Your Best Year Ever, Chapter 3: You Can Upgrade Your Beliefs

0:02Hey 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? All you gotta do is take a second, 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.

0:39I really appreciate it.

0:44Chapter 3. You Can Upgrade Your Beliefs. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Amy Lemtoe. Is not everything impossible until it is done? Daniel Wilson. In 1954, Martin Luther King Jr. accepted the ministerial call from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was just 25 years old. But what King accomplished over the next decade would radically reshape American society. In 1955, after Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat, King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the boycotters in 1956. A year later, King formed and led the Southern Christian Leaders Conference, which helped organize the burgeoning civil rights movement.

1:31He also spoke before his first national audience and made the cover of Time magazine. But that was only the beginning. King's organizing and protest work continued in the late 50s and early 60s with sit-ins and protests, culminating in the events of 1963. That April, King was arrested in Birmingham for disobeying a ban on demonstrations. When he came under fire from local ministers, he responded with one of the most important and memorable works, Letter from a Birmingham Jail. A few months later, he led the march on Washington, attended by over 200 ,000 people. It was the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and King gave his stirring I Have a Dream speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

2:16The demonstration galvanized nationwide support for civil rights. Earlier that summer, President John F. Kennedy had introduced the nation's most sweeping civil rights legislation to date. and the impact of the march and King's advocacy was instrumental in its passage in 1964. If that weren't enough, time picked King as its person of the year and the Nobel Committee made him the youngest ever recipient of the Peace Prize. There was more work to do, but he'd already turned the world upside down. He was just 35 years old. What was his secret? Avoiding the Trap of Limiting Beliefs King's critics in Birmingham considered his actions unwise and untimely.

2:59But unlike King, these ministers were laboring under a limiting belief. They held an idea about the world that limited their range of possibilities. Instead of seeing King's actions as paving the way for change, they saw them as counterproductive. They worried his actions would cause them to lose ground. But this is just one of a million examples in life where received wisdom is simply another way of saying widely held misunderstanding. As we learned in the last chapter, a limiting belief is a misunderstanding of the present that shortchanges our future. King was surrounded by limiting beliefs such as these.

3:34The civil rights movement is asking for too much too fast. The movement is stirring up unnecessary trouble. Nonviolence won't move the needle. Armed resistance is needed. White people don't change. Racial reconciliation is impossible. Racism is ingrained in the culture. We'll never change that, let alone the law. And there were many, many others shared by both white and black people inside and outside the movement. The difference between King and others was that he rejected those beliefs as untrue. Instead, he believed that the times called for urgent action. He believed that nonviolent demonstrations were necessary and effective.

4:14He believed that racial reconciliation was a real hope and that hearts and the whole of society could really change. Instead of limiting beliefs, King embraced liberating truths. He looked at the same facts as everyone else, but he used a different frame, to use the Xanders language from earlier. That's what his I Have a Dream speech was all about. King could see a better future, regardless of what some people said or believed. His frame allowed him to visualize the victory, and he knew in his bones that he would someday realize it as well. These liberating truths freed him to act with determination, and we can do the same thing.

4:54Trade your frame. Few of our aspirations will measure up to the accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr., but they do matter to the one and only life we'll ever have, and they can make all the difference in the world for us and the people nearest to us. One of my favorite examples of replacing limiting beliefs with liberating truths comes from the Alcoholics Anonymous community. Researchers at Brown University, UC Berkeley, and the National Institutes of Health worked together on a major study. They found that the difference maker for people trying to stay sober is belief. Instead of saying, I can't resist a drink, people in AA find they actually can resist.

5:32Why? Because now they believe the liberating truth, change is possible. Or instead of thinking, I can't get sober, AA participants swap that for the liberating truth, I can manage life's difficulties without a drink. Here's another example from my friend Donald Miller. Don's a best-selling author and tremendous entrepreneur, but after a string of failed relationships, he figured he was doomed at love. Then out of the blue, Bob Goff called. You know what I've noticed about you, Don, Bob started. I've noticed that you're good at relationships. Don wasn't buying. He was terrible at relationships, and he knew it for certain.

6:10But Bob kept calling him and telling him the opposite. He gave example after example of times Don had really bonded with people. For the next few months, there was a yawning chasm between Bob's affirmation and the way I felt about myself, Don said. But Bob's persistence paid off. Like a trial lawyer, he argued his case into my soul, week after week, until the chasm began to close. Don realized Bob was right, and the more he realized it, the more he was able to act on it and prove it to himself. The new belief enabled him to be vulnerable, hopeful, and act with confidence. It turned out Don was terrific at relationships, and he went on to date and marry the love of his life.

