What is holding you back?

Perhaps you’ve had this experience as well…

You are kvetching to your partner/bestie/anyone who will listen. You are knee-deep in explaining why the other person in the story is at fault. You are describing who they are and what is wrong with them. And as you do so, you start to see some holes in your own logic. The narrative that has been swirling in your head all week sounds less convincing coming out of your mouth. You keep trying to explain the situation, and like quicksand, the more you struggle to point out why the other guy/gal is to blame, the more you sink into confusion and embarrassment.

I’ve been in this moment way more than I like to admit. Sometimes I would stubbornly double down on my victim narrative, dismissing any evidence to the contrary with “you just don’t understand” or “if you knew them you would agree with me.” Sometimes I would choose a more passive aggressive route—*sigh* “never mind.” Sometimes I’d offer a lame attempt at taking responsibility with a self-deprecating “it’s probably my fault, we all know what a bossy pants I am.”

I can’t pin point exactly when my awakening began, but at some point I started to realize, “I think I might be the problem here. I think all of these issues that I keep running into, all of the drama, all of the spinning…I think the root of those things is somewhere inside of me.”

I tried to figure it out on my own. I tried to talk with my therapist about it. I told my partner, “I think I am the thing that is holding me back.” He nodded vigorously, but beyond “stop doing that” he didn’t have the tools to help me identify and rewrite the beliefs that were tethering me to my victimhood and my habitual behaviors.

But (this should come as no surprise) when I found coaching, I finally learned how to identify the tethers AND how to break free from them. Through coaching, I learned to start with the result I kept getting, trace that result to a habitual behavior, trace the habitual behavior to a feeling or a thought that typically preceded it, and then look underneath that feeling or thought for a belief that I didn’t even know I had, and that (now that it was out in the light) was obviously problematic and not something I would ever encourage other people to adopt as well.

Which brings us to the question of the month, here on Press Release—what is holding you back?

There are all sorts of things that can hold us back.  A lot of the time there are external constraints that need to be understood and strategically addressed.  But most often, I find that the strongest tethers and heaviest weights, come from an internal source--a belief, a mindset, or a narrative, that we are clinging to for reasons unknown. And these internal tethers can be trickier to identify and address.  They lurk in the dark underneath a bunch of habits, thought patterns, and reactions.  But the good news is that once you bring them into the light, and make a consicous effort to rewrite them, you feel so much lighter, so much clearer.  You start to wonder how in the world you ever lived with all of that baggage weighing you down.  It's an incredible gift, and this month, I'm giving it to you in three neatly wrapped packages.  

For the next three weeks I’ll air my limiting belief dirty laundry. I’ll walk you through my process of identifying a limiting belief, as well as what I did to rewrite that unhelpful narrative that was informing my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Because, here’s the thing, you cannot just get rid of the limiting belief. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you create a void it will fill itself in. You have to replace the limiting belief with a compassionate, expansive belief. And then you have to be vigilant, the way gardeners have to keep pulling the weeds from their vegetable beds (<-- seasonally relevant metaphor that gives you insight to how I am spending my free time these days). 

Here are the three beliefs (the laundry list, if you will) that I’ll share with you this month…

Limiting Belief #1—If it feels personal, it is personal.

Limiting Belief #2—There is some kind of objective "enough" (as in "I am not *fill in the blank* enough").

Limiting Belief #3--The things I am good at are not as valuable/useful as the things other people are good at. 

If you find yourself thinking “hey, wait a minute, that sounds familiar” as you read through those belief statements, I wouldn’t be surprised. I hear beliefs similar to these articulated by my clients almost every single coaching session. The recipe for change that I walk them through, is the same one that I used to change my own beliefs, and it’s the same one I’ll be revealing this month on the blog.

Tune in each week if that sounds like the mindset medicine you need right now.