1. Your beliefs and thoughts are either helpful or unhelpful and for the next week:
a) Note down in your phone or in a small note pad, every unhelpful thought that goes through your mind.
b) Every two hours note down your emotional state – happy, sad, excited, anxious etc.
c) Assess your thoughts at the end of each day and note are your emotions steady or a roller coaster?
Your thoughts and emotions are connected, and the purpose of this work is to make you more aware of your inner mental and emotional commentary so that you may take action to nudge and challenge your thoughts.
2. Next step is to identify your core beliefs.
a) Ask yourself the following questions.
What areas of my business and life are not as I want them to be?
What is standing in my way?
What am I doing that could be contributing to this?
b) Write down what your beliefs about yourself are, for example:
I’m not good enough.
I can’t hit $250,000 (or whatever your figure) monthly reoccurring revenue.
People don’t respect me.
My staff need to be spoon fed everything.
My customers will leave anyway, it’s cutthroat out there.
The issue with beliefs is that we tend to believe them to be real even if many of the unhelpful ones undermine our efforts and relationships. If you are experiencing events in your business and personal life that are not what you desire, start by recognising your beliefs, challenge them, and then replace each one with a constructive thought and action.
3. What Rules do you have in place that maintain your unhelpful beliefs?
Rules ensure that your beliefs stand true and drive your behaviours. they govern, what you do or don't do to protect or sustain your beliefs. For example:
Belief: I’m not good enough
Rules: I will work myself even harder and prove myself through study and achievements, I need to be tough and not let anyone be better than me or walk all over me. Other examples include, avoid having difficult conversations.
Write down the rules that sustain each of your unhelpful beliefs.
4. Identify what sets you off
We are constantly reacting to people, situations and events. Think for example if someone disrespects you or judges you, how do you react? Use the following formula to breakdown how sensitive you are to external situations and people
Stimuli – Someone is rude to you
Thought – What do you tell yourself about the stimuli? This is very important because it reveals how you will react, do you defend or blame?
Reaction – How you react is important because it reveals your level of emotional intelligence and self control.
Outcome (what does reality look like) – Regardless of who is being impolite, responding in kind or taking revenge depletes your authority rather than raising the situation.
Until next week's challenge, choose the iconic path!
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