6:51Let me give you some examples from my own life. I used to believe I wasn't good with my hands. I was always intimidated by anything mechanical. As soon as I could afford it, I would just hire other people to do that kind of work for me. I didn't enjoy those tasks, or so I thought. But in recent years, I started noticing that I enjoy washing the dishes. It may sound like an odd thing to say, but I'm really good at it, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment and contribution. I filed this away in my brain. Then I decided to try my hand at installing an automated lighting system. I have zero electrical experience, but I thought to myself, I'll bet I can learn how to do this simply by watching YouTube videos.

7:31Sure enough, I was right. I installed the entire system. I loved learning something new, and it gave me enormous satisfaction to do the project. I'm still enjoying the system to this day. Since that time, I've installed a live streaming studio in my office, which involves some fairly complicated wiring and setup. How did things turn around so completely? When I recognized that thought about not being good with my hands as a limiting belief, I replaced it with a liberating truth. Less Charlie, more Amy. I started saying, I'm very good with my hands. I can learn anything. It didn't feel that way at first, but instead of operating from scarcity, I chose to operate from a place of abundance, and now I'm much more confident whenever a new project comes along.

8:15I've wrestled with limiting beliefs around money in the past as well. I nearly went bankrupt in 1992. My business failed and people from church had to bring my family groceries for us to make it. Along with that, a mentor once told me, you're not very good with money, are you? I took those two experiences and created a story. I'm not very good with money. It took me years to shake myself loose of that, but I did. I started noticing when I handled money well. I also noticed the frequency most of the time. I intentionally started telling myself that I was good with money and I could get even better.

8:50Similarly, I used to believe I couldn't get ahead because I could barely make enough money to meet my family's needs. When I recognized that thought as a limiting belief, I determined to replace it with a liberating truth. So I started saying, I have all the money I need to meet our obligations, accomplish our goals, and be generous with others. It sure didn't feel that way at first. But instead of operating from scarcity, I chose to operate from a place of abundance. It wasn't magic, but it did open new pathways that allowed me to move forward. And the more I moved, the more resources I found to improve my circumstances.

9:24Here's another. I don't feel like doing that right now, I used to say. I'm exhausted. I thought my energy was something I had no control over. Either I felt energetic or not. But then I realized I had agency. I could influence what I experienced. So I swapped that limiting belief for liberating truth that went like this. I have more than enough energy to accomplish the tasks I undertake. I repeated that to myself every time I felt exhausted or tired. It wasn't long before my reality caught up to my words. In all these examples, changing beliefs made better outcomes possible. It's not magic. You already have what it takes to move the needle in your life.

10:04Everyone's different, and we all have our own portfolio of limiting beliefs. But in all my coaching, I've encountered two that many of us share. The first is that we have no power to change our circumstances, and the second is that we lack the resources to do so. I want to look at both of these in turn. When we feel powerless. Erin Grewell was a rookie school teacher assigned to a tough, newly integrated high school in Long Beach, California. Her diverse classroom was packed with at-risk kids, some of them rival gang members who hated their teacher even more than they hated each other. My class has become a dumping ground for disciplinary transfers.

10:42Kids in rehab are those on probation, Grewal said. Most everyone had given up on these students. The administration didn't hold much hope that she could make a difference. Even her dad thought she should find a new job. Fortunately for her students, Gruwell believed she could succeed with these kids where others had failed. She started by chucking the standard curriculum and assigning books about teens dealing with crises, including Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl and Zlada Filipovic's Zlada's Diary, A Child's Life in Wartime, Sarajevo. Just as important, she required them to journal about their experiences.

11:19In the process and through the years, her kids' lives were transformed. Against the odds, she helped 150 students learn, grow, and graduate. Most went to college. Some became teachers themselves. We all have more power than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. According to Stanford University psychology professor Albert Bandura, this power comprises four properties that help us achieve our goals. One, intention. We can imagine a better reality than the one we're currently experiencing, and we can work with others and within our circumstances to achieve it. Number two, forethought. By visualizing the future, we can govern our behavior in the present and give purpose and meaning to our actions.

