Overcoming Limiting Beliefs & Comparison | Jack Canfield

Hi everyone, I'm Patti Arbery and I'm here with Jack Canfield for another segment of Ask Jack, where our community sends in questions to get Jack's feedback and answers. Questions. So are you ready to go today?

I am.

All right, great. We have some good ones. All right, so question number one. I feel like we're at a game show. What is your best strategy to changing limiting beliefs?

Well, there's really two kind of limiting beliefs, the ones you're aware of and the ones that are subconscious that you're not aware of. And so the first thing you got to do to change a limiting belief is become aware that you have it. And sometimes you can just see by the results you're producing. And sometimes people will tell you you've got a limiting belief. But I think the ones that are most important that really mess people up are the ones that were formed somewhere between the age of three and eight and you made a decision about life, about yourself, about how smart you were, about how attractive you were, about how athletic you were, about is it safe? Ask questions, Is it safe to ask for what you want? All you know, your beliefs about money, which you got from your parents usually. So I think the main thing get to become aware of it. So if you're aware of it, then the next thing you have to do is say, what is the opposite of that belief? What's a more empowering belief? Because your limiting beliefs are, you know, keeping you down. What would be a belief that would empower me to go from my dreams to believe in myself and take the action I need to take? If the belief is unconscious, then we have to do an exercise, one that we teach in our trainings and I do online for people a couple times a year. I have people just get on the phone with me than like a thousand people at a time sometimes. And I take people through this limiting belief exercise. I'll give you a little distillate of it, give you an example of it. What I ask people to do is get in touch with what's something you want that you're not able to create someplace where you feel stuck, then close your eyes, notice how you feel when you think about not being able to create that, and then scan your body and notice what you're feeling. Where does a great greatest level of pain, tension or numbness. And for me, the first time I did this exercise, it was a bar across my back, like a two by four of tension. And then I ask you to look inside that, what you know, to really get in Touch with the sensation that you're experiencing. How wide is it, how thick is it, what color, all that kind of stuff. And then inside that there's a feeling because that pain is shutting down on a feeling. Then ride that sensation, that feeling back to the last time you can remember having that. And almost everyone goes back to ages 3 to 8, sometimes 11 years old, whatever. So then what happens is you get to see where you are, who you're with, what was happening that made you make a decision that is somehow still limiting you. So I'll give you an example. I was working with a woman that won a free coaching session with me and she was in England and she came on the phone and she said, great, I'm looking forward to this, what do you want to work on? She said, I want to be more successful. I said, well, tell me how successful you are now. And she went on to describe how she was a vice president of a bank, she was on a couple boards of banks she was talking about, she had a couple consulting things she was doing. She was planning her own wedding without a wedding planner. I mean, just way over amped. And I said, I said what I want to do is help you figure out why you're so over committed rather than how to be more successful. Would you be willing to do that? She said yes. So I took her through the process I just described. She ends up back, she's 5 years old in the kitchen and her father says this was a recession going on in England. Said I don't think we're going to have enough money to feed all the children. He was just blowing off steam. And she's five years old, she doesn't know it's not real. So she figures, I want to be one of the kids that survives, I want to be one of the ones he feeds because there were a number of kids in the family. So she decided, I'm going to be perfect, I'm going to be clean, I'm never going to get dirty, I'm going to never mess up my room, I'm going to be a good little girl, I'm going to get good grades in school, everything like that. Now she's in her 40s, she's still operating from this belief that if she doesn't do everything perfectly and overachieve, she's going to starve to death. And so we were able to unpack that, put a new belief in that, you know, there's enough, I'm successful the way I am, I don't have to do everything you Know, there's always going to be enough food for me, et cetera. And then we went into the future, had her wise old self tell her current self some things about that, and she literally hired a wedding planner, got off one of the boards, re committed to some of the, you know, renegotiated her contract with the bank, and led a much more balanced life. And so we all have those kind of things in us that we're not aware of. So that's really a powerful tool. So if you're watching this, just know that sometime in the next two to three months, I'm going to do about four times a year. Now, I did it in January for about a thousand people, and I'll take you through that process. So just make sure you're on our mailing list. Jack. Just go to jackcampfield.com, sign up for our mailing list, and you'll get information on how to do that. But I think the main thing is know that you have a limiting belief, what's the opposite? And once you have the opposite, create an affirmation for that belief. I am smart enough to do anything I want. You know, money comes to me easily and effortlessly under the grace of God. Whatever you want to say, it's the opposite of, you know, money doesn't grow on trees or you can never have what you want. And, you know, I can have everything I want. You know, money's not the root of all evil. Money is the root of all philanthropy. So we create the opposite, and we put it into repetition. That becomes the new belief, and then we no longer affected by the old one.

