You receive a lot of miscommunication about belief systems, what and where they are, and how to change them (especially how hard this is).
Research shows us that the subconscious mind is 95% responsible for how we think, what we believe, and how we feel, while our conscious mind (what we are aware of and have conscious access to) is only 5%.
Belief systems, and I’m talking about the ones that limit us, keep us in a space of scarcity and keep us feeling and acting small, live in the subconscious mind. So 95% of what limits us we have no conscious connection to and overrides our conscious mind when it comes to changing our behavior.
These subconscious beliefs are directly tied to certain behaviors, attitudes, and ways of relating to yourself and others and become triggered over time, and these behaviors have been habitually repeating in you for decades. They are old, hardwired, and completely governed outside of your mind. We now know that at least 70% of these learned behaviors are dis-empowering, self-sabotaging, and limiting.
Enough of mainstream information. How do you feel when you read that? I know I used to feel frightened and defeated; how could I possibly work on something I wasn’t aware of AND that basically controlled my thinking, actions, and choices? I felt like a robot, devoid of having true choices about the person I was and unable to reach the goals I had if this biological hierarchy was running the show
Read on please. Let me tell you what you may not know. This is a game-changer.
The information above means two things:
1.If you want to make changes in your life, it is absolutely critical to get your subconscious mind on board.
2. Your problems will never go away just because you are aware of them.
Your subconscious mind does not think or reason independently. It obeys the commands it receives from your conscious mind. ALWAYS. BUT…..the conscious mind HAS to believe thoughts and beliefs as facts in order for this to be effective. So basically what I’m saying is that the subconscious runs our behavior and is built upon (since we were infants) the information fed to it by the conscious mind. So, now you may be asking yourself what does this all mean and how do I work with it?
It means that what you have active awareness and connection to-your conscious mind-feeds your truths to the subconscious, which then applies these to your life. So where is the disconnect? Why can’t you just “believe something”-have it encoded in the subconscious mind-easily move past your limited beliefs and fluidly achieve your goals, be the person you want to be, and move on? It sounds so simple, right?
Nope.
The critical piece here is belief. In order for a limiting belief to be replaced by an empowered, expansive and abundant one, you have to BELIEVE it. And I mean fully, 100%, no-doubt-about-it believe it. And that’s where the trouble comes in. Because you can’t intellectually change what you believe. The brain doesn’t fall for that. It has to be far greater than an intellectual or rational believing. It has to be your reality, your TRUTH. Therefore, the ideal and only way to alter someone’s belief is to convince the CONSCIOUS MIND through what I will describe below, so that it can be stored in the subconscious mind as a logical FACT. To get the subconscious mind on board, all we need to do is have the conscious mind have a different Truth.
What can do that for the conscious mind? How do the neural pathways change over time with changing our beliefs? What is stronger than our intellect and has the power to do this?
An experience.
Just one thing that makes part of your reality different than it was before.
What do you need for an experience?
You need an action.
And most importantly, the action or actions you take to do this have nothing to do with what you believe. You’re probably saying now, “But, Carrie, you just told me that these beliefs are in charge?!”
Yes, your beliefs run the show BUT the thing that changes them (experience sparked by action) is independent from this. You actually can take actions that are contrary to what you believe (and what I mean here is you can take actions that you DO NOT EVEN BELIEVE WILL WORK) and if you have an experience which leads to different outcomes (and they usually do) that’s all that matters. The belief tied to the action is irrelevant (100%).
Here is the loophole. Here is the magic. And this is exactly what I do when in a space of life coaching with my clients. It’s breathtakingly simple. This can happen (and I’ve even seen it a few times in my career) in under 24 hours. Seriously.
When a person begins to take action steps that are contrary (usually opposite) to the belief systems they have (and most people believe it or not don’t take action that is contrary or goes against what they believe about themselves and the world) we most often have different outcomes than we would have expected or anticipated. We don’t know this beforehand because most of us don’t take contrary or opposing action than what our beliefs tell us, because, why would we?
