Episode #96 Working Harder Isn’t Always the Answer
Do you still struggle with trying to get where you know you’re supposed to be, but just not making it there? Many of us do and Sharri Harmel explains how a struggle with limiting beliefs (often rooted in our childhood experiences) can impact our success today.
No amount of hard work will allow us to move forward unless we uncover those pesky unconscious beliefs and deal with them in the here and now, re-building ourselves, and our worthiness to have a happy life. Listen as Sharri offers up a recent example of her own unconscious beliefs and shares her roadmap to a better way past them.
Resources and links in this episode:
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Episode #96 Working Harder Isn’t Always the Answer
So many women I talk with struggle to understand what is going on when they try over and over to make something happen in their lives and never get there. I think it’s time we took a deep dive into the topic, so we can all check in with ourselves, if we notice it happening, and find a way to work through it.
This is the situation. You have exquisite plans in place, you’ve done the affirmations, created vision boards, read the self-help books, and yet, something always gets in the way of your success. Instead of feeling like a victim, many women go into self-blame. And uncovering that blame game is what we are going to talk about today.
We all know, blaming yourself, isn’t productive. Yet, when something doesn’t go right, how many of you will freely tell yourself with judgement, exactly what you did wrong. You’ll say things to yourself like…
“OMG, why didn’t I anticipate X or Y? Why didn’t I see those big red flags people presented or why did I drive over those red flags? Why do I keep failing?”
This self-blame game goes on and on. With every miss or failure, thoughts always seem to circle back to analyzing every step of why something didn’t work out. Many of us fixate on our own lack, which I think it’s actually a form of self-bullying. But I’m here today to push back against any thoughts that your own failings are why you seem to have a constant date with failure.
And this applies to any context, whether you trying to create or grow a business, seem unable to pick healthy friends or partners, or even loss those extra pounds that you know are not good for your health. Most of the time it isn’t about better planning, working harder, or that you’re just lacking in self-discipline. What’s really going on is usually something much deeper and more hidden.
Do you have limiting, untrue beliefs about yourself and how your life is going to turn out?
So, what is it that creates the struggles? I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that many of you struggle because of some limiting, untrue beliefs you created about yourself and how your life is going to turn out… that goes way back to your earliest years when you were a child.
The idea for this podcast came from my own experiences and observations. I have a friend who has been loved her entire life. Loving parents, wonderful family relationships, worked with her father, who lovingly taught her the business, and even had a dream marriage. Feeling loved and therefore worthy of goodness in all forms is woven into her character, her personality and I believe it’s actually melded into her DNA. My friend has a deep belief in her incredible professional skills, ability to continue to attract only loving people in her personal life and make positive choices… and I believe this strong, positive, loving self-concept was built and developed in her early years. She doesn’t have much self-doubt in how she lives. She just knows. It’s quite fabulous for me to hear all her family stories. It is how every child should grow up right, but it rarely happens.
As many of you know, I didn’t grow up with that gift of love and many of you didn’t either. I had no confidence that my crazy, dysfunctional parents would ever take care of me. At a young age, I intuitively knew I was on my own. Now I had great teachers and coaches who nurtured my fragile self-confidence, but my parents never celebrated any of my successes. There were no loving compliments, guidance, or insights. They didn’t believe any child was all that special.
A foundation of doubt versus a foundation of self-confidence
I think many of you can more closely relate to my story rather than the story of my good friend, but what I wanted to explore is the consequences of the messages we received as children. Why? Because the messages you received from your parents when you were little, laid the foundation of your self-concept, your self-beliefs and probably hang around in your thoughts about yourself even today.
When I stepped back and compared my friend’s self-concept and strong belief in herself to how I deal with setbacks or decisions that don’t work out, the difference was glaringly obvious. My friend’s confidence comes from a deep inner core of being loved, valued and worthy and that was given to her when she was a child.