It's amazing that she lived all those years letting that run her. And in one hour, she was able to recognize why it's so important to really look at that stuff. Whether they're conscious or unconscious. I get the perfect thing. My brother was a nightmare. And so when I got to first grade, they were, oh, oh, there's another Mitchell coming in. So I had to be perfect and invisible, and I played that role for a long time. Didn't serve anybody, really. So. Yeah, I get that. That's interesting. Okay, here's. Speaking of books, this one says, I've wanted to write a book forever, but I just don't know where to start. So what would you say to some? I mean, we know like 85% of people have a book in them, and most people never ever even write a paragraph. So what would advice would you give someone that wants to do that?

Well, first of all, decide that you're Going to, you know, everything you do that happens, you make a decision. So make the decision. I'm writing a book. Then give yourself an amount of time. It could be a year, two years, three, I don't care. But give yourself a deadline. And then the question is, what are you going to write about? Are you writing a memoir, which, you know, your life? Are you writing a nonfiction book because you know, something valuable that other people might know? You just wrote a wonderful book called Permission Granted, where you had a bunch of women write about how they had given themselves permission to show up, speak up, step up, you know, step out in the world, come out of the shadows, et cetera. And I know you.

This was an idea for nine years.

Yeah. But you finally decided to do it. There was a point you said, I'm doing it. And then what you have to do is one of my friends says, you got to glue your bum to the chair. You know, and whether that means typing or writing or interviewing or dictating, but you got to do the doingness of writing. You know, John Maxwell, who we all know is this great leadership expert. You go in the airport, you see a whole bunch of John Maxwell books. He writes for an hour a day. It's a discipline that's 365 hours a year. You can write a lot in 300. I mean, if you write five pages a day, write one page a day, just think one page a day. You have a 365 page book at the end of the year. And so I would give yourself the idea that, what are you going to write about? Think about all the things you have to say. Just make notes of all the things you have to say and then start filling in the, you know, like, teach 100% responsibility. Well, what do I know about that? I know E plus R equals O. I know you have to think about blaming. I know I have to think about complaining. So whatever that is, key dot points, bullet points. And now you go back and you put flesh on the bones. You know, oh, I know this story. I know this concept. Jack said this. I read this in this book by Stuart Emery, whatever. And then you start to have these pages. There was a woman in Santa Barbara, where we live, who wrote, I think Fried Green Tomatoes was one of the books she wrote. And she was dyslexic. And she said, I would just write an experience. And I had this long clothesline down my hall and I would take a clothespin and I would just put it on. I'd print it out, put it on the clothesline then I'd write another experience. I thought it would be in the book. And then I'd. Was that going to come before or come after? Well, I'll put that before. And. And she did that and eventually she had all this book written. So, you know, whatever your way is. Lynn Twist, who you know, we helped her write a book and she said, all these stories. I said, lynn, you have to write a book. Well, I don't like to write, I'm not a writer. I said, come to my house, we'll get a few people. You just tell your stories, we'll record them, we'll send them to Rev, which is a transcription service. And within a couple weeks we had all those stories back. And all she had to do was kind of sequence them and edit them and a book. So the main thing is make the decision, commit time, consistent time. Am I going to write every Wednesday morning from 9 till noon? AM I going to write every day for an hour? Am I going to write every weekend for the next six months, whatever it might be, and then keep the commitment? And again, accountability partners are helpful. Someone that you have to say, someone.

That'S sitting next to you or sitting.

On the phone with you or whatever and saying, did you write? Send me the pages.

I actually heard in one of my mastermind groups this week, what they decided to do was create two hour office hours. So five women get on the same zoom call. They don't talk to each other, they just do their work. So it's like, because they're missing being in an office, which was really cool. They said we were so productive because the minute they kind of saw a squirrel or wanted to go to something else, they're like, oh, there's people watching. And so they had to stay in the zone, which is cool. You know, it's kind of a good idea. So figure out what you need to do to keep yourself.

I think that's really good. My wife Inga is writing a memoir and she just doesn't do it on her own normally. But she has this writing coach who, when she calls her, she'll just sit on the computer while Inga's writing. Or she'll come over here for a week and sit in Inga's office. And most of the time she's working on something else. But Inga's writing because she knows that there's someone there. And it's like a play date, if you will. You know that, you know that you're supposed to be writing now. So I think that's a Good idea.

I can think back years ago when I would say, I'm going to leave now, it'd be 10 o' clock at night, and say, no, no, just sit here for 10 more minutes. I'm like, are you kidding me? Just so I can finish this one thing. It's like having one more person there actually makes a huge difference. So reach out on zoom, conference call, whatever it might be, if we can't see someone, to actually create that environment for yourself. Yeah, that's great.

And I would just. The final thing, I'd say, just create words on paper.

I like the clothesline thing because I think people have this idea that you start writing a book from the introduction and you go straight through to the end. And that's never the case.

Right.

