"Self-belief" & "mindset work"? It's keeping you from succeeding

Hello, bonjour, bonsoir, it's Mary Shiller. How are you today? I am an author, coach, and course creator, sometimes known as Mary in Paris in some circles. You can find me online at www.maryinparis.com, and I am really thrilled to be talking with you today during this livestream on YouTube, and it's also going into my 5K Coach Club group, all about this idea of self-belief, self-belief. And I want to say right up front that I know, I know for a fact that some of the things I'm going to be saying today are going to sound weird, and some of them may even be a bit controversial. But that's just the way we're gonna roll. And if you'll excuse me for just a moment, I'm gonna just see if in fact I actually am live where I said I was going to be live. So let me just take a quick check on my phone. But I do appreciate you being here. If you're here with me live, please feel free to say hello in the comments. And yes, I am live on YouTube. All right, let me check my Facebook group. And if you are watching this on a replay somewhere and there's a place for you to comment, I am always happy to respond later on. So feel free to type your comments and thoughts. If you are here with me live and can type into the comment box, please say hello. I see a few people are watching. I hope to make this an interactive conversation for those of you who are here with me live. So I'm going to jump right in and get started on this whole notion of self-belief. Now, I have been a coach professionally since 2016. I started having what I would now consider coaching conversations with people actually a couple of years before that, back in 2014, although I didn't really think of them that way. But there is something that has come up over and over and over again, particularly since I started supporting other coaches who wanted to get their businesses started. And that was around 2018, I would say, was when I really started to get into that, definitely 2019. And it's this whole idea that we have to believe in ourselves before something can happen for us. This idea is so pervasive that it almost seems weird to question it. When I was getting ready to jump on here today, I was thinking, how do I even approach this? Because the fact is that this notion of self-belief and needing to trust ourselves and needing to believe in ourselves It's just part of the way we talk about things, isn't it? I'm going to speak about it in a business context, but you could really apply this discussion to any context you want. Anytime you're attempting to do something you haven't done before, or you're making some changes in your life, anything like that, there's always this discussion around believing in ourselves and also getting rid of what are called, quote, limiting beliefs. So if you're here with me live, let me know in the chat, does that sound familiar to you? I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does, because I remember this conversation very well until I started to see things differently and it started to look nonsensical to me. This is how it looked to me, and I actually spent quite a bit of money over the years trying to eliminate my limiting beliefs about certain things in order to make things change? Hi Heidi, nice to see you. So if this sounds like something that's familiar to you, if you have yourself spent time trying to believe in yourself or trying to get rid of limiting beliefs so that you can make some sort of shift in your life, you know, let me know in the chat. Because for me, prior to about 2014, 2015, this is how it looked. Hi, Anton. Yes, it's very warm here today, very, very warm. I've got the air conditioners going in the background. So what is this whole conversation about, about believing in ourselves? Where, where does this even come from? I actually don't know. What the origin of this notion is, but I have a sense that we think as human beings that there has to be some sort of internal shift before we can achieve something. Is that how it looks to you, that before we can start to make progress there has to be something within us that changes. And to me, in this conversation, it looks like people are saying you have to have more self-belief, you have to trust yourself, you have to let go of any limiting beliefs that say you can't do something, and then you'll be able to go forward, then you'll be able to make progress. And in the subhead for this talk, I said basically this whole idea of self-belief is holding you back. It's holding you back because none of that is necessary. Absolutely none of it. This became very, very obvious to me for sure by 2016, and I have to credit a coach for helping me to start to see this a little bit differently. I had had some insights into this before, and then she kind of, you know, took me over the finish line with this in that she was saying to me one day, you know, you say, Mary, that you've never been good at business and you're wondering how you're ever going to make a coaching business fly. You know, how are you going to make an income from this? How are you going to get clients and all of that. And she was really kind of pushing me on this and saying, you know, just because you haven't done this before doesn't mean that you can't do it now. And it doesn't have to do with belief. It has to do with the fact that you want to do something, and therefore you're capable. You want to do something and therefore you're capable already. There isn't any sort of thought process that needs to occur. It's simply a fact. What you want to achieve, what you want to do, you already have the capability to do that, period. Now you might say, well, Mary, you know, what if you want to be an Olympic gymnast at your age? Okay, maybe not. Maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration. But the truth is, if that's something that I wanted to do, I could probably