For those of you who did not receive that foundation as children: throughout your life, you will often struggle and try every way possible to get the feelings of being loved, valued and worthy of goodness. You build incredible resilience, but not necessarily a belief in your worthiness. Resilience and worthiness are very different states of being. This lack of worthiness, which affects everything you attempt to create, will continue UNTIL – you can re-parent yourself to re-build your self-concept.
This is huge my friends.
You’re probably now wondering; how do you re-build your self-concept?
First, you have to uncover those false and incredibly limiting beliefs that you hold deep down inside of yourself. To do that, you have to get quiet and super honest with yourself. These beliefs, like so many, are usually unconscious. So, to uncover them, you have to rip off all the masks you wear or the positive ways you present yourself to others. You have to be alone to do that because so many of us are disconnected from the negative beliefs we hold about ourselves. That’s what keeps them unconscious.
You have to get right down to your essence, who you really are and what thoughts you have about yourself that quietly but powerfully run the operating system of you
Once you can identify those unconscious or rarely acknowledged beliefs, your next step is to understand why you took them on. What did you hear as a child? This isn’t meant to be a parental blame exercise, because sometimes little children take on family roles or casual comments made by their parents, which were never truly meant to be absorbed as THE truth.
Sarcasm, negative nicknames, or roles in families have effects far beyond the fun and laughter in the moment. The messages children absorb can become facts even if they weren’t meant to be negative. That’s why parents are so powerful in molding the self-concepts of their children.
Negative beliefs are often rooted in our childhood
So, most negative beliefs we hold about ourselves and even how life is supposed to be, took root when we were children. Sometimes it can even be a belief as simple as life is always hard… nothing good will ever be easy.
It might be a belief around money… that money is easy to make but easier to lose, or that making money or understanding money will always be hard. Not talking about something also has a consequence.
Another family belief might be that good partners are impossible to find so accept that you are probably destined to be alone. Any negative belief you have about life and yourself, is most likely what is getting in the way of you creating exactly what you want in your life.
The only way out of this is to let yourself be a little kid again and listen to the communication you received. Take a deep dive deep into what created the beliefs you hold about yourself or when you first started to question your specialness, your ability to have a happy, wonderful life.
Reexamining unconscious negative beliefs are the way to move past them
Any unconscious negative beliefs you have are incredibly powerful and will actually run your life unless you address them. Take them from the unconscious to the conscious. Just like a computer, you rarely think about the operating system that powers everything. It’s just there, quietly dictating what you can and cannot do on your computer. So too are the unconscious beliefs that are running your life.
Now if we were sitting together over coffee or a glass of wine, you’d probably say, but Sharri, I did all the work… I made the vision boards, I tried daily affirmations, I joined programs, I just keep trying over and over and yet, I seem to get stuck, so it must be me!
No. Those affirmations, vision boards and program will sort of work for a while, but they won’t stick. Why? You need an updated operating system… .and to do that, you have to get honest with yourself- and expose any and all deep-seated beliefs you hold about yourself and the world around you.
Remember, you can’t change what you are unaware of!
It’s why food logs are always incorporated into weight loss program. Increased self-awareness supports changed behaviors. Working harder, saying affirmations, signing up for program after program… none of it will work unless you uncover any and all the negative beliefs you hold about yourself and the world around you.
How do I know? Well, I could be the poster child for unconscious negative beliefs about myself. I’ve tried the affirmations, I’ve made the vision boards, read the books, signed up for skill expanding classes, and over and over, convinced myself that if I just worked harder, things would change. And my friends, it didn’t matter what it was that I was failing at…. my marriage, a friendship, a weakness that I thought I could turn into a strength, a business idea, a new house, a new city… I’d always think if I just worked harder and smarter, it would all fall into place. But nothing changed, nothing stuck, UNTIL I uncovered my own unconscious, negative self-beliefs. Phew… let’s all take a deep breath.
