Always staying in your comfort zone

You can be amazing at what you do but even if you only do what you are amazing at you can lose your confidence in doing other things. Most of us prefer to stay in a comfortable, secure place, doing things we know rather than stretch ourselves to do things that challenge us. The more you push yourself to the edge of your comfort zone, the more it will expand each time you do. Challenge yourself, even if it’s not pleasant to start with, increase your flexibility and confidence a little more every day. What’s the worst that could happen?

Resisting change

Whether you love or hate change, the chances are at some point you will be exposed to it. Change is only bad if you believe it is bad. If you are not happy about whatever is happening in your life and if you avoid change, things will stay the same. To get different results, outcomes and feelings, we need to try something different. Work on developing your flexibility and positive outlook about change so you feel confident to approach it when it strikes.

Worrying about what others would say

People have their opinions about things and people, just like you have your opinion about others. Confident people don’t let the opinion of others define what they can or can’t do. They know that people don’t always agree on things, but that doesn’t make them wrong. Confident people listen to their intuition and trust themselves, rather than taking negative comments made by others too personally or trying to impress others. Concentrate on building quality relationships with people who support you, trust you and respect you and the opinions of those who don’t really matter to you will become less important. 

“Somehow I can’t believe that there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C s. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable” Walt Disney

 

Can you fake confidence until you become confident?

For some people confidence comes naturally yet for others it takes a lot of effort to act and behave in a confident manner.

Firstly, it is important to distinguish the difference between confidence and self-esteem. Both terms relate to your own self-worth, feelings about yourself and beliefs in your own abilities. Confidence is manifested externally while self-esteem is more internal.

Self- esteem develops from the life experiences, relationships and situations which have shaped how you view yourself today. People don’t know how you feel internally so even if you don’t believe in yourself or your capabilities on the inside, you can still come across as a confident person on the outside by acting as if you have a lot of confidence.

So if it is possible to act confident on the outside while having low internal self- worth, then can our self-esteem and positive self-regard increase by portraying external confidence? The good news is: YES it can and even better news is that it is easier than you may think.

You may already know that our body language and mind, thoughts and self-talk have a huge impact on our behaviour, so for example if you feel down or sad it is unlikely that you will have happy, positive thoughts and therefore you will not feel happy and motivated on the outside. Our mind, body and behaviour are strongly connected therefore by changing or altering one of those components you will impact the others.

In addition, hormones, and more specifically testosterone and cortisol levels have a huge impact on our confidence. Testosterone is the hormone of power, dominance, and confidence while cortisol is a hormone that impacts how your body responds to fear or stress. In short, high levels of testosterone lead to increased feelings of confidence, while lower levels of cortisol lead to decreased anxiety and an improved ability to deal with stress.

I recently came across a piece of research and a simple technique that can reduce your anxiety, improve your ability to deal with stress, and boost your confidence in just 2 minutes.

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy claims that 2 minutes of “power posing” (Standing or sitting in a powerful, confident pose) is enough to significantly alter the physiological and psychological and feeling states as well as your behaviour.

Our body language actually physically changes the testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain and according to Cuddy’s experiment just by sitting or standing for 2 minutes in power poses, the level of testosterone in participants raised by 20% and those who were sitting or standing in low power poses noticed a 10% decrease in their testosterone level. When it comes to Cortisol, high power people experienced a 25% decrease in cortisol levels and low power people experienced a 15% increase.

So what does this mean?

It means that the correct hormone levels can increase our appetite for risk, cause us to perform better in job interviews, and generally configure our brains to be more assertive, confident, focused and handle pressure better and cope well in stressful situations.

So although you may feel foolish at first standing in your best super hero pose for two minutes, and it's not advisable to do this in public, the research shows that it can change your body chemistry, naturally making you feel more empowered. Power posing can really improve your performance in a short period of time and the better your performance, the better the internal feeling you will get, which will build into both higher self esteem and confidence, until eventually you become who you were striving to be.

