Break Your LIMITING Beliefs and Wipe Out YOUR Negative Thinking | Tom Bilyeu

Everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. Today, we're going to be talking about limiting beliefs, how to get out from under them, how to move forward if you've struggled with something in the past. It is critically important to get your belief structure right to make sure that you don't believe things consciously or subconsciously that are going to throttle your actions. The end of the day, the only thing that matters are your behaviors, but your behaviors are driven entirely by your beliefs. Get your beliefs right and everything else will line up. All right. First question. What should I do to identify the self-limiting beliefs that are holding me back? Okay, this is one of those things that instead of trying to get in and identify all the different self-limiting beliefs that you have, what I would start doing is focusing on building a growth mindset. Now, one, read Carol Dweck's book called Mindset. It is absolutely the right place to start. Uh, at the end of that book, you will have learned a very simple truth. It is what I call the only belief that matters, which is that if I put time and energy into getting better at something, I will actually get better. That is a belief that will align your behaviors because at the end of the day, instead of like I said, going through and finding all the self-limiting beliefs, just start layering on these empowering beliefs. So, one, you can get better at anything at any time. So, putting time and energy into getting better at something will reward you with actual skill set and skill set has utility. Now, if you believe that and you think of yourself as the learner, as you encounter a limiting belief, I can never do that, I'm not a good dancer, I can't sing, whatever the thing is that you tell yourself, then it just becomes a question of, well, if I know that I can get better at anything, the question is, do I want to put time into getting better at this thing? And if I don't want to spend time getting better at this thing, then don't BS myself. Don't say I'm not Oh, I'm just not good at that. Just say, I don't care enough about that thing to want to put in the energy to try and get better. Now, another thing that can be very um freeing. So, for instance, I really wish I could sing. I also really wish I could draw. Those are two things that I really want, but the truth is when I say that I really want them, what I mean is that I really wish they came easily to me. And once I finally was honest with myself that I wanted to get what I'll call disproportionate returns. That when Lisa spends time getting better at drawing, she gets like 10x return on her time. It's insane. She is a world-class artist. If I put the same amount of time into getting better at drawing, I might get a .6 return on my time. So, I'm going to get better, but it's like whoo, that same unit of energy could be used on many other things and I would get a much better return than I would focus on drawing. Same with singing. There's no doubt. I could get a hundred times better at either of them. But at what cost? It would take so much time and energy. So, be very thoughtful that you're layering on these empowering beliefs and then being honest about how you want to spend your time. Once you get that balance right and you realize you can do anything you want, but you can't do everything you want and that things have to be put in priority order, then it becomes very clarifying that it's not even necessarily the that you have a limiting belief is that you're being honest with yourself about what you do and don't want to pursue. So, the key is to hold tight to that only belief that matters, that you can get good at anything. Now, once you have it, just ask yourself how badly do I want that thing? Next. Can you explain what initiatives I could take that will help me create the same discipline that you have so that I might have more confidence in what I can accomplish? Okay, so first of all, you've got to instill in your mind that the average human is capable of unbelievable improvement. That's That's the thing that's my superpower. I don't think I'm special. I just realized in looking at the science that humans actually are capable of this incredible amount of change. It is the strategy that our species took to be able to pass knowledge on through culture rather than having to have everything be instincts. And in having that layer where we can drink in the culture and read books and learn from other people. And you know, even now, we're all learning from things that people thought thousands of years ago and wrote down. Like it's insane. It travels through to you and all of that wisdom stored in culture. So, that as your parents are teaching you things, they're actually encapsulating a ton of the wisdom that has endured. Whether it's endured from religion or books or whatever. Like you're bathed in a culture that is giving you all of this incredible information. And so, recognizing how powerful and potent that is is incredibly meaningful. But you have to understand that you have to allow yourself to believe that you can learn from that culture in the same way that everybody else can. And that's what you're designed to do. Now, for me, that completely gave me the confidence. And I put confidence in air quotes because it's not like I believe something specific about myself. I just believed that the human animal is capable of this extraordinary change. And so now, I just needed to point myself in that direction. Now, once This is the key. Once I realized that I could get better at anything, it dawned on me that how I spend my time is a spiritual consideration. And I didn't want to die with potential that I failed to turn into skill set. That to me, that speaks to me. How much of my potential can I actually turn into skill set and get good at this stuff and push and grow and improve? Like that to me is just this incredibly intoxicating loop. So, for me, the discipline, the confidence, all of that comes from recognizing human the human animal. Nothing special about me. The human animal is capable of extraordinary change. I'm going to have to put time and energy into doing it, but I'm capable of getting this change. Therefore, I can do anything I set my mind to. Therefore, it really matters what I choose to spend my time on. Therefore, I want to put structure and discipline in my