Your Best Year Ever, Chapter 2: Some Beliefs Hold You Back

0:02Wow, it means the world to me that you're listening to this newly revised Your Best Year Ever. and I so hope that you've been getting so much value out of the book already. This first part of the book is only the beginning. Just wait until we really dive into designing your future, which is coming up soon. I'm going to show you what it takes to make a great goal. How habit goals are different than achievement goals and the key elements to both. And then we're going to dig deep into why your goals matter to you. and I'm so excited for us to dive into that because that is the game changer in terms of achieving your goals.

0:39We're gonna be sharing that content a little bit at a time but if you don't wanna wait, I wanna encourage you to go ahead and buy the book. You can go to Amazon or Audible now to buy it and if you buy the book before December the 31st, 2023, make sure to go to yourbestyeareverbook.com. Now, why is that important? Well, enter your order number in and once you do that, I'm gonna send you a free ticket to our biggest virtual live event of the year. It's called Your Best Year Ever Live. We've done this for several years. Many people tell us it was the beginning of the best year in their life. So that's where we're gonna dive deep into the content for the book.

1:17And that's where we're going to dive deep into the content for the book and go even deeper. You'll walk away with a complete set of goals for the year and an action plan to achieve them. Now, normally we sell these tickets for$197, But if you buy the book, I'm going to give it to you free. So don't wait. Go buy the book and go get your free ticket to Your Best Year Ever Live at yourbestyevereverbook.com. Chapter 2. Some Beliefs Hold You Back How little we see, what we do see depends mainly on what we look for. John Lubbock Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely. Karen Kaiser I once had a client whom I'll call Charlie.

2:04That's not his real name. Let's just say I've changed his identity to protect the guilty. Charlie derives significance from feeling wronged, put upon, and persecuted. He griped about everything. Everyone was an idiot but him. Nobody could do anything right. Life was rigged. If we went to lunch, which I dreaded, he never picked up the check, even if he called the meeting. I always left his presence drained and diminished. And it wasn't just me. Charlie was that way with everyone. His employees and friends rolled their eyes when I mentioned his name. He approached every relationship with a hoarding mentality.

2:42People around him lived in constant fear that their livelihood and well-being were at risk. And guess what? The success he craved always seemed out of reach. Charlie exemplifies what I call scarcity thinking. Now, compare Charlie with another friend of mine. Amy is one of the most generous people I know. She always greets me with an enthusiastic smile, a big hug, and an encouraging word. I always leave her presence energized, feeling great about being me. And she's like this with everyone. She treats friends, employees, clients, vendors, and everyone else, even business competitors, with generosity and grace.

3:23She routinely invests in their success, and it comes back to her in a thousand ways. Amy exemplifies what I call abundance thinking. Scarcity versus abundance. To accomplish anything, we have to believe we're up to the challenge. That doesn't mean it will be easy or that we even know how we're going to accomplish it. Usually we don't know. It just means we believe we're capable. We believe we have what it takes to prevail. Why is that important? Because every goal has obstacles. When some people have trouble getting over those obstacles, they doubt they have what it takes. Think Charlie. But others are confident they'll prevail if they just work harder or come at the problem from a different direction.

4:08Think Amy. Researchers label the first group entity theorists or people with fixed mindsets. They think their abilities are set in stone. You've heard people say this, I'm just no good at X, Y, or Z. They're scarcity thinkers. They assume if something doesn't come easily, it's probably not for them. Scarcity thinking naturally leads to limiting beliefs. Assessments reveal that about 4 in 10 students and adults possess this mindset. Researchers call the second group incremental theorists, or those with growth mindsets. When they struggle with an obstacle, they just look for new approaches to the problem.

4:48They know there's a workaround or a solution if they just keep working at it. If something is tantalizingly out of reach, it must be worth the trouble of going for it. They'll figure out how to make it happen as they try. These are the abundance thinkers, and their mindset naturally leads not to limiting beliefs, but to liberating truths. Research shows that there are about as many people out there with this mindset as there are with the other. Two in ten sit on the fence. Of these two habits of thinking, one leads to failure, fear, and discontent. The other leads to success, joy, and fulfillment.

5:26Consider the difference. scarcity thinkers are entitled and fearful. Abundance thinkers are thankful and confident. Scarcity thinkers believe there will never be enough. Abundance thinkers believe there is always more where that came from. Scarcity thinkers are stingy with their knowledge, contacts, and compassion. Abundance thinkers are happy to share their knowledge, contacts, and compassion with others. Scarcity thinkers assume they are the way they are. Abundance thinkers assume they can learn, grow, and develop. Scarcity thinkers default to suspicion and aloofness. Abundance thinkers default to trust and openness.

6:09Scarcity thinkers resent competition, believing it makes the pie smaller and them weaker. Abundance thinkers welcome competition, believing it makes the pie bigger and them better. Scarcity thinkers are pessimistic about the future, believing that tough times are ahead. Abundance thinkers are optimistic about the future, believing the best is yet to come. Scarcity thinkers see challenges as obstacles. Abundance thinkers see challenges as opportunities. Scarcity thinkers think small and avoid risk. Abundance thinkers think big and embrace risk. Scarcity thinkers want to guard their piece of the pie.

