George Soros learned during World War II to expect the unexpected because reality rarely matches our preconceived ideas. Evan Carmichael argues that inherited limiting beliefs, especially around money, cause entrepreneurs to underprice their work. He recommends raising prices at least 30 percent and defining yourself with a single word that captures what you stand for.
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Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is Expect the Unexpected. Over to you, George Soros.
I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
I wake up every morning.
George, you've written, "The Second World War gave me a lesson I've never forgotten." What was the lesson?
The main lesson that I learned during the war is to expect the unexpected. I mean, the situations that you get into are so out of context with what you have grown up with that you have to examine the framework in which you think, and then you realize that we all work with preconceived ideas, and those ideas don't necessarily correspond to reality. So there is this gap between perception and reality, and that's the gap that I have really kind of explored and also exploited.
After the war, Soros left Hungary and went to England to the London School of Economics.
So I think we all grew up with a set of beliefs that came from our parents, our family, our friends, our surroundings, and a lot of those help us, but a lot of them limit us as well. And so unless you want to live a life that's exactly like the people around you, then you need to start to question things, question some of the beliefs that you grew up with, and understand, are these actually representative of what you're about or not? This is where actually finding the one word is really important. Having the self-awareness to know what it is that you stand for, what the most important thing is in your life, and then building around that both a business and a life that now has purpose and meaning instead of accidentally having things randomly happen to you that help you. Now we're setting out to create a more powerful course forward. Having that self-awareness really helps. Let's look at your beliefs around money. I don't think many people grow up with a healthy belief around money. Some people believe money is everything. All that matters is money, and some people believe that money is the root of all evil, right? Money is negative and you shouldn't do it, and anybody who goes for money is greedy. You know, if you grew up believing that money is evil and it's greedy to ask for money, then you never charge what you're worth. If you're an entrepreneur, one of the things that we are terrible at in general is charging what we're worth. Most entrepreneurs should be increasing their prices by at least 30% based on the value they're actually providing. We undersell ourselves. And often that comes from a belief around money, where if you want to go out and have the impact that you want to have, you want to be able to build a team, you want to be able to help your community, you want to give back to causes, you want to build a real business, you might have to charge more, but you'll never do it until you fix your belief around money. And so understanding what your beliefs are, understanding the person that you actually want to be, right? Understanding what your one word is and then seeing The limiting beliefs that you have and the positive ones that you want to use to reinforce and build yourself up make a huge difference. This is your blueprint, and until you recognize it, until you audit it, until you examine it, you're going to continue running the same patterns over and over and over and over and over again. And no matter what strategy somebody gives you, you're never going to really follow through on it because the blueprint that you're running is holding you back. That's why for a lot of these things, the strategy itself doesn't really matter. Like, how to go out and do this doesn't really matter because you're not ready for it. You're still holding yourself back by the same story that you've been telling yourself your whole life. Those sets of limiting beliefs will continue to hold you back until you break through them, and then you'll be ready to hear the strategy and tactics to move forward. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what's the biggest limiting belief that you have that you have recognized and are trying to break through or have recently broken through on? Leave it down in the comments below. Super curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Joe Dodani. Joe, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really means a lot to me, Joe. I hope you're enjoying the read and that it's brought value to your business and your life. Thank you guys again for watching. I hope you have an amazing day. I believe in you and hope you continue to believe in yourself. And I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot Avent espresso.