life so that I can move forward on things that excite me, that matter to me, because I really can have this big crazy dream that I'm thinking of. So, my discipline is really born of my desire to have that thing, coupled with my belief that I can actually get there. Desire and belief. Get those two things right, and the discipline will take care of itself. Right? What steps did you take as you navigated challenging your belief systems daily, especially in the beginning, when you didn't have enough momentum to internalize the new and improved belief? Okay, again, a lot of this goes back to the big breakthrough for me was brain science. And I'm laying on the floor of my unfurnished apartment. I'm in a dark place in my life. I'm not happy. I don't know how to make my dreams come true. I'm very worried that I'm not enough, that I'm not smart enough, I'm not capable enough. This is in my early 20s. And I don't remember, I think it was something that started in college, but I don't remember exactly what made me decide that I was going to read about the brain, but I did. I decided I was going to read about the brain. And in reading about the brain, I started coming across this idea of brain plasticity. And this is in the late '90s, early 2000s. It's being hotly debated amongst the smartest people on the planet as to whether or not it's real. And I decided one day, you know what? Maybe it's not, but I'm going to act as if it's real. And in acting as if it's real, I ended up finding out that it actually is real because I was getting so much better at things. I was like, "Whoa, this is incredible." And so, what I was doing was learning this information on the key insight that I was going to act as if I could get better at something, right? The thing I call the only belief that matters. I was going to act as if that were true. By doing that, I saw that it really was true, and now the belief took care of itself because I saw it empirically in the data. And that is the like the big thing for me that I didn't need to believe I was special. I just saw that this process works, and so now my beliefs began to shift not around like magical thinking, they were shifting around what I was actually seeing and what I was reading about in the literature. And that to me is it, man. I don't know what else to tell people. It's like, we are so capable of improving our skill set. And by improving our skill set, we are we can fundamentally alter our ability to change the world around us. And as you realize, "Whoa, building these skills lets me actually change the world around me." Now, all of a sudden, it's just sort of one belief after another begins to implant itself in your mind based on what you're able to do. And then, as you hit a roadblock and you stumble and you fall, that's sort of that next thing, how do you deal with failure and all of that. But as you work through this stuff, I ended up compiling 25 beliefs, which you can actually download for free. Just type uh Impact Theory Belief System." And you will see the 25 things that I onboarded into my mind in order to have the kind of success that I have now. And what I was trying to onboard is really just the principles of a growth mindset and the things that you need to do and believe in order to constantly be moving towards your goals. It's really rudimentary. It isn't me making things up. It is simply me looking at the nature of the way the human mind works in concert with all these other and the society that we've created for ourselves. And if you act in the following ways, if you believe the following things, if you create the following rules, then you will move forward. It just is the physics of the human experience. So, you can shortcut it by going and reading the 25 beliefs, um, or you can just start with that same core first principle of humans can improve at anything they put the time and energy into improving in. And then then it's just like you see it play out in your life. Also, you could go to the gym. The gym, in fact, this is one of the things that I did. By changing your body, you will realize, "Oh my god, if I'm disciplined, consistent, and I learn about this stuff, I can radically transform my body." Once you see that you can transform your body, you really start to believe that you can transform anything. The body is an extraordinary way to get to the mind. So, I would leverage that as well. Emotions should never stop you from achieving your goals. So, if you feel stuck, overwhelmed, low on confidence, you're beating yourself up, or you feel like you're not deserving of the things you want in life, I have something to tell you. Emotions are not facts, and you should never let them hold you back. And yet, I find that people do this all the time. They mistake that feeling for objective truth, and it sends them in this downward spiral. Reaching greater levels of success in life means knowing how to use your brain. And if you're in a rut right now, or if you've been struggling for a while to achieve your goals, then I've pulled a class from Impact Theory University to help you get back on track. It's called Six Steps to Getting Unstuck, and it's for anyone who wants to know the exact steps to achieving big goals when life puts challenges in your way. If you want to check it out, go to unstuck.impacttheory.com. To get access, it's a free preview. All right, guys. I'll see you on the inside. Now, let's get back to today's episode. My self-limiting beliefs stem from childhood trauma. What suggestions do you have that might help me overcome them? Okay, so this unfortunately is something that comes up a lot, and one, I just want you to know, trust me when I say you are not alone. So many people are struggling with childhood trauma. And one, I want to say that having a professional therapist work with you on this is probably going to be the right answer. Without knowing exactly what it is you're struggling with, becomes very hard to help somebody deal with it. But I can tell you that a lot of times what ends up happening is people end up feeling that their self-worth is diminished, and they don't believe that they're worth um getting rid of the limiting beliefs. And they think that they are damaged or um compromised in some way. And so, one, recognizing that that just is not true, and that you absolutely are worth it. And that the only thing that makes sense is to adopt one of the beliefs that really changed my life, which is that