226: What If You’re Wrong About Yourself? Challenging Limiting Beliefs

How to Challenge Limiting Beliefs and Change Your Life

What if some of the things you believe about yourself aren't actually facts?

Maybe you've told yourself, "I'm not a runner," "I'm not good at public speaking," "I'm not musical," or "I'm too old to start something new."

But what if you simply haven't collected enough evidence yet?

In this episode, MaryAnn invites you to reopen the case study on the beliefs you've formed about yourself. Instead of assuming that a difficult first experience means you can't do something, you can get curious, try again, and look for new evidence.

Your brain looks for evidence to support what you already believe. When you change the thought, you can begin creating new possibilities.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• How limiting beliefs can keep you stuck.
• Why a difficult first experience doesn't mean you're incapable.
• How your brain looks for evidence to support your beliefs.
• Why practice and repetition can change what you believe you're capable of.
• How to replace "I can't" with a more supportive thought.
• Why it's never too late to challenge an old belief.
• How to reopen the case study and look for evidence of a different outcome.

Your Challenge This Week

Choose one belief that may be holding you back.

Ask yourself:

"What if this isn't actually true?"

Then look for evidence that there could be a different ending to your story.

You don't have to have all the answers. You just have to be willing to keep testing the hypothesis.

And remember: It's not too late to create change.

Looking for more support? Join my FREE feel better challenge! See you inside! https://maryannwalker-life.kit.com/cdf81f07e6