find some sort of gymnastics league that would allow me to start training even at 5'10" plus at my age. You never know. And so there's— there is capability present all the time that has no dependence whatsoever on any thought that's going through our minds. Hi Heidi, I feel shifts happen with the steps we take. The shifts happen as we progress. For example, progress is created from shifts. Excuse me, that's a very interesting way to look at things because that isn't what most people are saying. Would you agree with that? There may be some people who are saying you have to take massive imperfect action. Have you heard that phrase before? I don't subscribe to that at all, by the way. But there's always this subtext, always this subtext, that something has to happen in our mindset. I can't even say that word because it really— I just don't like the word, uh, mindset at all. Um, uh, yeah, Heidi says you agree. So there's always this subtext that there has to be a shift in our mindset at some point along the way. And to me, this whole thing about self-belief and limiting beliefs and mindset, I lump it all together into a pile that says we're supposed to do something that we have no control over. We're supposed to do something that we have no control over. We're supposed to shift our belief in ourselves. We're supposed to let go of limiting beliefs. We're supposed to change our mindset. But this is why I'm pausing so much, because I really find this quite irritating, frankly. We cannot control those things. We cannot control beliefs. We cannot control quote-unquote limiting beliefs. We cannot control quote-unquote mindset. First of all, as I've said for years, the mind is never set. The mind is never set. Can you recall an instant where you had the same continual thought in your head for any length of time other than a split second? No, because that's not how human beings are designed. We aren't designed to have things in a set pattern like this so that we can see these supposed beliefs and stop them in their tracks and do something about them. That is not how we are made. It's simply not how we're made. So here we are, and I was here too. So here we are trying to do something about a part of human— our human being design that we have no control over. Is this coming through? If you're here with me live, is this coming through? I got distracted for a minute because there was a very large bug outside the window. I was glad I had it shut. But anyway, we're asked to conjure up a feeling of self-belief when we are incapable of doing that as human beings? Because thought is not controllable. We can't predict what we think. We can't control what we think. We can't decide what we think. I will give— I don't have a million dollars in the bank, but if I did, I would give someone a million dollars if they could predict what I was going to be thinking in the next second, because I have no idea. I have no idea what I'm going to be saying in the next moment because that's not how this works. It's not how human beings are designed. And so this whole conversation around changing our beliefs so that we can do something, letting go of limiting beliefs so that we can achieve something, changing our mindset so that we can achieve something It's complete baloney. I almost said another word, but I won't. Because it's not possible to do it. It's not possible to do it. And not only is it not possible, it's completely unnecessary. And I will tell you why right now. Why is it unnecessary? Maybe if you're here with me live, You know what I'm about to say. Why is it completely unnecessary to try to have self-belief before we can succeed at something? Do you have an example from your own life or from a famous person's life where it— let's talk about you. Do you have an example from your own life where you achieved something that you had no belief in yourself whatsoever that you could do it. I mean, literally none. I can share an example from my own life. When I was in high school, I really wanted to continue my music studies in college, but I was not a great pianist. I was fine, I was passable, but I was never going to be a concert pianist, you know. That wasn't where my strength was, but I loved music, and I knew that if I could just get into a music program, that maybe I could find the thing that I was good at in there. I knew it wasn't performance, but I thought, well, maybe it's something else that I haven't explored yet. Well, in order to get into the UCLA music program, which was what I desperately wanted to be in because I wanted to move to Los Angeles and I loved UCLA, and I loved all of the sports teams and everything. In order to do that, I had to pass a piano performance exam. Now, when I say I had no belief or confidence in myself that I could pass this exam, I mean, that's putting it mildly. I was 100% sure that I would not pass because I thought I might have a slim chance of passing the part where you play the thing that you've been practicing and you perform that. I thought maybe I've got a chance there. But then there was this other part that I was really bad at, which was sight reading. I was a terrible sight reader, meaning they would put a piece of music in front of you that you didn't know and you had to instantly look at it and play it. I was really, really bad at that. And I knew that that counted for a significant portion of the entrance exam. So I went into the thing thinking there is absolutely no way that they're going to accept me. I had no belief at all, couldn't conjure it up, no confidence, nothing. So because I was not able to— I didn't live near the school, so I had to do this exam using a proctor, and my proctor was my then piano teacher. So she had to record me and then attest, yes, this is Mary playing. You know, this was back in the old days before video cameras and all that kind of stuff. So I played the piece that I'd been practicing, which