Overcoming Your Past: Self Limiting Beliefs

“I can’t do it” “It’s not going to be me” “Not even worth it” “What if it’s like last time” “They probably won't care” “Everybody’s out to get me”.

There are things we experience that give us lessons to carry long term, the impacts of these lessons are determined by how we look at them. If you worked in a job where you were undervalued, criticized, or faced a lot of negativity in general, it can put a glass ceiling over your self-belief. However, as Steve Harvey said, the ceiling is glass because you have to break through it. 

Not taking the time to own past experiences and put them in the past can inhibit your ability to see the good in new situations. For example, if you’ve experienced a harsh leader, it may impact your ability to trust or take feedback from future leaders. If you’ve worked with an unreliable partner, you may not trust people, avoid delegation, and try to do everything yourself. Gaining the ability to detach from your past starts with acknowledging its value in it. 

Considering the disadvantage you’d be put at having not experienced adversity, these situations tend to lead to long-term gratification, so long as you don’t let it derail you. This is the fundamental concept of success that is building a foundation of passion and vision which cannot be cracked from the outside. Eventually, individuals who reach a level of success look back and see that all the seemingly negative experiences were necessary to be successful. 

Acknowledging that this concept is easier said than done, here are some things to keep in mind:

There Is no Right Time

So often we can find ourselves in a position we know is not providing any form of benefit to us, in the back of our mind we have an idea of what we need to do. This is when the tendency to think of “starting tomorrow” or “someday” comes into play. Yet, without implementing any form of action, that “someday” starts to fade, and the current loop continues.

To combat this, reflect on your situation, find any form of action, no matter how significant and begin making progress. If you think about the way you take orders from an authority, imagine if you had that same level of accountability and dependency on yourself. 

You Are Not Your past

Things change, people change, the world constantly changes and so does the way we communicate and see things. It’s so easy to fixate on mistakes we’ve made which can challenge our confidence going into situations that require us to show some grit. 

Each day is a new opportunity to set a standard, set an example, and lead others on your team to be better. In your career, you’ll constantly be faced with challenges that will test your ability to keep going. As the company Under Armour famously tag line “The only way is through” which means you cannot let temporary challenges or adversity stop you from reaching your vision.

Build Relationships

The people around you can have more of an impact on your perspective and benefit your problem-solving ability than you can on your own. Yet, trust is the baseline to create a dynamic that is give and take. In the workplace, this can come from overseeing objectives as a collective, listening to others' points of view, as well as giving and receiving feedback. 

Testing the waters with your trust in others is how you will be able to decipher who is trustworthy and the competency of those around you. This will be beneficial when faced with pressing tasks where coordination within the team is essential. 

Conclusion

Author and former navy seal David Goggins developed a concept referred to as the 40% rule. The idea here is that people tend to put a cap on their ability to achieve, after reaching a certain point, they think “that’s it”. It is at this point that they’ve only reached 40% of their true capability. Why do they begin to doubt themselves then? A lack of belief, previous failures, outside criticism, and all meaningless noise used as a defence mechanism.

Don’t let that be you, find solutions, connect with people, take chances, push your boundaries, set goals regularly and commit to yourself. It is often the things that seem impossible or that will “take too long” that are the most rewarding.

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Cause, Effect, Direction and Destiny… Where are you heading to?

Bear this in mind: every action we take, either conscious or unconsciously, a thought, a decision, any action (or lack of it), is a cause you set in motion.

Simultaneously, each Cause will always be paired with a corresponding Effect. 

Now, if that action is sustained in time will start creating a Direction, and we already know that every Direction will eventually lead to a Destiny.

 If we are not aware of the Actions we’re taking, the ultimate destination we would arrive to will surely take us by surprise –and not the kind of surprises we tend to like.

All of our Actions are permanently molding our Destiny.

Luckily for us, there is a lag of time from the moment we start screwing up and the moment when we finally create that Destiny; it doesn’t manifest itself instantaneously, it will take us some serious and constant screwing up to have all those effects piling up enough to produce tangible manifestations. 

There are however two sides to this time lag coin: One –we could call it the “favorable” one, is that it will take more than just one wrong action to ruin our lives. 

The other side, the “less-favorable” one, is that we will also need to stock some well-directed actions in order to generate the positive results we in deed are expecting. It will take some momentum. 

We cannot change months, even years of wrong behavior with just a couple of well-directed action days. It would be just like trying to stop a guy sliding down a water slide… 

If we were to catch him near the beginning? Well, it might work. 

Half way down? … Possible. 

But down to the end of the slide? At that speed?

No way, forget it  (and that’s why they put the pool there, you know?)

Think about it.

Stay Strong!

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca, or book a meeting to review your software project.

7 Steps to Build –and Keep- a Positive Mindset

The power of a positive mindset –or positive thinking- is a trendy concept, almost a cliché, but not for that any less real. Its mental and physical benefits have been proved and demonstrated by many scientific studies; it can give you more confidence, improve your mood, and reduce the risk of developing hypertension, depression, and other stress-related issues.

So far, so good, but how can we build and maintain such a positive mindset?

Here’s a list of seven steps to take to accomplish that goal:

1. Start your day with positive affirmations. The actions you take in the morning set the tone for the rest of the day; go to the mirror and say to yourself: “today is going to be a great day,” or “I’m going to be awesome today,” and watch in amazement how your day will improve.

2. Keep your focus on the good things. There’s no such thing as a perfect day; whenever you bump into an obstacle, look for the good in that situation, no matter how small.

3. Look for the funny side in bad situations. We’re used to saying, “someday we’re going to look back on this situation, and laugh,” so, why wait? Just by looking at it with a smile, the way out or through the situation will show faster and clearly.

4. Turn failures into lessons. Mistakes are always going to happen, so instead of focusing on the failure, think about what you’re going to do –or not do- next time, and create a roadmap highlighting highways, shortcuts, roadblocks, and bumps.

5. Transform your negative self-talk into a coach. Your negative self-talk usually creeps up unnoticed, and soon it turns into internalized feelings that reinforce your conceptions of yourself. We have to turn our inner critic into an inner coach, so thoughts like “I’m so bad at this” become “once I get more practice, I’ll be great at this.”

6. Focus on the present. We need to live the moment. Most negativity sources come from a memory of a recent event or the exaggerated visualization of a potential future event.

7. Surround yourself with positive people and environment. When we do that, we hear positive outlooks, stories, and affirmations; their positive words and actions will sink in and affect our own line of thinking, words, and actions.

Everyone, no matter the situation, can take these steps and increase their positive attitude.

A positive mindset will always offer compounding returns, so the more often we practice it, the more significant benefits we’ll collect.

Stay strong!

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca, or book a meeting to review your software project.