Season 1 Chapter 8 -Power, Beliefs, and Limiting Beliefs

Welcome to the Synergy Life Podcast. Our purpose is to help multiply the positive experiences of your life in all areas. Dr. Janowitz, best selling author of the Synergy Health Solution, is the creator of the Synergy Success Cycle, a framework that helps uncover what makes top achievers successful in areas of their life. We interview amazing people who are excelling in life and help our listeners gain valuable insights so they can apply them to achieve their best life possible.

Chapter 8 Power Beliefs and Limiting Beliefs We've discussed in earlier episodes the importance of the mindset. In this chapter, you really get into how important beliefs, limiting beliefs and changing the mindset or paradigm shift plays a role in our healthcare. Tell us exactly what a belief is.

Sure. Beliefs, big thing. You know, in the coaching world, when you're coaching people, this is really where you can make big, big changes in people's life. And that's either health coaching them as a physician, or life coaching them as well. A belief is a feeling of certainty of what things are or how things should be. Right? And so beliefs become kind of the ground in which we walk on and the lens to which we see life and how we hear things as well, right? The eyes see what the brain is looking for. The eyes hear what the mind is looking for, right? And so a belief becomes a sense of certainty. Now, beliefs also come with limiting beliefs. And you can have empowering beliefs and you can have limiting beliefs. And obviously how we progress in life, if we're evolving and we're growing and we're maximizing the expression of who we are, it's really learning how to replace those disempowering, limiting beliefs with new belief systems. But the first step in it is to become aware of what they are. And just like strengths are hard to recognize, Jenny, because you are so good at them that you don't see them. Beliefs are the same way when you have limiting beliefs because you don't even see them because they. They are part of your operating system. It's like what's running your computer, right? Are your beliefs. So you have like four major beliefs. You have beliefs that are generalizations, right? Like, it could be that exercise is blank. Like exercise for someone. Could be exercise is hard, right? Exercise is work. Or someone else can say exercise is energy, right?

They're all true.

They're all true. They are all true. But whichever is your predominant belief is what you're going to do. So how you approach exercise, then if you have a belief about exercise or belief of marriage. I talk to young people and I say, are you planning on getting married or having children? And some people just look and go, no, I don't know. No children. I don't want to get married. And this is a trend that we're seeing greater now. But there's a belief behind that. There's some sort of belief that somebody has. So there could be a generalization. Marriage is what, you know, maybe they saw their parents go through a tough divorce, right. Exercise, Maybe they got hurt before, right? Or failed at this aspect. So you have these generalizations, and then you also have assumptions. Assumptions are because something happened in the past that means it's going to happen in the future. And it's really unfortunate. I've had patients come into practice where they've had pain for 10 years with their back. And I say, well, you know, what have you done? And, well, maybe they've even tried things like chiropractic. And that chiropractor didn't explain the things or didn't assess in an assessment process that maybe we employ in our practice. And they had some potentially negative experience. Maybe they had soreness. And that doctor didn't explain, said, maybe for a small percentage of people, you might be more sore after the first treatment because you're changing the body like a workout sore. Or if you're a trainer or you hired a trainer and then you were sore the next day, you can go, wow, I didn't know that I was going to be sore. And then you don't work out anymore and you lose all the benefit of exercise or all the benefit of eating right or all the benefit of chiropractic care, whatever it is, fill in the blank. But. But because of things that happened in the past, we use those as filters of what they can do in the future. But those assumptions can limit us in a lot of ways. Then we also have interpretations. Means that you could be interviewing me and we could be talking and maybe you messed up on an interview and you were wearing a colored outfit and you're like, well, never again am I gonna wear that color outfit. Because when I wore that, it was this or I went for a job interview and I wore thing or did this thing, you create an association which could be the wrong association. You know, like, you know, I created limiting beliefs in my own mind. When I had my lazy eye, I had an interpretation. When people. When people look the other way, I looked at it as that I. That I was not worth looking at. Right. Versus they were looking the other way because that's where my eye was. It was an interpretation. So. So Many times we can experience something in life, create a meaning to that, and that meaning can limit us. It can limit you. And if you don't think it's happening into your life, that is also a limiting belief. Right? Because we do that. Because the brain likes shortcuts. There's so much coming at us that our brain has to focus on only so many different things that these shortcuts allow us to function. But they also create a box in our life, right? You can have like a tiger in a cage and keep them in a cage, this amazing species, right? And this amazing animal and creature. And the tiger could be pacing around in that cage, Pacing around. And then you have that tiger in there, which should be in the wild and expressing their capacity. And now you remove the cage and that tiger still paces that same spot. Well, that's what beliefs do is they cage us into that area. And then you also have beliefs that are much more deep seated that go from. You mentioned it earlier before when you talked about growing up with a more limiting inner city and different things where you have this who am I to be great or who am I to be deserving? So at some level we deal with the belief that we're not good enough or we're not good enough to be loved and are good enough to receive things. And then we start to act in ways that are consistent to that and it literally becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because we've created those beliefs. So it's such a tricky thing because we don't see them forming and then we start acting in a way and then our actions produce results that validate those beliefs. It just becomes.