was an E-flat Nocturne by Chopin. When I finished that, I was like, all right, well, that was about the best I could do under this kind of pressure. But I still didn't feel very confident. And then we got to the sight reading bit, and I kind of froze up. I had one of those moments where you're just like, oh my gosh, uh, did I even play anything? I mean, I got to the end of it and I was like Wow, that felt really, really bad. I don't know if it was— it sure felt that way. And so my teacher, you know, stopped the recording and all of that, and I was like, how was that? And she said, well, it could have been better. And I was like— and she said, you know, the nocturne part was okay. I understand you were nervous. She said the other part, you know, you, you kind of made it through, but nothing spectacular. So I went home just going, oh my gosh, from her house— that's where we were doing this— I just went home thinking you know, there is no way that I'm gonna get in. And I was really upset and everything. Well, by some miracle that had nothing to do with my belief, they accepted me. And then I had to pass another exam, a written exam, but I did fine on that because, um, I had been studying for that and I knew exactly what to do. So for me, that's a big example from my own life of a time when I achieved something that I had absolutely no belief that I would be able to do. None whatsoever. Have you ever had something like that in your life? Was belief a prerequisite for something that you wanted to achieve, or is that just a superfluous idea that makes no sense, which is the side of this that I'm landing on? I'd love to know your thoughts in the chat if you're here with me live. So there's that. There's the piece— let me recap for a second— there's the piece that says we have to have self-belief before we can achieve something. We have to let go of limiting beliefs that are supposedly holding us back. We need to make some sort of mindset shift again before we can achieve what we want to achieve. And then Heidi said, you know, a shift happens as we make progress. I just shared an example, an actual life example of a time when belief had nothing to do with my ability to do something. Absolutely zero. And my thing is— I'm going to put flashing lights around this part— my thing is If something is true, it has to be true all the time. So if there is ever a time in your life where you achieve something and you don't have any belief in yourself, then the whole argument that self-belief is crucial just falls apart. It carries no weight. It can't be true, because if it's true, it's true all time. So what looks true to me, and through my own life experience, through watching other people, is that this whole notion of belief, even confidence, mindset, it plays no role whatsoever in whether we can achieve something. None. Is that shocking? If you're here live or if you're watching on the replay, let me know what you think, because as I'm saying this, I'm really recognizing how much this goes against the grain of what's being said out there. And I'm not trying to— I should say this— I'm not trying to criticize anyone who is putting forth these ideas. I know that they are trying to help people, but my experience of those programs, which I took several of them, is that they actually did the opposite for me. They, they made me focus so much on something that I have no control over that I started to have a sense of being less able, less capable. And what I've seen in the interim is that the less I worry about any kind of thought that goes through my mind, the more I sense the power and capability that's flowing through me always. So after I had the conversation with the coach before I started my coaching business, or as I was starting my coaching business, The realization came to me that, oh, maybe instead of worrying about what's going through my mind, why don't I just start doing stuff? So getting to Heidi's point, why don't I just start doing things? Why don't I just see what happens if I tell people what I'm doing now professionally as a coach and see if they're interested in talking to me about it? Why don't I just do that? Instead of waiting around for some amorphous thought to pop into my head that says, you can do this, Mary, you can do it. Why don't I just go do something? Why don't I just, just take an action instead? So that's what I started to do. Because what I see from a lot of people— and again, you know, verify this or not, I'm not asking you to take what I say at face value. I'm really asking you to look at this for yourself. I never want anyone ever to listen to what I say and just accept it. I want you to verify everything. But what I see a lot is that people wait and wait and wait and wait until a belief shows up before they do something, and they wait forever. And yes, Heidi, I'm going to show your comment. I can't force belief. Waiting for belief to show up seems daunting. Experiences shape everything, even, even it would seem, belief. So yes, you cannot force belief to show up. I can't force anything to show up. It's not how we are made. Let me ask you this. How do you get an idea for something? How does that actually happen? How does something occur to us? Do we sit around and, you know, like in this position and just try to force some thought to occur to us? Come on, come on, come on. That's not what we do, right? Ideas come to us. They just appear. I've talked in the past about the fact that 95% of the work is done for us because we have thoughts and ideas all day long, all day long. That's how we are made. Lots and lots of ideas flowing through our heads constantly. And our role, it seems to me, as human beings is to act on them. At least one here or there, because that is how we're made. Things occur to us to do, and then we do them. Things occur to us to do, and then we do them. So why are we trying to sit around and wait for