6:50Abundance thinkers want to make bigger pies. The main difference? Scarcity thinkers like Charlie operate from a web of limiting beliefs about the world, other people, and themselves, whereas abundance thinkers like Amy operate from a foundation of liberating truths. The big question now is this. What's your mindset? Achieving our goal starts by understanding the distinction between these two mindsets and the beliefs that characterize them. Scarcity thinking is marked by limiting beliefs, while abundance thinking fuels liberating truths. Don't be surprised if you've got a bit of both Charlie and Amy in you.

7:27We all do. In fact, it can change with the situation we find ourselves in. Someone may show signs of scarcity thinking in one area of their life and abundance in another. The trick is recognizing scarcity thinking when it crops up. Three kinds of limiting beliefs. It's easy to spot limiting beliefs in our own thinking if we're attentive. Start with assumptions we hold about the world. I can't start a new business right now. The market is terrible, someone might say. Or I don't trust management. They're always trying to cheat us. Or those politicians are going to deep-six the economy and make it impossible for me to get ahead.

8:05These can be very deep-seated beliefs, but they're not always reality, and they're rarely the whole truth, even when they seem accurate. We've got to learn to question and even dismiss them, or they will limit our freedom and motivations to act. We also have limiting beliefs about others. It's no use asking, you might say, he's too busy to meet with me. Or, hey, she's just a bean counter, what can she possibly know? Or, he hasn't responded yet, I guess he must be upset with me. Or, someone like her would never go out with a person like me. These aren't truths necessarily, they're just beliefs we let influence us.

8:44The third type of limiting belief is what really hits home for most of us. I mean beliefs about ourselves. We might say, I'm a quitter. I never finish what I start. Or I can't help it. I've never been physically fit. Or I've always been terrible with money. Or I'm just not the creative type. These beliefs are often false, half-truths at best, and they will roadblock any progress you want to make in life. How do you know if you're falling into the trap of limiting beliefs? In his book, Making Habits, Breaking Habits, Jeremy Dean mentions three dead giveaways. Black and white thinking. That's when we assume we failed if we don't achieve perfection.

9:23Reality is usually a sliding scale, not a toggle switch. Personalizing. That's when we blame ourselves for random negative occurrences. Catastrophizing. That's when we assume the worst, even with little evidence. To that list, we can add a fourth. Universalizing. That's when we take a bad experience and assume it's true across the board. Our language offers a dead giveaway for limiting beliefs. If our words betray either-or appraisals of the world, others, or ourselves, we're in trouble. Same if we catch ourselves self-bullying or doom-spiraling over an unpleasant or unwanted occurrence. And as my daughter Megan reminds me, if you use broad brush words like never, always, Can't.

10:09Won't. Anything a marriage therapist says you should avoid in a communication with your spouse, your vocabulary is throwing up flags about your mindset. You're in limiting beliefs land. The key is to put a speed bump between your experiences and the stories you're telling yourself about those experiences. So where do those beliefs come from? Hey there. First of all, thanks for listening. There's one thing I know about you already. You have a bigger and brighter future ahead of you than what's behind you. And I'd be willing to bet there's other people in your life you feel the same way about. If you found this book helpful so far, would you do me a favor and take just a couple of seconds and share it with your spouse, a friend, somebody else in your life that you think could benefit?

10:56All you got to do is take a second and hit the share button now. That would mean the world to me. Your sharing means that we can help more people achieve their goals and have a better future than their past. I really appreciate it. The Source of Limiting Beliefs Some of our limiting beliefs, as I've said, come from previous failures or setbacks. Repeated setbacks can train us to assume the worst. They can condition us to hoard what we have and avoid risks. But if we're observant, we can spot other influences. The news media, for instance, has a strong negativity bias. As J.R.R. Tolkien quipped, it's mostly murders and football scores.

11:38Studies have shown that an overabundance of news can make you depressed, anxious, and for the most part, doesn't usually provide you with the ability to actually change or influence anything being reported, says Michael Grothaus, and he's a professional journalist. Tune in, and it's easy to believe the world is getting worse and worse. More crime, more poverty, more violence than ever. It's like a long litany of worry and fear interrupted by commercials about scary medical conditions. News organizations are predisposed to show you negative news because fear triggers the most primitive parts of our brains and keeps our eyes glued to the threat.

12:17To make matters worse, their industry is in decline, so the media increasingly appeal to fear in order to deliver eyeballs to their advertisers. Then there's social media, which can mirror this negativity bias. After an election cycle, it can seem like a never-ending stream of negativity. But you could also detect a positivity bias at work. Check Instagram, and it can seem like everyone's leading a charmed life. Happy kids, beautiful friends, gorgeous vacations, fulfilling work. We're instantly, usually subconsciously, aware we're not measuring up. We're not as smart, creative, educated, successful, lucky, athletic, or artistic as everyone else.

