Steps to Success: How to Break Free of Limiting Beliefs and Patterns

Steps to Success: How to Break Free of Limiting Beliefs and Patterns

What is your modus operandi? 

What is the way that you do things, your particular way or method of getting something done?

One that is particularly well established? 

What is your pattern, your SOP, your standard operating procedure. 

We all have these. We all have particular patterns that we’re running all the time, we have comfort levels for the way that we do things. 

We do things the same way. We are creatures of habit. We loop on the same things over and over again. And you know, what else does this pretty much everything? Pretty much everything on earth does this, particularly the earth? 

You and I both know that the Earth orbits the sun once a year, and it rotates on its access every day. And these are the reasons for day and night and the changes of season, and all of that. So certainly, most everything has a pattern, you and I have patterns. 

And we have these patterns in every aspect of life. Time that we go to bed, times that we wake up, times we wake up on Saturdays and Sundays versus Mondays and Tuesdays, the food that you eat when you eat the food. 

You think about when you get out of your pattern, that’s when things are strange, right? Step outside of the pattern, things are weird. It’s hard on your body. If you normally drink four beers on a Saturday night, if you drink eight, well, you got after a little too hard. Or if you didn’t drink any beers, you certainly woke up probably feeling a lot different. 

So that’s super minor, or maybe super major, but that’s pretty minor. But what about really, really, really, really important stuff? 

What are your patterns around the really important things in your life, because you have them your your, your your work, your career, your business, your level of fitness, your physical fitness, your cardiovascular fitness, your your strength, your mental health, your emotional health, self care that’s been on the tips of everyone’s tongue, including mine over the past six months. What are your habits there? 

What are your patterns there, your emotional well being, all of these things. 

Fascinatingly, we all have ceilings. And we all have floors, sort of the parameters of our patterns, the edges of our puzzle, however you want to think about or look at it. 

We all have them.  And if we’re not cognizant of it, which most of us are not, we and this is me too. We are following our patterns. 

We’re following these predictive pet these these predictable patterns, the way that we do things, what’s momentum, it’s inertia, it’s all of these things. The thing about our ceilings, is they are 99% of the time self imposed. 

And we limit ourselves because we do not think that we deserve better than better than we have. You might think that I deserve better than I have. But you probably don’t really believe it. And I know this was very true for me. 

And I’m a guy that that has experienced success, different levels, certainly, as I’m sure that you are as well. 

And are there levels higher that you could be achieving, but you don’t really think that you deserve them? That you don’t really believe that you can have more than you currently have. You might want them. But do you really believe that you can have more than you currently have? And it’s that limiting thinking and those limiting beliefs in their core real beliefs. 

I say the limiting beliefs that’s not like a casual thing. This is super powerful. They are keeping you at your ceiling. It is preventing you from moving past it from getting higher.

You all know, we all know, a total jerk, a total narcissist, who is wildly successful. Why is that? 

Because they honestly believe, that person honestly believes to their core, that they deserve what they have. They deserve to get whatever they want. And there’s lessons to be learned there. 

And it really is that level of belief. And the same is true of our floors. 

Downside, opposite of the upside, the floor versus ceiling, it’s much the same. Sometimes we do fall below that level, of where we’re sort of most comfortable. But for the most part, it’s slow and gradual, it’s more of a death by 1000 cuts kind of a thing. 

It’s pretty easy to put on a pound, over the course of a month, all that takes is, you know, takes 3500 calories to put on a pound. So that’s essentially 100 calories a day, right? It’s technically 116 calories a day. But that’s nothing. 

So the reason that we let ourselves go a little bit, the reason that we don’t take good care of ourselves, the reason we don’t go to the doctor enough, the reason we don’t practice self care, is that just like we don’t necessarily think that we deserve all the things that we might want is that we also do not believe that we are worthy of being taken care of, or taking care of ourselves. 

And just like maybe you don’t think that’s true, or maybe you think it’s 100% true for you. These are the reasons, the reasons behind why we are at the level that we are at wherever you are at. 

It’s these imposed floors, it’s these imposed ceilings on ourselves. And why? 

Why are we stuck in these patterns, because patterns are powerful things, they keep safe, our brain is interested in keeping us safe and alive. So it doesn’t want us getting too hot, it doesn’t want us getting too cold. It just wants us comfortable. 

And so for eating an extra 100 calories a day here or there, whatever it might be, body’s like, okay, no big deal. 

It’s the whole boiling the frog thing. Throw a frog in a boiling pot of water, it’s gonna jump the eff out really fast. But if you just slowly heat that water up over time, you’re gonna cook the frog.

But this stuff is so important. 

Because we’re talking about our lives. And we got one crack at this deal.  We’ve got one lap around the track. So we need to maximize and take advantage of that. 