some strange thought to come through that says, I believe in you, Mary, I trust you. You have permission to follow that idea. Why are we waiting for that? It makes no sense at all. Heidi says, I've done something, uh, have heard or seen something that sparks an idea. Yes. So the idea just occurs to you though, right? You're, you're not sitting there watching something or reading a book or whatever thinking, I need a new idea. What happens is you may be in the process of doing that and boom, something happens, right? You hear something. Inside yourself, or however that looks for you. It might be a sensation, it might be an image, it might be a moving picture. Somehow within yourself, an idea occurs to you, something appears there, right? That is how we are designed. Things just appear. We have some kind of recognition of that, and then we either act on it or we don't. Yes, exactly, Heidi. So that's how the process works. How many times have you heard famous authors, let's say, say, I don't know where the idea came from, it just occurred to me, you know, I read something and oh, I have this idea for a story, you know, it's just how it is. That's the same for you and me. There are so many— going back to what I was saying a moment ago— there are so many famous people who have hit the pinnacle of success in whatever profession they're in, who walk around in a state of doubt, fear, anxiety, lack of confidence, lack of belief. They— I've heard many people say they've gone on stage, big people, and they have no idea why all those people are even there watching them. They don't understand it. So if belief or confidence or a lack of doubt or, you know, elimination of these quote-unquote limiting beliefs, if that was a prerequisite, how could those people be at the point that they're in? Hi, Anton. When you don't identify with thoughts and feelings, you just do what you feel is the thing to do. Yes, it all flows from there. Exactly, Antoine. I'm going to show that on the screen. Yes, everything is always flowing, you know. Everything is always flowing. It's always at the ready. Ideas are always there for us. All we have to do is pay attention. We just have to pay attention. And as you say, Anton, we don't have to identify or put any stock in a thought that says you're not capable or you can't or whatever, because as I said, none of those thoughts can be true because you and I are sitting here right now. We are fully capable human beings. We have done so much in this life of ours that we aren't even consciously aware of because we're not able to see how much of a ripple effect we have on this world and on other people. And yet we're sitting around waiting for some thought to occur to us that says, you can do it. I mean, honestly, I can't even say that with a straight face. I honestly can't. What I wish more than anything— and I've said this for years now, so I guess I'll just say it again— I wish more than anything that this whole discussion of believing in yourself, developing confidence, getting rid of limiting beliefs, changing your mindset— I wish it would just disappear entirely. Because I actually think that it is keeping the world and progress in the world stuck. Because I see— I'm getting emotional now— I see so many incredible people in the work that I do as a coach who are hearing these thoughts in them, inside their minds, saying, I can't do this. Nobody's going to listen to me. Why would anyone care what I have to say. I can't be a good coach, you know, all of these things. And I just want to say, it doesn't matter. Those ideas, as Anton just said, are not your identity. They are simply floating around in the ether. They're just there. They don't mean anything. What means something is the examples that we can cite from our own lives of our capability and our creativity that spans everything. It's not locked into one thing or another. Oh, thank you, Heidi. Yes, I'm glad to hear you changing the narrative around this. So tired of you just have to believe in yourself. Yeah, it's never ending. It's never ending. And another thing that I learned from this coach many years ago was that when she was talking about my capability with business, she's like, do you think that capability and creativity are just locked into certain spheres? And that you don't have that across the board, because if that's what you think, you're wrong. We have everything we need in any area of life that we want to pursue, that we hear something within ourselves or in this kind of inner space that, that is calling to us to do. We have what we need. We always have what we need. We always have the answers. We always have the ability to have someone help us if need be. It has zero to do with how we think or feel in any given moment. It's simply a fact that, to use Anton's words, it's always flowing. The answers are always here. This life force is always flowing through us. It's always creating things through us. It doesn't need permission from a belief. That would be like saying that the sun is only gonna shine tomorrow if I believe in it. I mean, that is how ridiculous this whole conversation sounds to me around self-belief. I don't have to believe that the sun is going to shine tomorrow in order for that to be true. I don't need to believe in yours and my capability to know that it's a fact. Belief is a thought. It's random. It's passing. We don't have control over that. We need to stop trying to control something that doesn't need to be controlled. Heidi, yes, the loop of can't do this, that, unless I believe in myself needs to be shelved. As you've said in your coaching, just do it. Yeah, borrowing from Nike, just do it. And that's what I did when I did the coaching startup thing in 2016. I just said, all right, I'm just going to start taking action. I'm in sort of a transitional phase with my business right now where I'm adding another very large piece to what I do. I'm