I would encourage you to take a look at the link below. It's a short video presentation of Amy Cuddy explaining her research and how it could potentially change your life. I watched it and it had a huge impact on me so what have you got to lose?


http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are?language=en

How do you sustain confidence and self-esteem when faced with redundancy and unemployment?

There is no doubt that losing a job can be a very stressful and challenging experience. Sometimes it is hard not to take redundancy personally. Staying positive and confident can be tricky, especially now, with many people looking for work there is a lot of competition, so finding a new job can be just as difficult.

I am going to share with you a few things that might help you to stay positive, sustain your self-esteem and keep focused during this challenging time.


Accept the reality

Everyone reacts differently to change. Some people strive on challenge and see this situation as a new opportunity, others associate change with a source of great stress. Ultimately, there are two things you can do: accept your reality, recognise that your situation has changed and that you need to start thinking about strategies to improve it; or choose to think that you deserve a break after all those years of hard work and that things will just fall into place and sort themselves out.
You may want to have a short holiday or a break to think things through and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact a short break can be an ideal time to get inspiration and to feel positive about the future. However when you have had the break, it is important to start taking action as you may suddenly realise that things don’t fall into place on their own and you need to do something about it. Some people just want to bury their head in the sand and hope that all the stress will go away. Well, denial will not make your problems disappear or change your situation for the better. It may only help you feel better for a short time but in the long run it may drain your positive energy and replace it with stress and sadness.


Take time to think about your strengths, skills and resources

It is common that when people face redundancy or are unemployed, they start questioning their skills and abilities. It is important to take time out to analyse and evaluate your strengths, skills and resources. What skills or resources could help you in this challenging period? Who could help or support you through this change? Or, what are you good at? Sometimes, a simple question like this seems far more complicated during unemployment because people too often concentrate on the negatives and things that they are not good at. If you struggle to answer this, think about your previous achievements, things you are proud of however small they may be. What skills helped you achieve it? You can also ask your friends, family or your manager to add their contribution to your skills list. When you realise how many great skills and attributes you have, it will not only improve your confidence but will also make you feel good about yourself.


What do you want to do next?

When you find out about losing your job, especially a job you enjoy and love, your world can come crashing down and you may have no idea what to do next. Spending some time thinking about your new direction and career plan will help you get clarity. What job are you going to look for? People often make the mistake of applying for any old job available because they feel like they have to find something quickly. But will getting a less suitable job mean that you are going to sustain it and enjoy it? Of course, you need to take your experience into consideration and be realistic. However, remember that if you don’t know where you are heading, how will you know when you get there? Having a clear goal and direction is essential. It will help you stay focused, in control and confident.


Prepare yourself

When people find out that they are going to be made redundant, they might be a little bit lost in terms of what to do next.
Some employers may offer help to their employees and provide access to various courses and training that can help you improve your CV, jobsearch skills or interview skills. Unfortunately, the reality is that this does not happen too often therefore you need to get the ball rolling. Start by finding out what help and support is available in your area. There are a lot of courses available for free that can help you build your confidence in job hunting. Think about the people who can help you. Start building and improving your job hunting skills as soon as possible. When people have up to date skills and knowledge they feel more confident about their abilities and better equipped to face possible challenges.


Having routine

One of the things that has the biggest impact on losing your self esteem and confidence is a lack of purpose and direction. Often people who become unemployed suddenly have a lot of time on their hands so they plod along through their day and before they know it, a week, or a month is gone and their situation has not changed. Having a routine and staying focused is essential. Your job now is looking for a job. Have a plan of exactly what you are going to do each day to improve your situation and make sure you stick to it. Commit to your plan like you would commit if you were employed and paid for your work. Knowing exactly what you have to do and having a purpose to get out of bed each morning will motivate you and increase your self esteem.


Be accountable

It is important during this difficult time to have somebody you can talk to, share your concerns or bounce ideas off. Being accountable to somebody who can give you support, encouragement and keep you on track can be very motivating. Having this other person, whether it is a coach, friend or job search buddy can make a massive difference in how you feel. Knowing that you have somebody to report to about your achievements will make you more committed and motivate you to achieve your goal. When you see or feel you are moving forward and progressing, your confidence and self belief will increase naturally.


