Limiting beliefs are the ultimate glass ceiling
Would more training or removing the 10lbs weight attached to your ankles increase your running speed the most?
Personal growth is a strange journey; it is rewarding and overwhelming, filled with breakthroughs and “Can I take the blue pill finally”, empowering and disheartening. But at the end of the day, what choice do we have other than to go forwards and onwards?
I have been on my personal journey for more than a decade now. Looking back I wish I knew what I know now, in order to accelerate the pace of growth and transformation. However, I know very well that you can’t rush growth, your emotional, physical, energetic realities can only take so much at one time…or is it?!
One thing I learnt during this journey was to question anything and everything. And I realized that I had a lot of beliefs that were really blocking my personal growth - such as it is slow, difficult, complicated to change.
And these limiting beliefs were not present only around my personal growth journey…oh no, no no! They were everywhere; from how much money I deserved to be paid, my ability to win a tennis game, my look, my wealth, my happiness, my relationships, and so on,… they permeated everything.
As you can imagine, it is pretty impossible to have a successful relationship, career, health, financial situation,… if deep down (and mostly totally unconsciously) you believe otherwise.
I am a great example of this. I used to have, among many others, very strong limiting beliefs around my career and finances. As a child, my single mother was most of the time broke and the constant messaging and energy was “these nice things are not for us”, “people like us can’t access this or that”. In addition, being from the 70’s and a very catholic & machos environment, I was also fed by “women are there to serve men”, “it is unattractive for a woman to be smart and successful”, “men are better than women”. So not really an expansive mindset for a young woman, to say the least. And guess what, I was excellent at following the party line! Despite tremendous hard work and ambition that led me to a multitude of successful well-paid jobs, I would inevitably blow them. It is almost beautiful to see the consistency with which I destroyed everything I worked so hard to build over and over again!
This realization led me to 2 paths. First, being a rational human being, I started to uncover these limiting beliefs in myself and release them (more on that in subsequent editions). Second, I started to look around me and realized how flawed our Equal Opportunity programs were. How could we expect sustainable progress when we were not addressing the root cause - the ingrained beliefs in some of us that “I don’t deserve this or that because I am not good enough” and “people like me don’t have these things”.
Broadening the aperture, you can see why we have seen such little progress with our Equal Opportunity programs. If we all go back to our own level of “deserve” and “self-worth”, how can we expect the initiatives put in place to yield sustainable results without having addressed first what is in the way of success - limiting beliefs. How can we expect from people who have been fed with clichés based on their gender, race, religion, socio-economic backgrounds, their entire childhood - when they are at their most vulnerable and just absorb what is shown and said to them as the ultimate truth- to just “rise to the challenge” because we gave them a bit of help?
We, as a society, have been putting tremendous efforts and resources to try to level the playing field for the past 50 years. I think it is time to admit that it has not been working. Just look at any stats if you believe the return on investment is actually there. From VC capital allocation, CEOs of Fortune 500 to incarcerated population, the results are extremely disappointing. Again, this is not surprising to me anymore.
I have a dream. That we, again as a society, start with where the problem is - the belief that one is not good enough and don’t deserve success, happiness, love, money, etc…, because of their background. By establishing a solid foundational belief system in people, that yes, regardless of their background, they are good enough, we will see great progress in equality. This simply starts by deprogramming (aka releasing) these limiting beliefs, before any other initiatives are put in place.
This is not that difficult, especially when considering all the work that had already happened in the space. Add this step at the beginning of all Equal Opportunity programs. Include initiatives focusing on removing limiting beliefs in inner-city schools (ideally bringing the parents, siblings, and neighbors along). Tons of easy and cheap tools exist that can be used in group or alone, no need for expensive, long and complicated programs.
I will come back in future editions to this topic and in particular on 1) how to detect one’s limiting beliefs; 2) how to release them.
Hope this edition intrigued you and that you will not only play with that concept for yourself but also for your community!
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