Video transcription
Have you ever driven one of those go-karts at an amusement park? I think they’re lots of fun. And if you have an ounce of competitiveness, then you’ve probably wished yours could go faster.
What’s not obvious is that these go-karts all have what is called a “governor” on them, which limits their speed. Human beings have speed limiters too.
Today I want to talk to you about one of the most important, yet invisible, underlying factors of building your practice or habit. Indeed of building anything you’re taking responsible for making so. I want to talk to you about beliefs, and specifically the beliefs you have about yourself.
A belief is an idea that we accept as having some degree of truthfulness or likelihood. Throughout life our beliefs change, and things that we take as being true and important at one point, are displaced by others. The Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas are fossilised beliefs we possibly used to hold.
The most significant beliefs we hold are about ourselves. The reason why beliefs about ourself are so significant is that they act as an invisible limiter on everything we value, think, feel, and do. In particular there are 2 core beliefs that limit us. They are beliefs about our worthiness (that is our deserving of love), and about our power (that is our capacity to shape our future).
Of these, it is the belief in our power, our ability to do what we say we’re going to do, which most limits our ability to build a practice.
Imagine you have a friend and this friend says “I’m going to do this, or I’m going to do that, or I’m going to leave my job, or I’m going to learn to play the piano”. And of course as their friend, you encourage them and support them however you can.
And they keep on affirming what they’re going to do, again and again, but they never do it. Years go by, and now when you hear them saying these things you think to yourself “oh yeah”. And you now no longer bother making an effort to support to help them. You think to yourself “I can’t trust you when you say that cos when it’s hard, you’re not doing what you say you’re going”.
Well we are all both of those characters in that story. Both the one claiming what we will do, and the untrusting other that no longer bothers to make a stand for them anymore.
Whenever we say we are going to do something, and we don’t, then we unconsciously undermine our belief in ourself and our word.
This limiting belief then goes on to try and limit our success by diluting the potency of our motivation for change. We may really want something new in our life, but when we don’t believe in our ability to build it, then the motivation, which is the fuel for our journey, is watered down.
When we don’t keep your word, nothing changes outside, but something precious inside; our belief in ourself is hurt. We’ve got to learn how to stop doing this; we deserve better. We’ll talk some more on this topic in tomorrow’s video and what we can do to build rather than undermine our belief in ourself.