"January, you start the year off fine..."
Guys, who else is feeling the buzz of newness in the air?! I usually feel a shift in my energy every time we welcome in a new year, but I've decided to spend this rotation around the sun becoming the best version on myself, and taking a team with me! Because you can either be the best version of yourself. Or the current version of yourself. You can choose the discomfort of discipline, or the discomfort of regret. The amount of dedication is the same. So for 2023, I've decided to choose a theme to each month. For the month of January, the theme is 'to shed'. Don't worry; it won't add to the pet hair tumbleweeds under the bed! It's a time to shed old habits that aren't serving us, anything that is too weighty and detrimental to our oh-so-precious time and wellbeing, and old beliefs that are limiting our potential. I felt this was the most practical place to begin. After all, we often need to remove, or shed, the old to make way for the new; donating a bag of clothing to free space for your new finds, or pruning old leaves from a plant to allow the new ones to thrive. This month, we're tossing out our old beliefs like last week's half onion in the back of the fridge!
A note about beliefs... Don't get me wrong, beliefs can be of benefit to us, but only if they allow us to expand and grow. If we're feeling caged in by them, while feeling envious of the freedom of others around us, it may be time for an upgrade. What is a belief?
Think of your beliefs as your default settings; it's what you revert to without thought or question. Essentially, a belief is an assumption. It can be an assumption we hold true about others, ourselves, or anything else. For the purpose of this activity, we're going to focus the beliefs we hold about ourselves. Picture a house. Our beliefs serve as the foundation. It is on top of this foundation that we build walls, which serve as our identity, behaviors and choices. These walls can let people and opportunity in, or it can keep them out. Here's where we start to see the impact of beliefs: if your foundation - your belief - is that you are afraid of failure, do you think your walls - your choices - will ever allow you to try new things? Likewise, if you have a belief that you are lazy, will that help or deter you from leading the physically active and healthy lifestyle that you think about? The purpose here is not to erase your beliefs; the purpose is to examine our beliefs. Then, we gotta flip them on their head, and make them work for us, rather than against us. Here are some examples of limiting beliefs that hold us back (left), as well as examples of how we may tweak them (right):
"I will never be financially secure" | "I am in charge of my own finances. Each day I am given the opportunity to grow my wealth" |
"I am shy" | "I no longer back away from people or opportunities" |
"I am afraid of success" | "I am excited to experience my successes" |
"I am afraid of failure" | "Failing provides wonderful feedback. I am grateful to learn from failures to come" |
"I don't have what it takes to run my own business" | "Every moment presents an opportunity to evolve and grow. I have the ability to create my own successes" |
The trick is to be realistic with the wording of your new beliefs, not just to adopt the polar opposite of each. For instance, if we changed "I will never be financially secure" above, to straight up saying, "I am rich", that may not feel very real. It's just too much of a gap. It's not reflective of the baby steps you take in between. It feels like a big jump, and unless you're Tom Cruise, I'm willing to bet that big jumps are not your area of expertise.
When it comes to beliefs, you can choose to invest your time and energy into ones that chain you, or free you.
The dedication is the same.
© 2023 Cass Boutilier