Barbara Corcoran credits her entrepreneurial success to believing she has the "right to be here" despite feeling ashamed and stupid in school. Evan Carmichael breaks down how limiting beliefs about education, connections, or geography hold people back, and outlines three steps to dismantle them: notice the belief, catch it when it happens, and act despite the fear.
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Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is you have the right to be here. Over to you, Barbara Corcoran.
When I was a kid and was such a stupid kid in school, I was made to feel stupid. I learned shame in the classroom reading out loud. What a wonderful background to be an entrepreneur. You know what I learned by the time I got out of that goddamn schoolhouse, which I called jail? Hmm, you know what, I have the right to make a place for myself. And so for the next so many years of my life, I just thought, I have the right to be here. That was my attitude. I have the right to be here. So if I walked into a room filled with men's suits and they ignored me and I introduced myself and they kept talking, I stood there and said the same thing to myself again and again. You know what, I have the right to be here. I have the right to be here. It was a self-pumping up. But you wanna know, the idea that I had the right to be here anywhere. It got me into the elevator, got me publishing a bad report on Donald Trump, which got me invited into his huge desk where he looked down at me, got me in more hot water because I got in the habit of going through the door. And you want to know what I have learned about myself and what I have learned about every great salesman or entrepreneur I've ever worked with? If you can get in the habit of going through the door without the answer— and our education system tends to make you want to have the answer— if you walk through that door, people are amazingly Smart. Once you're in there in the hot water, you discover the answer. Every time I could discover the answer on my feet that I didn't have outside the door. I don't know if you heard, a couple years back there was a maintenance guy who rescued a boy off a track of a subway train ready to run them over. He jumped in and rescued the kid, and when he was interviewed for the whole week and given the key to the city, you know what he said? I didn't know I was a hero. He was a hero, right? I have found walking through every door believing that I'm gonna go through the door, jump out the window, I'm gonna learn how to fly on the way down, and you wanna know, I have always had my best successes. And so I wholeheartedly believe in the belief that all of us have the right to be there, ask for what we want, we all can be rich, we could all put our dagger in the sand, or whatever that thing is called, and say, that's me, I'm going for it, what the heck. And I don't think it's a reserved right for anybody, and that attitude has been more responsible for building my business and my career than any other thing.
This is a really important topic because we all have these limiting beliefs, we all have these limiting mindsets, and we talk ourselves down from things. We talk ourselves out of things, right? We have these brief moments of boldness where we think we can do anything, and then we wake up the next day and feel like, "I can't do that. Who am I to do that? I don't have the right to be here." And we come up with excuses like, "I don't have the right education," or "I don't have the right family connections," or, you know, "I don't have the right experience, I don't have the right friends, I don't live in the right country," you know, whatever it is. And that's going to hold you back for the rest of your life until you realize that it's, it's, it's a limiting belief. And so the key to combating limiting beliefs is one, awareness. Awareness is always the first step, but I think it's the hardest step. You know, I have an entrepreneur friend of mine who is convinced that because of his education, he's not good enough. And, and he doesn't realize how much that holds him back. And it comes across so many times in how he talks, in that because I don't have this education, that's why he's not successful. It has nothing to do with your education. And as long as he believes that, he's going to be stuck where he is. And so it's the awareness, right? The awareness that you're holding yourself back. Because so many of these limiting beliefs you just do unconsciously. It's subconscious. You do it because it's habit. You do it because you've always done it, and you don't even recognize that it's, it's a habit that is limiting and destructive for you. So step 1 is recognizing what your limiting beliefs are. And a good way to do it is Answer this question: I can't achieve my goals because— what? What is it? What's that thing that's there that's holding you back? Is it your lack of education, lack of resources, not the right connections? What is it? That's a limiting belief right there. And then what you want to do is try to catch yourself in the moment. Try to catch yourself the next time you find yourself thinking that. Not afterwards, not afterwards when you say, "Ah, I should have handled that a different way." You have that little regret because you didn't take action the right way. In the moment, when you're experiencing it right now, this is a limiting belief right now. And then 3, have the guts to actually change. Have the guts to do it anyway, right? To be afraid of it and do it anyway. That's how you start breaking your beliefs because you'll realize that even though it's scary, it's not not being scared because it's being afraid and doing it anyway. You realize that by being scared and conquering that fear the first time, it becomes easier the next time and easier the next time and easier the next time.
So that's the pattern.
And you want to break as many of those beliefs you can. And every single major growth that I've had in my business has come from breaking through a limiting personal belief. So one, identify what it is, right? Be self-aware enough to identify it. Two, try to figure it out in the moment when you're experiencing it. And three, take action in the moment even though you're afraid to do the opposite of what you normally would do and conquer that limiting belief. So the question of the day today is, what are your limiting beliefs? Give me the biggest limiting belief that you have right now that is holding you where you are instead of letting you grow to to where you want to be? Leave in the comments below. Join the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe. And I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
