I will start with a simple yet powerful quote: “I am not the product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions”.
Tell you more you ask? The truth is that most of us are naïve to the incredible influence we exert on the circumstances that create our world. The reality is that each of us is co-creating our lives each and every day!
There is a synchronistic dance occurring between our non-conscious mind and the external circumstances that we experience, but because we don’t learn about this process in any traditional educational settings, we wander through our lives blissfully unaware of this pervasive and potentially empowering process!
The vast majority of brain activity that drives our everyday actions and behaviours occurs at the non-conscious level in response to an operating system that pivots around our deep seated beliefs, morals and values.
Our beliefs and values are critical filters that determine what thoughts radiate out from our non-conscious mind to determine our actions, behaviours and outcomes in life.
We as human beings are very simplistic…we are what we believe we are!
We all have a powerful, innate desire to be consistent with our sense of self. We refer to this as “cognitive congruence”.
If we act consistent with the beliefs and values that support our self-image, we experience non-conscious alignment which results in experiencing less mental anguish than if we act in a manner that’s not consistent with our beliefs.
If we are inconsistent we refer to this as “cognitive dissonance” and sure enough results in the opposite affect and we experience a degree of mental discomfort.
Naturally, the default human position is to avoid mental anguish and discomfort, and so because of this there is more power to align our behaviours with our non-conscious beliefs, even if this creates undesirable circumstances in one’s life.
For example, an intelligent, hard-working and resourceful person may have a non-conscious belief that they’ve carried throughout their life that tells them “wealthy people are rude and arrogant”.
As a result, this type of person, in spite of their focused efforts to earn more money will continually find their path to financial freedom blocked by a series of obstacles and in many cases, this amounts to a form of self-sabotage.
I stress that this process occurs at the non-conscious level and a person may be consciously very hungry for success or in search of a different type of life, but deep seated limiting beliefs are a huge impediment to a successful and fulfilling life.
In order to find the alignment between our morals, beliefs, values and our sense of self we must learn to tap into and to understand exactly what these are. When we understand this we find consistency and live with less mental battle and struggle.
My focus and work in my years of coaching experience in both the sporting and business has indicated that helping people identify and overcome limiting beliefs is the primary focus for any leader looking to take their people into an authentic and sustainable peak performance space.
How do we identify these limiting beliefs and overcome them? Stay tuned!
Wayne
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