Beliefs.. do you really want the ones the have

Have you ever wondered what beliefs are, where they come from, what their purpose is, are they permanent?

Every day after you wake up, whether you go to an office, co-working space, or you work from home, your collection of beliefs are with you helping you make sense of the world around you. There are many types of beliefs that you have about yourself, your skills, and your values; beliefs about other people, beliefs about the world around you. They play a huge role in your life as they affect your everyday experiences.

Where did they come from? How did we get them? How much truth do they have? What are they? What is the difference between a thought and a belief? Can we change them if we wanted to?

We gather our beliefs as the result of our life experiences. They are much stronger influences on us than thoughts and they therefore hold more meaning. The more validation we give something, the more of a hindrance it can be for us. These beliefs become real in our mind and become rooted in our very being. We believe them to be true so much that the danger is that we cannot accept that they may not be true – this then becomes our reality.

Beliefs can become a self fulfilling prophecy in that the more you believe in something the more you will likely see evidence of it, experience it and then create a solid foundation for its truth.

I met someone once who told me that if I were to read and recite positive affirmations every day then I would become a more positive person. Unfortunately, I didn’t believe the words I was reading, so they had no long lasting effect on me.

How do you get a belief in the first place? They come from your experiences, such as things you read, a movie you watched, a conversation you overheard, or something a parent said to you. Interestingly, two people can witness the same experience and then have different beliefs about it. This means that each person as a “meaning maker” internalizes the experience and creates alternate beliefs about it.

What makes this more complicated is that then we can layer beliefs about our beliefs, and these need to be unravelled to break through the barriers we build.

We also make generalizations and then believe them to be true; For example, we may say to ourselves “All good CTOs are male”, and holding that belief strongly will mean that we would be unlikely to hire a female CTO, because now we believe that they are inferior to male. This may not be based on fact. Generalizations are almost always false and lead to poor decision making.

When you recognize that a belief you have been carrying around with you turns to have no real substance to it, you are ready to change it to a more empowering one. I have personally found that when a key belief that I have had is not serving me well I will want to switch it for a better one.

I have met a lot of people that when they shared their beliefs with me I’ve found that by asking the appropriate questions we will both go on a journey of discovery that will either lead to me accepting their belief or more often it is the belief itself has its power reduced and sometimes shattered in a matter of minutes and a more empowering belief is then created to take its place.

Michael Hall told me that in his head he imagined that beliefs are like jackets in your closet. If you have a jacket on that you don’t like, you can reach into the closet and try another one on for size, walk around in it. If you don’t like that one you can swap it again. That is way more empowering than remaining with a belief that is not helping you. Being an entrepreneur is hard enough as it is without making it harder by carrying beliefs around with you that are a hinderance.

One entrepreneur I was working with told me that they did not feel comfortable asking people to pay for the service they offered, and that she was much happier to offer the service for free to people. I asked what it was that was preventing her from charging for her service and she told me that she did not believe that the service was valuable enough, and also that she was fearful of asking people for money. This permeated through the entire team.

One of our standard coaching questions is “So how does that serve you?” She said that it did not and she wished that she did not have that belief. That then gives a coach the permission to explore this with the entrepreneur and seek to uncover the limiting belief and then seek to reduce its power or get rid of it entirely and replace it with a more empowering belief.

It turned out that the belief came from her childhood when she made lemonade as a child and her mom told her that she shouldn’t charge people. This belief manifested itself in her subconscious for over 15 years and was still present.

We are not therapists or counsellors so clearing something from the past is not our forte however quite quickly in a coaching conversation we were able to challenge that belief so much that the foundation on which it was based in her mind eroded so much that it lost its power and then she was ready to replace that belief with a better one, that she said created things of quality and was incredibly helpful to others and that people would happily pay for her service. Also, that if she was able to charge for her time then it would lead to many amazing things going forward.

If we believe something like “I am no good at public speaking”, “I can’t do anything analytical”, “I am no good at coding”, “my team doesn’t like me”, “my shareholders are losing faith in me”, “I am not a good CEO”, “my co-founder believes he should be the CEO instead of me”, these beliefs will become your reality because you manifest them. If that is true, then it is about time you chose some better beliefs.

Imagine for a moment how many beliefs you have that may affect you as an entrepreneur and also your interaction with your co-founders, your team, your customers, your investors, etc.

What do you believe about your ability to speak in public, to ask for funding, to give feedback to a team member etc. Assess whether they are based in fact or whether they are made up fantasies of your mind. See whether they serve you or not and decide when you would like to change them. Then go find a transformational coach that can work with you on them.