I mean, we cut and paste and glue and color all over things and do all kinds of crazy stuff to reorganize things. So I think there's a misconception out there that it just flows out of some people. And that's not true.

No. When I wrote the Success principles, which was 64 principles, revised one was 67, I didn't do them in order. You know, I might have written the fifth chapter before I wrote the first chapter. And then the eighth chapter, I just got inspired to write that, or something came into my thoughts and went, oh, I should add that. And then I just really got into it, so. And then it was like putting it all together. What makes the most sense? What's the order for this?

Good. All right. But just do it, basically.

Yeah.

Okay. All right, the next question. I'd love to do what you do, Jack. I want to inspire people to believe it's possible, but I find myself comparing myself to you. What is your advice?

Don't do that.

It's a bad idea. I've been there, done that. It doesn't work.

No. Well, you know, I say in our seminars, comparison is a fast track to misery. No one's ever compared themselves to someone they were better than. We always compare ourselves to someone who's better than us. You know, if you're an actor, you start comparing yourself to Robert Redford or to Tom Hanks or something like that, you know, and so the same thing in athletics, you're comparing yourself to the Olympic athletes, to Michael Jordan, you know, whatever. And I. I just watched the Last Dance, which is a series of video, documentary videos about Michael Jordan's last year. And the reality is anyone who was comparing himself to Michael Jordan, including Guy, you know, superstars, they're not going to win they weren't going to win because he was the best at that time.

So instead of comparing, it's like, what can you do to start? So we actually created Train the Trainer Online, which is a certification that literally is a how to step by step guide to get there with scripts and slides and everything else. So knowing that we have that, and I'm sure anybody watching has probably heard that before, what advice would you give them on just going for it? Like you always say, just lean in. But what's one thing to make to really get, like believe it's possible? I mean, what's the. What if you could say one thing in one sentence, what would it be?

Well, let me start by saying this. When you, if you find yourself comparing yourself to somebody, the first thing you're telling yourself is, I'd like to be like them. The second thing is let yourself be inspired by them rather than judging you're less than them, that you don't have the qualities. I believe if you're inspired by somebody, that quality or whatever that is that inspires you, their excellence, their compassion, their skill set, whatever is resonating in you, that's why you're attracted to that person. You know, we're all attracted to different mentors. Some people are attracted to Tony Robbins, some people to Lisa Nichols, some people to me, some to Brian Tracy, some to you. So the reality is that you're going to be attracted to someone who's vibrating or attacking the same issues or trying to, you know, empower people the same way that you are. And then let yourself be inspired and then do what, you know, neuro linguistic programmers do nlp, model that person. In other words, let them be someone you say I want to be. Remember Michael Jordan? We just talked about be more like Mike. That was a whole campaign for Nike for a while, you know, or one of the products he was, you know, sponsoring. So the point being that once you now know you want to be that, then as you said, find what are the resources available. So we have our online trainer training program, we have our live training training program. And let yourself then put yourself in a student position and learn as much as you can. And you're not going to be as good as me the first time you do it. There's just no way, you know, it's taken me, I'm 76. So the reality is what happens. It took me a lot of years to get here. I always tell people, if you want to be a great trainer, speaker or coach, it's a triathlon, it's Not a sprint. It's going to take you a while. We talk about, you know, I think with Malcolm Gladwell said, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. Some people think it's less than that if you work with a master. And I love Alex Mendozian's quote. Every master was once a disaster. And so, you know, I was once a disaster. I didn't start out doing this well.

You know, well, and you can't microwave a turkey is what I like to say. So it's a transformational journey that you go on more than it is. I think a lot of people think, okay, I'm gonna hurry up and get this done, then I'll be there. It's like you're never there because there's always something new to learn. There's always more to give. There's always a new awareness that you have. There's all kinds of different things.

Well, you've seen my office. I probably buy five new books a week and read three of them. But the point is, I read a lot of books. I take seminars, I watch YouTube videos, I watch TED talks. I'm constantly learning to get better. And so you start with what you have. Start with the basics, like the success principles. Start with our online training program, whatever. But then you're going to be adding to that for the rest of your life, learning new things. Like people that study with us will often go study with Dr. Deb Sundela and learn the rim technique. And it's another thing that's ancillary. Or they learn tapping. Eft tapping. Or they learn Byron Katie's work and keep, you know, aggregating. Yeah, exactly.

I think the biggest thing is if you feel compelled to do something, follow it. You know, I think so often we edit our dreams or the things that we really secretly desire before they actually. Before we even say them out loud. And then we crush them ourselves because we're afraid that someone else is gonna crush them, but we just crush them first.

Yeah, I'll crush it before you can. That way I'm safe.

It's crazy. Yeah, exactly. All right, well, I hope you found the segment interesting. And if you'd like to add comments below, you can. If you'd like to send in your questions to Ask Jack, you can do that as well. And we look forward to seeing you next time.

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