Transcript

0:42

well, hello and welcome back. I recently saw a quote on Instagram by Scott D. Clary that said, "Most of the beliefs that you have about yourself are just hypotheses you stopped testing." I'm not a morning person. When did you last test that? I'm bad at public speaking. Based on how many attempts? You concluded the experiment decades ago with insufficient data. Reopen the study." And that really got me thinking about all of the studies that I might have closed for myself prematurely with insufficient data. I'd already come up with my conclusion, and I thought, "No, I have enough information. It's fine. I'm going to continue to believe this." But I wonder how many times I have just stunted my own growth by believing that. And so today we're going to be reopening that case study for ourselves. And I think this is a great time of year to be doing it because I think as the kids start getting back into school, we generally fall into a more consistent rhythm. and I find that as the temperatures cool off, it just naturally is a space we can kind of just be more introspective. So I hope that today you will bookmark this episode, you'll share it with a friend, start a dialogue about it, but start to open those case studies and get really curious about, okay, what is it that I'm believing that's not necessarily true? Because oh my goodness, we so cling to these old beliefs. It's kind of like having that little blanket when you were a child, your little woobie and now you're a grown adult, but you're still carrying it around. And it's not even serving as a blanket anymore. In fact, it has been laundered so many times. It has been drug across the dirt with you so many times that it might not even be a whole blanket. It might be really kind of lacy with holes in it, or maybe it's just a tiny square of it is left now because it's just been so threadbare. But just notice that, yeah, your thoughts are the same way. They're kind of like that old woobie. And you cling to it because, oh, it feels so familiar, so it must be safe, and it must be true, and this must be the one way that I can have exactly what it is that I'm seeking, which for most of us is peace and comfort in life, joy, right? But today we're going to look at a few specific things to see if we can kind of identify what beliefs are holding you back so that you can mix 'em up. When I was in sixth grade, I ran my first timed mile, and you guys, I was slow. I mean, I was really slow. Right now as an adult, I could probably walk as fast as I was running that timed mile in middle school. And to be fair, probably then sixth grade me also probably could have walked it, but I'd never really practiced running any kind of distance before. So I was putting so much energy into going about as fast as I could walk and trying to get all my laps in around that field for this timed mile, and it really was taking a toll on my body. I mean, I was huffing and puffing. My face was red. I was struggling to catch my breath. And at the end of the timed mile when they recorded my time, I decided in that moment, "You know what? I am just not a runner." But the thing is, up until that moment, I had never actually run a timed mile before. I mean, yes, I had run from here to there on the playground in grade school, right? I'd run to the swings. I'd run to the slide. I would play jump rope. I would get some good cardio in at recess, but I had never done a timed mile before. This was the longest distance I had ever run in my life. And because the first time was challenging, then I decided that it just wasn't for me. It was too hard. My legs are too short. Other people must have an advantage because their legs are longer, right? Oh, my lungs must be different from everybody else's. My lungs, they just can't hold enough air for me to run. I might literally die if I ever have to run a mile again, right? And so because that was my belief system, I only ran when I absolutely had to, which means the next time that I ran any distance at all that was, you know, further than just going to the swings, then it was the next timed mile. And guess what? I got the same results because I was equally unprepared. I didn't improve my pace. It didn't get any easier when I had to do it again the next semester, But the other kids that actually worked at it, the kids that when they ran that timed mile said, "Ooh, I wonder how fast I can go next time," they got a faster time. And they could run so fast that it seemed like within just a few minutes, they were already done with their timed mile. They were already going to get showered, and they could just have free time for the rest of PE. Meanwhile, I was dragging my feet around that field. So what might have happened for me if instead of choosing to believe, oh, I'm just not a runner, and those kids are somehow, more genetically superior than me, and that's why they're so fast. What if instead I had adopted the belief that Oh, so this is what it feels like when you run a mile for the first time when you're 11 years old. I wonder how much better I could do next time, right? What if I had just changed my thought the tiniest bit? It really can be that simple to change your result. When we are young or when we do something that is new for the first time, then it's really easy to believe it when our brain tells us, "Oh, you're not very good at this." Because guess what? More than likely your brain is right. You're probably not very good at it the first time that you do it. But that doesn't mean that you're never going to be good. It just means that right now you're really new at it, and the more you work at it, the more evidence you'll have for your brain that, "Hey, I'm actually getting pretty good. I'm actually improving here." When I first picked up a ukulele, then I tried to tell myself that, "Oh, well, this should be easy. It only has four strings," even though it has countless chords. So I was in for a surprise when I learned how many chords could be played on those four strings, and I also learned that there are certain strumming patterns that you can learn for different songs. And the first strumming pattern that it seems everybody learns on the ukulele is the island strum, and that was kind of a challenge for me because I was trying to do so many things at once. I was trying to learn the chords. I was trying to learn my fingering. I was trying to sing the lyrics along with the chords as I was playing them, and I was trying to make sure that my hand was going in the pattern of down, down, up, up, down, up. That's the pattern for the island strum. And for a long time, I couldn't even look at any of the chords or any of the lyrics. I only had to sit there with one chord and say out loud as I was doing it, "Down, down, up, up, down, up. Down, down, up, up, down, up," until it became rote memory for my body, right? Until my body could remember it. Then once I had the island strum down, then I could introduce other things. But if I had just decided that, "You know what? The island strum is too hard. I'm not going to do it," then I wouldn't be where I am today, where, yeah, I wouldn't call myself an expert ukulele player by any stretch of the imagination. But I have told people from time to time that, yes, I do play the ukulele, and I love it. But that wouldn't have happened if I had just decided that because the island strum didn't come so easily for me as it did my friend, that I wouldn't be able to ever learn how to do it. Do you remember when you were learning how to first drive? I remember being kind of overwhelmed at all of the things that I needed to keep track of just to drive down the street. 'Cause first of all, there's all the things that you have to do right when you sit in the seat, right? You have to do up your seatbelt. You gotta adjust your mirrors, make sure that your radio isn't going to be on full blast as soon as you turn it on. There's quite a few things that you need to do just as you sit in the vehicle, and then when you're driving, then you have to remember things, too. Like, I remember thinking, "Well, there's two pedals, and I have two feet. Why can't I just put one foot on each of them?" Now, anyone who drives knows that, nope, unless you're driving a stick shift, you only use one foot. So there were some things I needed to learn over time, and it did feel overwhelming in the beginning. But I could see that my classmates were learning how to drive, and so I decided from looking at them that, you know what? I think it is possible. I think I can learn how to do this, and I passed my driver's test on the first try. So the thing is that the brain is going to look for evidence that whatever you're thinking about, that it's true. So if you're telling yourself things like, "I'm not a public speaker. I'm just a heavy person. I'm never going to lose weight. This is just the way that I am. I'm not a runner. I'm not musical. I could never get a job like that. I'm too old to go back to school. I'm not as smart as other people. It's just too hard. I just can't do it." If you tell yourself those things, your brain is going to start looking for evidence that those things are true, and it's going to collect so much evidence that eventually you're gonna say, "Okay, see, now I have enough evidence to know that, yes, this is true." So when you've been telling yourself that since you were eleven years old, sometimes it can be a challenge to change those things. But when you start to recognize what it is that those beliefs are actually creating for you, that's when you can create that lasting change. So let me help to offer you a few more supportive thoughts to help you to get unstuck. Okay? So some more supportive thoughts might be, "Oh, this is what it feels like the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth time that you speak in public. Oh, interesting that that's what it feels like. And with practice, I can see that I'm getting better every time." Or you might think, "You know what? I've never run my own business before, so it makes sense that I'm not going to do everything perfectly the first time. But I am learning through my mistakes, and I'm willing to keep learning until I can get this thing off of the ground." Or maybe you wanna tell yourself, "You know what? I love myself enough to keep trying until I get the result that I want." Now, there's a really famous story where Thomas Edison was asked how it felt to fail a thousand times before creating the light bulb, and his reply was fantastic. He said, "I didn't fail. I found one thousand ways that didn't work." You know Colonel Sanders? Yeah, the KFC guy. His real name is Harland Davis Sanders. And did you know he did not start his restaurant empire until he was sixty-five years old? In fact, he used his retirement benefits and his first Social Security check to start his business. But he did it at sixty-five years old. Before becoming president, Abraham Lincoln, he lost his mother. His business failed. He lost the state legislature. He got fired from his job. That forced him to borrow money from his friends. Ultimately, he faced bankruptcy. And once he was finally getting back on his feet, he found love, and then his sweetheart died, and that left him bedridden for six months due to a total breakdown. He had so much evidence in his life that he would never find success. And then he became president. He abolished slavery and completely changed the nation. Any one of those people, they could have quit. They could have decided that they already had enough information to close that case study, that they already knew what they were capable of, that they already had enough evidence that they would never amount to anything They could have easily decided that, "Oh, I'm never going to be able to achieve my goal. I'm too old. I don't have enough resources. I'm too poor." But every single one of them kept challenging their hypotheses until they got a different outcome. And you can do that, too. So this week, just notice. Notice what beliefs are holding you back. Maybe it's a belief that you adopted at age 11 like me. Maybe it's a belief that you've been fighting your whole life, and now you're 65 years old and trying to decide what it is that you want to do with this new season of life. But pick one thought and reopen your case study. Look for evidence that there might be a different ending to your story. Look for the evidence that your goal, it might be closer than you think. It is not too late to create change, and sometimes creating that change is as quick as changing your thought. And of course, if you need help and support challenging your beliefs, if you need help identifying what is and isn't a thought, because so often we believe it is a fact, if you need help just reopening that study, then come and work with me. I would be so happy to be both your cheerleader and your coach. All right. Here's to seeking more. I hope you have a great week, and let's talk soon. Bye now