So different different experiences, different thinking, different life, not totally different, but different here or there is available to you. And that means that whatever you want, that’s different than what you have, you can 100% have it. 

You deserve to be healthy. You deserve to feel good. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be a contented person. 

You do. 

So I want you to think about this. How would you like to feel? That’s it.

How would you like to be feeling about things? How would you like to feel when you get up in the morning? How would you like to feel about your work? How would you like to feel about whatever. 

We think about goals the wrong way, a lot of the time, we think about once I achieve this, then I’ll feel this way. 

Once I have this relationship, then I’ll feel this way, once I have this car, then I’ll feel this way once I get the promotion that I’ll feel this way. But that’s totally flawed. We need to figure out how we want to feel and then figure out our goals from there. 

So it’s all available. So do you want to be debt free? Do you want to be able to play pickleball? Do you want to be able to speak Spanish? All of these things. You can do it. 

But it’s a question of do you know how to do it? 

What new learnings are going to be required? 

Where can you get that information? Where can you get that knowledge? Where can you get the wisdom that you needed?

And then it’s a matter of taking those small actions getting started. And then once we’re getting started, the more we can automate things, the better. The more we can schedule things the better develop a checklist, that’s when things start to get easier. And we follow the checklist.

Look at the first item, we do it, we cross it off, and then we go to the next item. It makes it easier, doesn’t make it totally easy, but it makes it a lot easier. 

So you know what’s really, really, really hard, losing 100 pounds is really hard. You know, it’s really hard getting out from underneath 10 grand worth of credit card debt, that’s super hard. 

You know, it’s not checking our cash flow once a month reviewing bank statements once a month, that’s pretty easy. Coming up with 200 extra bucks a month. All right, I can figure that out. Eating a pre prepared meal for lunch. Well, I can do that. 

Checking off the next item on a list. Super easy. In fact, checking off items on lists. Totally awesome. It feels good. 

So changing our habits, changing our modus operandi. It’s hard, super hard, making big changes in life are super hard, recognizing that our brains, and I’m grateful for my brain, I am. You know, it did great. It’s done great stuff for us. 

But it also is keeping us is keeping us in these patterns. It’s keeping us constrained, it’s keeping us down. It is keeping us from really living the life that we really want. And we really deserve. But we need to recognize that and pay attention to when we are experiencing some form of limiting thinking or something like that. And then recognizing that, figuring out how it is that we want to feel about things. And then getting the new learnings that we need to achieve them. And then breaking these things down into absolute eatable pieces, digestible pieces. literally putting together a checklist for this is what I needed to do today. 

This is what I needed to do this morning. So what got me thinking about this, is I made a goal of doing 500 episodes of the podcast in 2021. 

And today, this is the 500th episode that I’ve recorded in 2021. So yay, me. Yay, all the wonderful guests that we’ve had just reflected back and I look back this morning, I saw that in 2019, I did a paltry 227 episodes, those are rookie numbers, for sure.

 And then last year, I did 387 episodes much better. 

And then this year, I will end up doing 515 episodes. So talking about getting outside of a comfort zone or expanding what we think is possible or available to us. And this is not to say that that more is is better not by any stretch of the imagination. 

It’s just, it’s simply to say that when you work and figure out what it is that you want to do. And you make a decision about it, and you put the systems in place for actually executing and doing it, that anything is available to you. literally anybody. 

This is available to everybody. So again, more not better. And in fact, for 2022. It’s my intention to do one show a day. So I think that there’s 365 days in a year. Hopefully I know that after all that science talk about the Earth going around the sun and whatnot. 

So it’s my goal again, to do 365 episodes in 2022. The idea being that discretion is the better part of valor. So that means it’s better to avoid dangerous situations than to confront it sometimes. 

So my challenge to you is to take a hard look over the next couple of weeks at what you can optimize in your life, what you want to improve, get better at. And that doesn’t mean more. It doesn’t mean pushing yourself harder. It could mean the opposite. It could be pushing yourself a lot less could be letting things go a little bit. It could be delegating could be whatever. But recognizing again, that you deserve the life that you want.

And that you’re perfectly capable, and that you are 100% A person who is is is worthy of the things that you want and we’re worthy of the investment of time, and attention and money or whatever other investments are required to help you live the life that you want, because again, you got one crack at this whole deal. 

So I really want you to, to pay attention to that recognize the patterns that you’re operating under. So recognize your patterns, recognize your modus operandi, all that stuff, and then figure out what change you need to make. And then really break them down to small bites, digestible bites. 

So awesome. Well, I very much appreciate as always the support that you’ve given me and all of our wonderful guests, thanks to our guests over the course of this year, 500 episodes 500. For the most part, I think 500 Guests have done very few shows with just me this year. So thank you so much.