12:59Scholar Donna Friedas conducted a large-scale study of social media and students on more than a dozen college campuses. Facebook is the CNN of envy, a kind of 24-7 news cycle of what's cool, who's not, who's up, and who's down. She writes in The Happiness Effect, a book that reports her findings. Unless you have rock-solid self-esteem, are impervious to jealousy, or have an extraordinarily rational capacity to remind yourself exactly what everyone is doing when they post their glories on social media, that is, positioning and bragging, it's difficult not to care. I'm a huge advocate of social media, but it's no wonder that time on Facebook is predictive of feeling crummy about our lives.

13:43And then there are negative relationships. anyone from friends and co-workers to our family or faith community. We often pick up limiting beliefs from other people in childhood. Those beliefs become part of what University of Virginia psychology professor Timothy Wilson calls our core narratives about life. And many of these core narratives are good and helpful, but some are not. And they can be hard to let go of and disruptive when we try. Other times we pick up limiting beliefs later in life at church, the college quad, or the office. Regardless of when or where we acquire them, our beliefs create the lens through which we see the world.

14:22The undeniable reality is that how well you do in life and business depends not only on what you do and how you do it, but also on who is doing it with you or to you, psychologist Henry Cloud says in The Power of the Other. Hang around people like Charlie and you start seeing the world from his glum, self-defeating perspective. Surround yourself with Amy's, on the other hand, and everything starts looking up. It's worth noting that these mindsets become self-reinforcing. Cognitive neuroscientists and journalist Christian Jarrett describes a dynamic we can see operating in our lives if we're observant.

14:59Our personalities, he says, are a mix of nature and nurture. Our genes and biology combine with our life experiences to form our personalities, which include our beliefs about the world, others, and ourselves. Our personalities then drive how we act and react in the world while we pursue what we want. What's striking about Jarrett's model is the loop. As our actions and reactions shape our experience of the world, that experience feeds back into our personality. It's a self-reinforcing circle. Our beliefs shape our experience, and our experience shapes our beliefs, creating a virtuous or vicious cycle, depending on what beliefs we embrace and enact.

15:41The thing to realize is that positivity and negativity are, to one degree or another, both learned and changeable. They're perspectives, not facts. And remember when I said we've all got some Charlie and Amy in us? That's important to recognize so that we can intentionally shift our mindset to something more empowering when we notice disempowering beliefs creeping in, because we inevitably will from time to time. If we want to experience our best year ever, we have to begin by recognizing which of these two kinds of thinking dominates and intentionally move toward abundance. There's no reason to let limiting beliefs hold us back.

16:20You choose. Shortly after Apple CEO Steve Jobs died in 2011, family, friends, and others gathered at Memorial Church on the Stanford University campus. The invitation-only event drew several hundred to pay tribute to a visionary innovator and leader they had come to admire, respect, and love. Journalist Brent Schlindler recounts the moment at the close of his book, Becoming Steve Jobs. Bono, Joan Baez, and Yo-Yo Ma performed. Oracle founder Larry Ellison spoke, as did lead Apple designer Johnny Ive. But what struck Schlindler the most were the words of Jobs' wife, Laureen Powell. He shaped how I came to view the world, she said of her husband, adding, It's hard enough to see what is already there, to remove the many impediments to a clear view of reality.

17:09But Steve's gift was even greater. He saw clearly what was not there, what could be there, what had to be there. His mind was never a captive of reality. Quite the contrary. He imagined what reality lacked, and he set out to remedy it. As a result, she said, jobs possessed an epic sense of possibility. So ask yourself, what's not in your world right now that could be, must be there? What's lacking that only you can remedy in your relationships, your health, your career, or your spiritual life? As we begin to think about designing our best year ever, we need to recognize that most of the barriers we face are imaginary.

17:51Sometimes those barriers feel fixed. They feel certain. Mount Everest is 29 ,000 feet high. Mountaineers had many attempts at its summit, but they couldn't seem to get past the final 1 ,000 feet of elevation. Some died trying. It almost seemed as though there was some invisible barrier at 28 ,000 feet through which no man could go, Edmund Hillary said. Imagine if he and everyone else looked at the results up to that point and decided it was truly impossible. There are a million thoughts running through our heads, but we alone get to choose what we're going to believe. And the best way to overcome limiting beliefs is to replace them with liberating truths.

18:30It's possible to upgrade our beliefs. More on that next.

18:38Hey there, just wanna take a quick moment to thank you for tuning in. You've just heard a chapter from my newly revised book, Your Best Year Ever. I'm hoping it's offered to you some actionable insights to fuel your dreams. And if you found this helpful, it'd mean the world to me if you'd leave a review on Amazon or Audible. Your feedback helps others decide if the book is for them. So simply search for your best year ever and then share your honest thoughts. Thanks.