Unleash Your Potential by Changing Your Beliefs

What keeps us from becoming who we want to be or doing the things we want to do? Why haven’t we started that new business, shared with the boss ideas to help the company, worked out things at home, invited our neighbor over or stepped up to that leadership position that has been waiting for us to fill? There may be numerous reasons; some in our control and some out of our control. Changing what we believe about our life, business or others is within our control and can unleash possibilities you once believed were not possible or very difficult.

My son and I watched the movie Unleashed a few years ago. The main character, David (Jet Li), had been trained to believe he was powerless while wearing a collar. The collar represented a leash his master held on to. Even though he was stronger and smarter than his master as long as he believed his master and the collar held power over him nothing could change. The interesting thing is the collar was not locked or attached to any leash. The only thing holding him back from removing the collar was his belief.

Circus elephants are trained in a similar way. When they are young their leg is chained to a stake. No matter how hard they try they cannot break away. Eventually they stop trying and surrender to the fact that they are stuck. When they are adults it only takes a small stake and rope to re-establish the belief and keep them immobilized. If they tried, they could easily yank the stake from the ground but that doesn’t happen. In fact during fires elephants have had to be cut free from their leashes in order to keep them from being engulfed by the flames.

In both instances, Jet Li and the elephants have created an unbreakable leash in their own mind. This leash is not only keeping them from doing things they would like to do but it has diminished their desire to try. We all wear leashes from which we could easily break free, but in many cases we have become unaware of the control they have over us.

So what do we do? We don’t have to do anything unless we have situations, events or patterns in our life we would like to change. If you are sure you want to change, consider the following questions. This process is much better if you find a friend, manager or coach (like me) to walk you through it. Conduct it like an interview.

1. Identify a recurring situation, event or pattern you want to change.
2. Explore the actions you typically take related to this situation as well as their consequences.
• What is it like when you behave this way?
• What are the payoffs or benefits you get from behaving this way?
• What price are you paying for behaving this way?
3. What beliefs might cause you to behave this way? (Identify several and choose one you would like to reframe.)
4. Identify the distortions of logic within this belief. These would be statements that sound true but are not necessarily true. (ex. If I speak up to the boss I will get fired – the distortions are making it more catastrophic than it is and fortune telling or predicting the future)
5. How might you change this belief to one that is more rational and empowering towards achieving the results you desire? (Come up with several ways of restating this belief, and then choose the one you like best.)
6. Explore how you would feel and behave if you acted from this new belief.
7. Imagine yourself in the future, facing the old triggering event identified in Step one. Your old belief would have been (restate old belief). Instead, you now believe (state new belief). Describe what this is like:
• How would you act?
• How would you feel?
• What would be the consequences of acting and feeling this way?
8. Integrate the new belief into your daily behavior by:
• Writing it down
• Taking action on it for the next several days
• Collecting evidence that verifies it
 Evaluating the results you are getting

You can use this process for any situation in your life that is not working for you, is ineffective, or seems like a leash.

One leash I recently let go of is my willingness to tell others about my Christian faith. My old belief was that if I did, my business would suffer because I would offend someone. I was recently asked to be a keynote speaker on what makes a successful consultant. As I prepared my presentation it was obvious to me that if I left out the impact my faith and spiritual life has on my consulting business it would be like speaking to a Nascar audience about winning the Daytona 500 and never giving any credit to the engine.

To get past my old belief I reframed it to be, “It is good to share what is important to me and allow people to use what is important to them.” My business has not suffered and people are free to use my faith as well as my other teachings as they see will benefit them.
We don’t have to be tied down to old beliefs and patterns in our life. If you recognize you are wearing an old leash, it might not be that hard to remove.

Unleash the person you can be.


Unleash Your Potential by Changing Your Beliefs - To learn more about this author, visit Rene Zamora's Website.

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