Overcoming self limiting beliefs is an essential part of my progress in learning to be happy.
In the book, How to Be Rich and Happy, beliefs and related topics are very well covered and it follows on nicely from the personal values work covered immediately prior. I liked the way I was able to tie in the two areas of values and beliefs to get a better understanding of myself.
I’m really beginning to see how I got into difficulties in my life in the first place and even better I can see how I get out of them as well.
The examples given in the book were easy to relate to and immediately triggered a list of limiting self-beliefs that I hold.
It was great to be able to examine some of my beliefs because I was able to see how far from the mark I have been with my beliefs and how many of them really are self limiting.
Clearly I can’t cover all my beliefs here, there are far too many and I haven’t even begun to think past the ones foremost in my mind at the moment.
I’ll share one of my self limiting beliefs with you now and I’ll examine more later in the process.
This particular belief may seem fairly innocuous and pretty tame really, but now I see how debilitating it has been. The fact that it is innocuous meant that it didn’t set off any alarm bells for me before I got into the book and was prompted to examine my beliefs.
For nearly 2 years now, I been trying to build an online business – something to supplement the household income and something that can be built upon later to replace the salary I lost when I left work to become a stay at home dad.
Working from home is a challenge at the best of times, but it appears I may have been making life more difficult for myself than I needed to.
For the entirety of my working life I’ve held the belief that I can’t get any work done in a noisy or busy environment and I think that has had a profoundly negative effect, initially on my success at work and latterly since I’ve been at home.
Interruptions at home are constant. With four young children, a wife, a mother-in-law and two dogs, daily life can be busy and noisy.
I try to work from the kitchen table because I need to be present with the children to supervise them. It’s not like I can just work upstairs and leave them to their own devices downstairs.
As you might imagine the children want or need my attention frequently, which is totally understandable if somewhat draining (even if I had nothing else to do besides care for them and the home). In addition, my mother-in-law who lives in an adjoining annex to the house, comes and goes frequently. Unfortunately, she doesn’t really have any concept that I’m trying to get some work done, she just sees me sitting at the computer as a way to pass the time and feels it’s okay to interrupt.
The phone goes, the doorbell goes, the dogs bark, the children shout, the mother-in-law wants to chat – and I just can’t concentrate.
As soon as these things start to happen it seems like a reaction is triggered and I start to get annoyed, upset and frustrated. Over time this kind of behavior has a cumulative effect and so every time it happens it triggers a deeper emotional response which compounds the problem.
When this sequence starts to unfold I immediately jump to my belief that I can’t work in a chaotic environment and I start close down as I focus on the noise and the drama rather than the work.
It’s fair to say that my working environment is not especially conducive to getting work done, but I feel sure that through my erroneous belief I’ve talked myself into a sort of paralysis.
If I’m forever seeking perfect conditions before I feel that I can do any meaningful work, it’s pretty unlikely I’m going to find it at home, and if I continue to hold onto my very negative belief my online business may never see success.
Somewhere along the line I’ve obviously determined in my own mind what makes for a perfect working environment and what doesn’t. Unfortunately it looks like it only takes a couple of factors to fall outside my idea of perfect, for me to down tools and jump to my usual emotional response of frustration and sometimes temper.
So now that I have a better understanding of self-limiting beliefs through reading How To Be Rich And Happy I wonder if I can turn this particular self-limiting belief around?
What if I decide to believe that I can do meaningful work while chaos and mayhem is all around me? What if I decide to believe that conditions don’t need to be perfect?
Would this increase my happiness?
Absolutely it would!
Would I have a better chance of being successful with my online business?
Definitely!
Why? Because I wouldn’t be spending valuable time feeling annoyed or angry. My brain wouldn’t shut down and my creativity wouldn’t be stifled. I’d even have a chance to learn how to improve the quality of work I’m able to do in these situations.
I’d be free from the bad moods that have plagued me, sometimes wrecking my whole day and occasionally my whole week, and that’s not an overstatement.
So to test the idea of leaving my old limiting beliefs behind and adopting new empowering beliefs I decided to write this post at one of the busiest times of the day with all the children home and my mother-in-law in full interrupting mode.
It has actually worked much better than I expected. I found that the absence of the negative emotions has allowed me to retain clarity of thought. So in short bursts between interruptions I’ve been able to really focus on what I’m doing.
When interruptions do come, I’m taking them in my stride and it’s not like I’m even having to smile through the pain.
I been able to attend to all of the children’s needs, including preparing lunch and cleaning up after. I’ve played games with the kids and danced around the kitchen with the girls and I’ve even engaged my mother-in-law in a light-hearted exchange.
It’s important to acknowledge that it wasn’t a perfect experiment. There were times when I was a little rattled but I was able to shake it off quite quickly – which is also an impressive improvement on past performance.
There were also a couple of occasions when I abandoned writing to deal with the more immediate needs of family life. I was okay about doing that but I was aware that I was harboring an anxious feeling to complete the work.
I can’t vouch for the quality of the work just yet because it’s still in draft, and I’m yet to read it through but baring the correction of the odd spelling mistake, I don’t really intend to change it. I want to let it stand as an example of what I can achieve when I change my beliefs.
There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s easier to work in peace and quiet without interruption but now I’m starting to believe that I can still do some good work even in challenging conditions.
I suppose when I set out to prove that it’s possible to change my beliefs I could have picked an easier one, but this area of my life is important to me and I wanted to tackle it early.
What’s the worst that could have happened? Well, I guess I could have produced a post full of unintelligible garbage, got frustrated and angry, and spend the rest of the day the bad mood.
Well, that’s how it is most days so I figured I had nothing to lose by trying.
I still haven’t checked the quality yet, it may well be garbage, but what I can say is I haven’t got angry and I’ve remained in a good mood. I’ve produced a substantial piece of work and my happiness is intact – so I’m claiming this as a success.
I may even be able to take this one stage further and start telling myself that I can do great work at the kitchen table.
And this doesn’t just apply to my online business, this also applies to other important aspects of my life they get put off or are abandoned if conditions are not absolutely perfect e.g. the management of my finances, health and fitness and personal relationships.
It may take me a while to get proficient at working this way and I would never actively seek to work like this, but knowing that changing limiting beliefs is possible and that I can do it without negative consequences leaves me feeling excited about my future happiness.
On a final note: I’ve checked my work and it falls in the bracket of “more than good enough”, not perfect but good enough and much better than expected.
For anyone who is more than casually interested in personal development I would encourage you to look at changing your self limiting beliefs because they’re probably holding you back
Thanks for reading,
Andy.
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Thank you, Andy