The answer is to step back and observe yourself
What is so amazing, that once those unconscious, limiting beliefs are out into the open, you will reap incredible benefits. Being able to step back and observe whenever your limiting beliefs show up is how you work to change them… I call that stepping back time as self-reflection time.
This period of self-reflection is when you pull yourself out of the situation, and watch what is going on as though it is a movie. Just like it’s always easier to see what others need to do or change than it is to see ourselves, you’ll get the same benefit if you look at what’s going on in your own life through a movie lens rather than being in the middle of it. Try it. I do this whenever something isn’t going well, and I’m absolutely convinced something negative is happening about to happen.
Taking the time to pull back and observe the situation will give you the opportunity to question whether a limiting belief is what’s driving your negative thoughts. Sometimes it means I have to go for a walk-in nature, sometimes I must journal, sometimes it’s a combination of both. Ask yourself good questions… the hard questions.
How are you feeling? What are you afraid of? Is what you think is true, like true? How do you know it’s true?
Why do you want something? How will you feel when you get it?
Why are you staying quiet? What is scaring you?
You might find talking out loud to yourself facilitates self-awareness. Some of the thoughts we have in our heads sound ridiculous when we say them out loud. Self-reflection is powerful. Self-reflection allows you to make good choices, good decisions and be happy. It’s like being your own mentor and we all need mentors. But we must do this all the time. Self-reflection needs to be a habit that we embrace all the time in our lives.
A personal example, even today
I’ve done a lot of work on myself…and I regularly set aside time for self-reflection but here is an example of how easy it is to fall back into limiting beliefs. My current podcast manager is moving on. She has taken another role and will not be able to continue working for me. I’m happy for Cristy but sad for me. At first, I thought, well I’ll just get another podcast manager. Easy peasy.
Well, I did a few interviews and was shocked by their prices, every one of them were beyond my budget. That’s when my own limiting beliefs started to run the show. I spent two days with these thoughts in my head:
- I should give up the podcast. It takes a lot of time and doesn’t make one dime so I’m just being stupid to spend money and make nothing.
- I must gut this out and find the money somewhere.
- Nothing is going to work out, this is the beginning of the end.
- I’m a tech idiot, but if I’d just get serious and learn how to edit, I wouldn’t need a podcast manager.
- I have to squeeze guest management into my already packed schedule… isn’t this more important than sleep?
- Why am I doing this? Go back to one-to-one coaching and forget this dream of a magazine, podcast, and blog!!
See how easy it was to revert to standard thinking I’ve had all my life? I was a mess until I got a handle on myself and stepped into self-reflection. That was when I saw that I love doing this podcast. I get to write and talk and interview amazing, truly extraordinary women. All of you and the women I interview enhance my life in a way that is invaluable. I can’t put a price on it.
So, this podcast does have value! Once I took my own limiting beliefs from the unconscious to the conscious through self-reflection, I could see that there might be more options. Self-reflection took the judgement away, so I could gracefully and gently, begin to problem-solve possibilities so that the podcast can continue.
I shared this with you because I wanted you to see how even after all this time, my go to response to a problem was based on my own core limiting belief that everything I try to create in my life has to be difficult. Nothing good can be easy. Hopefully, you can now see that you must continually give yourself the space to self-reflect on your decisions, your choices, and most important, your thoughts to make sure that there are not any unconscious limiting beliefs running the show.
Create your own self-reflection ritual or routine. Use it whether there is an issue you want to explore in your career or your life. I block out time in my calendar to consciously focus on self-reflection. You might want to do the same. Ask yourself,
How are things going?
Is there anything that isn’t working? If yes, explore a little deeper to see if there are there any unconscious beliefs running your life?
Then with kindness and gentleness but also a conscious awareness of those powerful limiting beliefs you carry, you’ll begin to shift how you view yourself, the thoughts you have about yourself, the thoughts you have about your life. It is then, that those roadblocks that have previously stopped you from having the life you want, begin to disappear.
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