12:04Number three, action. We have the ability to act on our plans, to stay motivated, and to respond in the moment to remain on course. Number four, self-reflection. We not only act, we know we act. That means we can evaluate how we're doing, make adjustments, and even revise our plans. We should think of these properties as superpowers. They're so common we rarely pause to think about them, but you can find the seed of every human accomplishment in this list. If you're attentive, you'll see them either implicitly or explicitly in all five steps of the Your Best Year Ever methodology. Erin Grewell put all these to work in her teaching.

12:44She knew her involvement in her kids' lives would make a difference. She built a program that would accomplish her intent. She got started, made course corrections along the way, and little by little changed the lives of 150 students who would have otherwise been left behind, not to mention changing her own life. Whatever our circumstances, we have the power to pursue a better future. Some don't buy it. They think because they can't control everything, they can control nothing. But that's only a limiting belief. By our choices, we become active participants in the outcomes we experience. During the final difficult months of the bus boycott in 1956, King preached a sermon to encourage his congregation to live hopeful lives of creative action.

13:27Lord, help me to accept my tools, he told them to pray. However dull they are, help me to accept them. And then, Lord, after I have accepted my tools, then help me to set out and do what I can do with my tools. To show how powerful our humble tools can be, King pointed to the example of Moses, who discarded his own limiting beliefs and led his people to freedom. As we've seen, King proved the validity of this point by his own example. The Resource Question Gruel's story also reminds us to avoid limiting our goals to our current resources. Resources are never, and I mean never, the main challenge in achieving our dreams.

14:08In fact, if you already have everything you need to achieve your goal, then your goal is probably too small. When Gruel first started out, she had no budget for books. But her students needed certain books if her plan was going to work. The answer? She got a second job and bought the books herself. As her goals grew, so did her need for resources. Her students wanted to bring Miep Gies, the Dutch woman whose family hid Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, to the school to lecture. The school didn't have the budget, so the students held a series of fundraisers to make it happen. And that wasn't all.

14:42They also raised funds to bring Zelada Flopovic, whose book they studied, to America. The more they determined to step out, the more the necessary resources appeared. Their determination was the difference maker. There's no deficit in human resources. As King said in his 1964 Nobel lecture, the deficit is in human will. Resources are necessary, but they're never the precondition for success. The perceived lack of resources is often a benefit in disguise. In fact, dealing with constraints can trigger a cascade of unforeseen rewards. For one, they force us to rise to the occasion and give our best to the pursuit.

15:18Easy resources make for weak performance. Economist Julian Simon calls human creativity the ultimate resource. But ironically, limitations are often needed to unleash it. A lack of resources spurs resourcefulness. Limited resources build resiliency and confidence. The more times we overcome difficulties, the more capable we are of overcoming whatever comes next. In short, an apparent lack of resources might be the most important resource we have. Our limiting beliefs keep us from seeing that. But here's the liberating truth. We live in a world of genuine abundance, a world full of resources we need to pursue our most important goals.

15:58That doesn't mean you won't ultimately require the resources you currently lack. If your goal is big enough, you probably require more and different resources than you assume when you start. But start! A lack of resources is never a good excuse to stay put. Treat it instead as a prompt for what to tackle as the next step towards your goal. When climbers first began making their attempt on Everest, only to be rebuffed by the 28 ,000-foot ceiling, they'd been coming through Tibet on the mountain's northern slopes. Tibet closed to climbers after World War II. Not only were they unable to climb the full height, suddenly they couldn't even be on the mountain.

16:36Guess they should all head home, right? Wrong. Because Edmund Hillary and the other climbers believed they could break through the 28 ,000-foot ceiling, they used the constraint to shift their approach. After reassessing southern access through Nepal, which had previously been thought too difficult, Hillary and his expedition leader, Eric Shipton, spotted a possible route up to the top. The constraint didn't shut them down. it helped them find another way.

17:06Wow, 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 gonna 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.

17:43We'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 going to 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.

18:18So that's where we're going to dive deep into the content for the book, and 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 yourbestyeareverbook.com.

18:51Revise your beliefs. You don't have to be hemmed in by limiting beliefs. You can exchange them for liberating truths. I'd like to suggest a simple four-step self-coaching process to help you do that. It's the same method my daughter, Megan Hyatt Miller, and I describe in our book, Mind Your Mindset. Let's begin by pulling up the list of aspirations you created at the start of the book. You might even have a few more now that you've had longer to reflect. That's great. As you look at those aspirations, do any seem out of reach? Impossible. That's where the process comes into play. To follow along, you can download our Full Focus Self-Coacher by following the URL at the end of this chapter.