This is a heavy topic.

It really does and it really comes. But it really happens in your health too, because so many people are stuck in a health cycle and they can't get out of it because they don't see all those limiting beliefs that are going on. So the book hopefully introduces the concept, but this is the tough work. This is where you got to get deep and dirty a little bit to understand what's operating. Because the way to solve a belief is to recognize it, bring it to the surface and then see how it's really impacting you and then find a way to find what's a new empowering belief and creating like a declaration of what things are in terms of possibilities in your life.

Right?

Yeah.

This is a very emotional thing for most people. As you mentioned. These are very deeply rooted beliefs that we've developed over time or we just inherited from our environment or upbringing.

Yes.

And so you did talk about declaring new possibilities.

Yes.

So when I read this chapter, I thought from my perspective, but also from the reader's perspective. The big question that came to me during this chapter is like, okay, how.

How do you do it? Right?

How do you dig these roots out and create these new possibilities?

Yep. Well, the first step is to recognize, like we talked about it. And then I love the word possibility. You know, I love the concept of possibility, that things are possible. The Bible is very clear about that as well. And so really declaring possibilities. I'll share with you a story. I had a limiting belief brought to me by my parents and just being around and, you know, I created a very. Because I wanted to be a chiropractor at a young age, I was able to start my own practice and to have a very successful practice at the age of 27 years old. And I was very much into my work. I lived below my means, and I was able to create a good level of success financially in other areas of my life, having a business and, you know, all the things that would be perceived as the American dream and being incredibly happy at that time as well. But I had this belief that people wanted to be with me because it was just because of my resources. And so that caused me to not be allowing myself to be close with a girlfriend, at least to a level where I would really let them in because, you know, I had this where you got to watch out because they only want you for your this or for your money or for this. So it really limited my ability to connect emotionally. And then I went to a seminar. I'm always into growth and development at the same time as I met my wife that weekend that I went, I met my wife. I met. She was obviously just a friend at that time. I went to this seminar and it was about declaring possibilities. I declared that the possibility that I was inventing for myself and in my life was the possibility of being in a loving relationship. And so I declared that possibility. So that was the statement. The possibility that I'm inventing for myself and in my life is the possibility of being in a loving relationship. It could be whole, it could be complete, it could be perfect, or it could be healthy. Right. So part of the process when we see with the patient is to help them to see where they are with their health, see things as they are. That's the first step. Recognize, like, what's the operating system in their life, what is the belief system that they have, Help them to create inspiring goals and help them to create A new possibility. You know, it's wonderful if we said, hey, if we can, you know, someone comes in with symptoms, you know, headaches, back pain, neck pain, stomach issues, poor sleep, stress, you know, financial issues, all these things we say, well, we can wave a magic wand. And all those health issues were gone. What would that create for you? And it's an interesting question for a lot of people because they don't know what to say at first. You know, if we can take it all away, how would that look like for you?

I'm not used to thinking that way.

I would have. It's a shift to a pattern, because we have this pattern that this is my life we talked about, this could be my identity. And then all of a sudden you go, well, wow, well, what's now possible? And when you have that conversation, the energy in the room changes, the energy of that person changes, their posture changes and their level of inspiration for their own health. Because to make change is hard, right?

It is.

I mean, when you're struggling with a health issue, you're not feeling good, you're already drained. Well, you need somebody and you need that supportive environment of a team that is committed to you and invested in you to really help you see what's possible. And so that's really what creating possibilities are. So I would say the antithesis of limiting beliefs is possibility living.

Right, right. I like that. Live in possibility.

Yeah, absolutely.

You offer action steps in this chapter as well, just like the other ones. And I want to encourage the readers to revisit it on multiple occasions because this is not a one step process.

That's right.

You know, overcoming limiting beliefs especially, I feel like, is a repetitive process because once you feel like you got it, it's so easy for those thoughts to try to seep back in.

Oh, yeah, they'll come right back.

They'll come right back. Or somebody might say something that triggers, you know, a memory or something that you associate with that. And so it's an ongoing process. It's not a magic fix. You know, reading it once and going through the action steps once. I know for me, I have achieved a level of success in my life, but I have to revisit this often because these can be very deeply rooted and the longer they're there, the longer it takes to overcome them. But it's possible and we're living in a life of possibilities. So have fun with this chapter. Get through the tears, because there are a lot of tears that come with it. I know when I read it, even talking about it, it brings a lot of tears. You know, those are memories that can be challenging, but they also help develop our characters. So we don't want to necessarily get rid of them.

That's right.

We want to turn them into possibilities.