So when we finally do take this new type of action, we have different outcomes (usually WAY MORE successful than we ever would have anticipated)-which is why we never tried because we didn’t believe these outcomes were possible, and outcomes are what supports, shapes, and directly changes our reality. Outcomes are the foundations of your Truths. Outcomes tell you what is possible. Outcomes define and shape your reality. So different outcomes are some of the most powerful experiences you can have. You desperately need different outcomes.
If you don’t believe something will happen (or you are convinced on the other hand that something will always happen by something that you do or do not do), you have a reality or a truth about that anticipated experience. This is why we stay stuck. This is why we stay limited. Our minds confirm our beliefs by restricting different types of experiences that are outside of what we believe to be true, and therefore, when we behave in accordance with what we believe, we confirm the reality we have.
And we do this every day. We confirm our limitations. We confirm daily every belief we have that keeps us stuck. Not because of course we want to! But because we don’t know how to do anything else.
So what is one to do? How do we begin to implement this?
Step 1. We begin to identify the beliefs that we have.
Step 2. We identify the behaviors that we engage in that confirm and keep us in those beliefs.
Step 3. We identify beliefs that are alternative, opposing, or different than the beliefs in Step 1.
Step 4. We identify actions that are in alignment with the beliefs in Step 3 (contrary actions you would take if you DID believe these things (contrary/opposing/different actions). Now remember, you do not have to BELIEVE these are true. This is a critical piece!
Step 5. We engage in these contrary actions.
The result? We have different outcomes because
a) we’ve hardly ever or never done this before and again, why would we? It’s behaving in a way that is not supported by our limited beliefs and because,
b) the original belief was limited in the first place and so of course we never believed successful outcomes were possible.
The above looks so easy, so matter of fact, and in many ways it actually is. But it is more challenging than you expect. This is the most important (and dangerous step in the process and I want to stress this point and beef this last section up. Hopefully this is enough content/ideas for you and can be quick.
They have a choice in Step 5, and the majority (and they need to know this) of people do not go past step 5. PERIOD.
If they make it past step 5 and then consistently practice staying in step 5 for 90 days, they are far along their way to new careers, beliefs systems, rewiring of the brain and lots more joy. If they choose to not move forward, they have actually caused a bit more harm and backtracked more than if they had not even tried. Essentially they have gone and then stopped exactly in the place that will CONFIRM THE LIMITING, ORIGINAL BELIEF THEY BEGAN WITH. By stopping, the confirm it’s validity, it’s power, and strength.
If, on the other hand, they take three action steps every 3-5 days over the next 90 days (if you do the math that’s actually a TON of action steps so its actually not that surprising that a ton can happen in only 90 day) there is a VERY high probability something massive will have shifted inside them but also around their careers, goals, and life vision.
Most people get stuck in Step 3 and most rarely get past to implementing Step 5. But for the ones that do, and this is what my coaching is all about-new actions, new experiences, new beliefs, new outcomes, changes, joy, abundance can and will begin to happen for you.
Do you see what I’m getting at? With the support and guidance to get through these steps (especially to engage and remain accountable to Step 5), profound changes can and will occur.
The Steps change your reality. They change your truth. And then it finally (and often very quickly) happens.
Your conscious mind NOW believes it. And guess what? This translates to your subconscious mind believing it too.
The subconscious mind works and lives in our “Truth.” Change the outcomes, change the Truth, change the beliefs, change the subconscious, change your life.
And this is a HUGE part of masterful life coaching. A large part of what we do together. Through coaching, we begin to change your Truth so we can change your life.
Do you want to love your work? Do you want to feel passionate about your life? Do you want to connect with your spouse or friends in meaningful ways? Do you want to earn more money than you believe you can? Do you want to be healthier and take better care of your body? Do you want more confidence and to stop caring what others think? If so, then changing your Truth is the only way to achieve these things.It’s time to start living in step 5 and begin seeing some radical changes in your world.