19:30First, identify the limiting belief associated with your reaction. I mentioned several giveaways in the last chapter. If a belief reflects black and white thinking, it might be a limiting belief. Same thing if it's personalizing, catastrophizing, or universalizing. Our language can help us spot trouble. Look for anything you might state in the negative or universal. Can't. don't, won't, never, always, constantly, and so on. These beliefs could be coming from past experience, the media, or your social circle. Whatever the content of the belief, no matter how true it seems, it's important to recognize that it's just an opinion about reality.

20:12And there's a good shot it's wrong. It might be something like, I don't have enough experience. I don't have the right experience. I can't write. I always quit. I'm not creative. I always fail eventually. I'm not very good with money. I'm not very disciplined. I'm terrible with technology. Let's be honest. It could be anything we think about the world, others, or ourselves. We all have our own challenges. The first time she did this exercise, Natalie, one of your best year ever course alumni, was the tired young mom of two. She had recently quit her job and moved with her family to a new city.

20:51One of my limiting beliefs was I just don't have enough energy, she told me. I can't get to this because I'm trying to provide for these two little humans. That was just a start. Another of Natalie's limiting beliefs. Maybe I am meant to be mediocre. And maybe I'm just meant to have a life of insignificance. I had a friend who was laid off from his job in his mid-50s. I'll call him Greg. The Great Recession was in full swing and he had a really difficult time getting re-employed. Over the course of three years, I started seeing this story take root in his thinking. He would say, well, I'm just too old.

21:25He also had two graduate degrees. Then the story became, I'm overeducated. Greg's situation was tough, no doubt about it. But the culprit was not his age or his education. It was his beliefs about his age and education. Whatever your story about the challenges you're facing, don't leave it floating in the air. I always find it helpful to write it down. By writing it down, you externalize it, and then you're free to evaluate it. Second, interrogate the belief. This is when we evaluate whether the belief is factually accurate. As Megan and I discuss in Mind Your Mindset, most of what we believe is actually conjecture and guesswork.

22:06We may know one thing or another, but how that fits into the rest of what we know is often the product of interpretive leaps and assumptions. If we look at what we believe more objectively, a lot of those assumptions fall apart. It's also worth asking whether a belief is helpful. Is it enabling you to accomplish the outcomes you want, or is it preventing you from doing so? It was hard to see those words on paper, Natalie admitted, until she wrote down her limiting belief. It clouded her thinking. By externalizing it, she was free to confront it. And you are too. The trick is to separate facts from stories.

22:40Facts are verifiable, objective, and certain. They're not emotions, opinions, or conclusions. You'll want to look for interpretations, causations, universals, or even changes in context. This work is essential to set the stage for imagining a new and better belief. It's important to note that we are sometimes addicted to our limiting beliefs, just like Charlie from earlier. Maybe they offer a sense of certainty. Maybe they give a sense of drama or significance because we think we've got the world figured out. But don't get stuck there. Honest evaluation is the key to freedom. Third, imagine a new, more empowering belief.

23:17If a limiting belief is simply false, you can just reject it. Sometimes this means restating a negative as a positive or making a simple swap like in my personal examples above. That's what Natalie did. When I saw those limiting beliefs I wrote down about me, I realized that those came from such a dark place, she said. That's just not who I was. That was almost coming from somewhere else. Writing down the opposite of that, those liberating truths, felt so good to say something positive about myself and to begin to taste that confidence and see the hope and possibility of what I could become if I really started to believe in myself.

23:57Sometimes, however, it's not that simple. Many limiting beliefs have a kernel of truth in them, and that's what makes them so convincing. But they're not the whole truth. If a limiting belief is true or partly true, you don't have to settle for it. You could always recast or reframe the story. You might need to marshal a case, just like Bob Goff did for Don Miller. Bob took Don's limiting belief, I'm no good at relationships, and offered him a liberating truth in exchange, I'm good at relationships, then pressed his case with supporting examples. Negativity in the media provides another source of limiting beliefs.

24:31Yes, there's a lot of bad news out there, but it's only part of the picture. Against what the pundits say, evidence shows the world is improving in a number of key areas. World life expectancy continues to rise. Pay and college degrees awarded to women continue to rise. The number of annual hours worked continues to fall. The number of democracies in the world continues to rise, while the number of autocracies declines. The number of people enslaved around the world continues to fall. Violent crime rates continue to fall. The number of wars continued to decrease. The number of trees in the world continues to grow.