the only thing that makes sense is to only do and believe that which moves you towards your goals. So, even if it were true that you are worthless, it doesn't help you get towards your goal to believe that. And if we're only going to do that which moves us towards our goals, then immediately when we begin thinking that we are worth less, we don't have to convince ourselves that it isn't true, we only need to realize it doesn't move us towards our goals. And since we only do that which moves us towards our goals, we're going to pattern interrupt immediately the second we start playing that loop because we've got to break the habit of thinking that about ourselves. So, we're going to pattern interrupt that. We don't allow ourselves to think that anymore. It's done. It's just not an effective strategy. And that was a big deal for me because the thing that I was struggling with was I'm not smart enough to pull this off. And by believing that, then I didn't try. And as long as I didn't try, I was never going to fail, which of course was the thing I was trying to protect myself from, but I was also never going to succeed. And so, finally what I had to realize was because my behaviors were being dictated by my beliefs, I could not allow myself to believe something even if I was convinced it was true. I couldn't allow myself to believe it because it would stop me from taking the behaviors that would lead me to learning, growing, getting better, and moving forward. And so, you it's not that easy. Childhood trauma is wicked. It is so pernicious. It gets inside your mind and it won't let go. And depending on how early in childhood, there is a lot of brain development around that trauma. But I'm just saying, one of the things that we're going to have to do outside of therapy is begin to pattern interrupt that. To not allow yourself to repeat those negative stories about yourself. And to only do and believe that which moves you towards your goals. So, if loving yourself is going to move you towards your goals, then we're going to do it even if you don't think that you're worth it. If pushing to grow and get better is going to move you towards your goals, then we're going to do it even if it doesn't feel like you deserve it. You have to let go of that in order to get to your goals. And now, as long as your goal is exciting and honorable, why would you ever want to do something that holds you back? If you're doing something that elevates yourself and other people, why would you want to stop yourself from doing that even if you deserve to be punished or whatever it is that you think about yourself because of what happened in the past? It doesn't make sense. Free yourself from that. Allow yourself to contribute to yourself and others. Contribute as big and aggressively as you want, as you possibly can. And by continuing to believe that you're not worth it, you won't be able to do that. You won't be able to turn your potential into skill set. You won't be able to get into that passion loop where you're able to learn something and gain mastery and add value to other people's lives and get that positive feedback from them. You're so busy living in the past that you forget that there's an entire future waiting for you. But you have to let go of the past before you can move forward. Now, I don't want any of that to sound right. Again, I understand how difficult this is and I highly encourage you to get professional help. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's amazing. It's beautiful that you would think enough of yourself to go and put the time in the energy into getting better and you can get better. But you're going to have to put in the work. All right. When you were making your transition into being successful, how did you combat the frustration of not being where you wanted to be? I'm never where I want to be. So, I'm not where I want to be now. I'm not where I wanted to be when um you know, people would have looked at it and said, "Oh my god, this is like the height of success." It was one, I'm very careful to make sure that I'm only invested in the process. But because I'm trying to get somewhere that intentionally I'm throwing way beyond where I'm at, I'm always thinking about what it's going to take to get to that next level. I'm never where I quote unquote want to be, but I don't trick myself into tying my value to achieving it. So, I'm having fun. I'm enjoying the ride. I'm in it for the process. I'm in it for the learning. And I make sure that I'm handcrafting my life to optimize for joy and fulfillment. And so, knowing that, I cannot guarantee the success. I cannot guarantee ever that anyone is ever going to be successful. But, I can guarantee that you're going to struggle. Guarantee. 100% Nobody avoids it. That's it. Everybody that ever tries to do anything, and even most of the people that don't try to do anything, are going to struggle profoundly with moving forward. It's just hard like that. And so, if you know that the struggle is guaranteed, then you can't allow yourself to waste time to be tormented by the fact that you're not where you want to be. Make sure you're having fun in the struggle. Figuring out how to struggle well, that's the answer. When I was coming up, the question I was told to ask myself was, "If you knew you couldn't fail, what would you do?" And what I realized is since failure is the most obvious answer, that's probably not the right question to ask. The right question to ask is, "What would I do and love every day, even if I were failing?" Now, failure is never going to be as fun as winning. I know that. But, if you can do something that you believe in enough, and that the act of trying to get good at it is fun in and of itself, now you're on the right path. That's where you want to focus. Put your time and energy into making sure that you love the process. Don't worry about the outcome. Worry about the process, getting better, and loving that. Everything else will take care of itself. All right, everybody. That's it. Limiting beliefs, don't let them inside your life. Do not them Do not let them take over your mind. You really can overcome it, but you're going to be very thoughtful about how you build that growth mindset, pattern interrupt the negativity, and only do the things that are moving you towards your goals. Speaking of things that will move you towards your goals, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Peace.