Banish bad beliefs that hold you back!

Are your beliefs about you and your life helping you or holding you back? Beliefs are built on past learning and can be good or bad for you. Good beliefs are beliefs based on reality and help you reach success by making good decisions and avoiding negative consequences. Bad beliefs are not based on reality. They are based on faulty past learning and contribute to self-doubt and fear. Bad beliefs are like chains or handcuffs that hold you back from doing the things you want to do in life and being the person you want to be. What got us thinking about this subject is that we consistently have the privilege of seeing people change their beliefs and positively change their lives.

How we interpret what happens to us greatly affects how we feel and, consequently, how we act. Often when people feel they have no control over a situation or there is finality in a situation, it can trigger negative beliefs. When giving a speech, even if people bomb, they can believe they have control and it’s not final. There’s another chance to speak and practice will help them get better. In situations such as losing loved ones, the situation is final and there is no “do over”. It’s important to find a way to use positive beliefs, such as happy memories, to self-soothe and be able to move on through grief.

So what affects beliefs? Here are some ideas that we share with clients. We feel it’s important to look at your body and mind because they both contribute to your beliefs. Physically, how you take care of your body can influence how you look at life, positively or negatively. Ask yourself some of these questions to uncover things that could be physically affecting your thinking. Am I getting enough sleep or am I tired? Am I calm or am I stressed? Am I eating healthy foods and staying hydrated with good water or am I a “junk food junkie” drinking lots of sodas? Am I in relationships that energize me or relationships that drain me? Do I enjoy my work or do I need a change? What other things in my life need to improve for me to find more peace? Your physical state gives clues and a good exam from your doctor may identify what could be negatively impacting your thinking and beliefs. Let’s look at mindset now, because it does a lot to influence us.

On the mindset side, there are ways we look at things positively that will make us believe we can succeed and ways to look at them negatively that can make us believe we will fail. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, you’re right.” Beliefs are important because they influence how people look at a situation and the actions that they take.

We help people explore their beliefs about a situation by going “down the tube” and “up the tube”. Going “down the tube” is rehearsing all the “what ifs”, the bad things that could happen which promotes catastrophizing. Mark Twain said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” We also encourage people to go “up the tube” recognizing the “what ifs” of positive things that could happen. Looking at things more realistically, they see the advantages of moving forward even if it takes courage to do so. Then they break the chains and handcuffs of false negative beliefs that hold them back.

Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, discovered a mindset that results when people have been repeatedly subjected to negative or restricting conditions. This is called “learned helplessness” because they learn that they shouldn’t try new things for fear of what negative things could happen. Therefore, their beliefs hold them back from making good choices, even when positive opportunities are available. Dr. Seligman suggests breaking the cycle of “learned helplessness” by adopting an optimistic way of looking at life. He also suggests setting SMART goals – specific, measureable, achievable, realistic/relevant and timely because these types of goals contribute to beliefs and motivation that foster success.

How about you? What are your beliefs?

Here are suggestions: Look at your life and pick three things you really want in life. Ask yourself if negative beliefs are holding you back. The most recent related video at http://SharingLifesLessons.com shows how “learned helplessness” develops and can be confronted. Use your strengths to banish bad beliefs and break the chains and handcuffs that hold you back so you live life to the fullest.

Chanhassen residents Doug and Lynn Nodland are Success Coaches and owners of The Balance Center. They can be contacted at WeCare@SharingLifesLessons.com

© Doug and Lynn Nodland 2018 Articles and videos may be shared in their entirety with attribution.