Keep a positive attitude

Staying positive and sustaining your self esteem when facing unemployment or being unemployed can be a bigger challenge than one may think. It is very important to feed your mind and body with good quality “fuel”. Use positive language, choose positive thoughts, appreciate yourself for your progress and your achievements. When you catch yourself feeding your mind with negative and unhelpful thoughts such as “I am not good enough”, “There is no way I will get this job” etc, make sure you change and replace them with empowering and positive language. Our subconscious mind is very powerful and sooner or later will believe what you say to it. Choose the words you feed to your mind wisely. Positive language will have a positive effect on your body language, how you feel and the decisions you make.

Many unemployed people have taken advantage of their situation and turned their life around for the better, often achieving goals they would never have reached if they had not spent some time being unemployed. It is your choice on how you will approach this challenge.

What determines success?

Recently I attended the National Achievers Congress which took place in London between 2-4th July 2011. The event was very motivating, thought provoking and left me wondering what it is that makes some people more successful than others? The event welcomed 15 speakers including Tony Robbins, Lord Alan Sugar, and Sir Richard Branson, to name a few…

Each speaker shared their story and nuggets of wisdom and although many were from different countries and cultures, different backgrounds and had different aspirations, I have come to realise that there are a few things that all of these speakers have in common.

VISION

Everything starts with a dream, vision or a goal.

Knowing exactly your goal not only keeps one focused on the end result but also helps to keep one motivated. If you do not know where you are going, how will you know when you get there? The more detailed and clear goal one has, the easier it will be to achieve it. Once you know your goal, you can start working on it.

DETERMINATION

As powerful and successful as those speakers are and appear now, many of them have been at rock bottom at some point. Whether homeless, with no money or with a lack of formal education, they have managed to find a way out of that negative situation. Those daunting circumstances made them even more determined to improve their life and did not discourage them from dreaming big and achieving even bigger.

The words of George Bernard Shaw sum up very well one of the attributes of successful people. “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them”

CONFIDENCE

Successful people beam with confidence. You can see it in the way they walk, talk and look at you. They come across comfortable when speaking in front of thousands of people and doing things that seem impossible for a “normal human being”.

People often have the preconception that successful people have been always like this. In reality, this perception is far from the truth. Not everyone was born with a bundle of confidence or as a natural public speaker. A lot of the time successful people have had to learn confident body language, and master their tone of voice and eye contact. The approach of “fake it till you make it” is applied more often than many may think. However, successful people always believe in themselves, their abilities and their success. If you do not believe in yourself, you can not expect other people to believe you.

TAKING ACTION  

In order to achieve any task, one needs to take action. Be proactive, do not wait until everything is just right as you could miss out on a great opportunity. Assess what is the worst that can happen, trust your guts, be brave and take the plunge. If something goes wrong, at least you have tried and you will learn from your mistakes. Next time it can only be better.

NOT GIVING UP WHEN THINGS GO WRONG

Most successful people will have tasted failure at least once before they accomplish their success. The secret of their success is picking themselves up when things go wrong and trying again. Don’t be discouraged by obstacles along your way, consider what you have learnt, be flexible, be open to take different approaches and do not concentrate on negatives. Instead think of your shortfalls in positive terms, learn from them and have the courage and resilience to continue. As Thomas Edison once said, a lot of people do not realise how close they were to success when they give up.

The National Achievers Congress made me think a lot about people, human behaviour, peoples’ expectations and aspirations.

It is not about being successful or rich; it is about achieving what success means to you. Whether it is feeling more confident, getting on with your family, getting a new job… Whatever circumstance or part of your life you want to improve, bearing these pearls of wisdom in mind will be beneficial in achieving your own success.

If you are lost, stuck in a rut or you are not sure where to start and how to make that vision reality, a life coach can help you work with you on making your goal your reality.