not sitting around waiting for belief in myself to make those changes. I listened to what I was hearing inside this inner space of mine and said, yeah, that's what I want to do. So I just started taking action. And I know that I'm capable, period. I don't have to question that. I don't have to have any sort of permission from anyone else or from some thought within me. And here's the other thing too that I find sort of vexing about this whole conversation around self-belief and limiting beliefs and everything is that they're asking you— now see if this is making sense— the people who are talking about that are asking you to conjure up a belief in something that you haven't necessarily seen occur yet in that form. So I— what I am saying is You don't need to conjure up a belief that you're capable of doing something because capability itself is innate and limitless. Capability itself, creativity itself, it's innate and it's limitless. It is available to you in all sectors, period. Whereas the people talking to you about creating better beliefs in yourself, letting go of limiting beliefs, they are asking you to try to conjure up the idea that you can succeed in something, in a particular thing. And unless you can get there, you're not going to make it. That looks ridiculous to me. It looks ridiculous. We are of the natural world, are we not? My cat does not have to believe that she can chase down the fly that got in here earlier in order for her to be able to do that, right? The trees outside my window here do not need to believe in themselves in order to grow properly. As I said, the sun doesn't need to believe in itself. I don't need to believe in the sun for it to do what it does naturally. Why do we assume differently about human beings? Why do we assume that human beings are somehow outside this natural system and somehow we have to conjure up this self-belief in order to blank? That's ridiculous. So if you're on here live and you'd care to comment on what has come through for you so far, that would be great. If you're watching this on the replay, of course I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. I'm going to take a sip of my drink here. The action piece of this is important because for me, that has always been the thing that has shown me the truth. What shows us the truth is seeing our capability and our creativity on display in our human form. We need to see concrete examples of things a lot of the time, and that's totally okay. So all I need to do to know that, all right, I can, you know, do this next phase of my business— it's very exciting to me, I'm really into it— all I have to see is I've done so many other things, even if they aren't even related to this. Our lives are just filled to the brim daily with all the evidence that we could ever need or want to demonstrate how capable we are. That's all we ever need to look at. We don't need to look at, or as Anton said, try to identify with any random thoughts. That's not where the truth is. The truth is not in a random belief. The truth is You. The truth is the evidence that is borne out through you, through your existence, through the force that is present within you that has created so much incredible beauty in this world. Hi Heidi. While we can say that there is no time wasted, I'm reflecting on all the time I have given to that belief. A belief. I try not to do that, Heidi, too. I do. It's hard not to though, right? And again, this is why I'm being so outspoken about— outspoken about this, because I don't want people wasting any more time. We can't— how can I say this— we can't afford to be wasting time on something that is meaningless, like trying to conjure up belief in ourselves. We've got things to do, so let's just go do them. The capability is there. We know everything we need to know. We have everything we need to have right now. The last thing we need is a thought randomly popping up that says you got to believe in yourself. That is hooey. Uh, hi, Oren. Oh, thank you so much. So I feel like this conversation really needs to change, and fast, because we got stuff to do. In this world, right? Again, I'm getting kind of choked up because we have things to do, and yet we're, we're being told what is essentially, to me, if not a lie, at least a deep misunderstanding. And this misunderstanding is that we have to believe in ourselves before we can be capable of doing something, and that is false. That capability is already present. It's always been present. It always will be present. We have everything right now. All we have to do is go do stuff, take action. So if you're here with me live, I really appreciate that you took the time to join in. If you're watching on the replay, your presence means just as much. I really, really appreciate it. It's my hope that this discussion today has sparked some new ideas for you, perhaps, and has allowed you to let go, if you will, of those beliefs around belief. I'm winking here because that's not even necessary. It's not necessary. Go do the things that you want to do now. Don't worry about whatever fleeting thoughts you do or don't have in regards to your ability to achieve something. It's meaningless. All the evidence you need is right in front of you. Your life is all the evidence you need of your own capability and creativity. You don't need any sort of thought process to happen in order for you to do what you want to do. So let's try to shift this conversation away from all of that mindset stuff and into let's go do things. Let's harness this force that is within us, this creative force, this limitless force, and go make some changes in the world that are desperately needed. So I'm going to leave you with that today, and thank you so much for being here with me. I've had a blast talking with you, and I hope you're having an amazing day wherever you are in this world. And I will talk to you again very soon. Bye for now.