157. The Hidden Power of your Beliefs | Breakthrough: No More Settling

The reason why you doubt yourself and your abilities did not start with you. That did not originate with you, but every single day you make decisions that reinforce that doubt through negative beliefs and negative self-talk. Today we're gonna dive into where your negative thinking and beliefs come from and how it influences your actions and how you show up every day. I'm Travia Steward, and this year on the podcast, you are about to experience ways to stop settling in your relationships, careers, and lifestyle. No more settling for the bare minimum. This is Breakthrough. What's up, my peeps? Happy Podcast Thursday. You know, we are getting close to the end of January, and again, man, this time flies by so fast. And so as you notice, well, I hope you're noticing, and I talked about it in a couple episodes ago, that there's a theme that, you know, this year's Breakthrough Podcast is, is really focusing on. It's not settling, right? No more settling so that we can create better relationships, careers, and active lives because so many of us settle And we forget that, you know, we're all created for more. We're all made for more, that there is always more for us. And then when we get comfortable and when we stop striving for that more, I believe we're like flowers that begin to die because if we're not growing, we're dying. Now, my scientific wife would disagree that she goes, oh, there's a middle thing. You know, that's not true. But you know what, when I think about the drought that we had, you know, the summer in Arizona where, you know, half our trees and plants died, you know, I'm looking out the window right now as I record this podcast episode and the sun was baking our plants. So they were dying and there was no in-between there. They were either growing or dying. So today I want to start off this podcast episode with a quote, and this quote is probably one of the foundations of the work that I do as a, as a coach and the work that many of my coaching colleagues do. It's a quote by Gandhi. Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny. And again, that's Gandhi. And so just to break it down, what that means is it all begins, you know, what we think about all begins with what we believe in. It's like our core principles. Like, you know, you look at your, your morals and your ethics. And then those beliefs pop into your head, which shape how you see things. So that formulates and forms the thoughts that you think that pop into your mind. And we have between 60,000 and 80,000 a day. And then the words, you know, those thoughts spill out, out of our mouths into words, because what we say reflects what we're thinking. Those words turn into actions, and then we start doing stuff based on what we're saying, because why? It was in our thoughts, which began with our beliefs. And then when we keep doing those actions and we repeat it, it becomes habits. So this is like we no longer think about how to do something because we formed a habit of it. And then our habits, what we do every single day, how we spend our time, it shapes our values because your values are shaped by what you're spending time on. You know, so many people, You know, even myself sometimes, you know, like my health is my number one value. So that should be my guiding light of the day that I don't get anything done until I get my workout in, until I get my cardio in. And so what you repeatedly do shows what matters most to you, which is why your habits shape your values. And based on how you show up and how you're spending your time, you're adding it all up. This creates your def— your destiny. And so it's the sum of all, like, your beliefs. It's the sum of your thoughts, your words, your actions, habits, and values that make up your destiny. So in a nutshell, what I'm saying is what you believe in can and usually does lead to the kind of life that you end up creating, that you end up living. Like, I want you to look around at your life right now and go, how did I get here? It's based on the thinking, the thoughts, the beliefs, and it's pretty much a roadmap for how your life unfolds. And so where does it all start? You know, because again, like in the opening, I opened the show with saying the reason why you doubt yourself and your abilities didn't start with you. But every day you make decisions that reinforce that doubt through negative beliefs and negative self-talk. Now, there are more than just these 3 reasons, but I believe this is where the negative self-talk, the beliefs begin. Number 1, with personal experiences. Like, you look back at your life and personal experiences shape who we are, how we show up, what we believe. Number 2, highly charged experiences, whether negative or positive. And in my opinion, negative seems to linger longer. Like, we really— the negative charge lasts, you know. Like, for instance, here's the— here's an example. Like, if you— I've never won the lottery, but if I won the lottery, that would be such a positive charge that it would be like, oh my goodness, I am on cloud nine. But if I lost all the money, What am I going to remember most? The fact that I lost the money. I probably will forget that I even won the money. So that's like an example of a highly charged experience. And then number 3, it's your environment, whether that's like social comparison on like the, you know, social media, whether it's input from other people, but it's your environment. It's the people. That we are around, the situations that we are around that we trust. And ultimately our brains prioritize keeping us safe. So anything that appears as a threat, we go into protection mode. So what happens is we have these personal experiences, we have charged experiences, whether positive or negative, and then we have this environmental thing. And so because your brain wants to keep you safe, anything that has sent you into like upsetting your nervous system, that's taking you out of homeostasis, your brain goes, uh-uh, I want to keep Trey safe. I want to keep Travia Steward from not being embarrassed because from personal experience, she was embarrassed the last time she did this. We're not going to have her do this again. I want to keep Travia safe when someone says something because the last time someone said that, the last time she compared herself to someone else, this is what happened. And so I wanna share with you an example of how this really has played out, one of the ways it's played out in my life. And so one of my negative thoughts that honestly I have believed for most of my life was that money was hard to earn. You know, like you had to really bust your ass. You had to hustle, you had to work tirelessly. And for, you know, most of my life, I watched my mom work tirelessly, you know, to try to keep, you know, and she did, she succeeded with keeping a roof over our heads, clothes on our back, food on the table. But that watching my mother do all of that reinforced that I needed to also work hard to get what I needed in life. Nothing was going to be handed to me. I wasn't going to make a lot of money unless I was hustling and working like busting my ass for it. And this again was reinforced by a lot of the people in my life. They all basically thought the same thing. So if I have these types of thoughts and beliefs that I need to work hard and hustle and bust my ass for money, then how am I gonna show up in life? I'm gonna show up in a hustling mentality, you know? And for a long time, the results I got in my life reinforced that negative thinking.. And when I think back about it, I generally, I was really surrounded by other people who shared those same feelings, you know, and I was a teacher for 24 years, but for, for about 10 of those years, I was also selling Medicare insurance because I was still of the belief that money was hard to earn. I needed to work even more to get it. And so I was a teacher. I was also selling insurance. And so when I hustled more and worked harder and harder, I made more money, which was the result that I wanted. So that hustling mentality was reinforced from the results I was getting, making more money, which in actuality was proving my negative limiting belief completely true. You see, Trey, if you go out and hustle, if you bust your ass, if you work more than one job, then you'll get the money that you want. So it took me years to realize that that was negative. That was a limiting belief. And you see, this belief seed was planted from my personal experience with my mom and my family and the people I was surrounding myself with. And then the second example I want to give you from a highly charged experience I was talking to a guy just the other day and he was, he was born in Mexico. This guy is 35. He was born in Mexico. He didn't come up to the United States until he was 29. He had gone to university, gone to college in Mexico, and he did not speak English. And so whenever he tried to speak English, you know, just a few words here or there, people would laugh at him. So then he began to play music. And so he became a member of a church and this band needed a bass player and they asked him to come in and play bass. And then, so he was like, he wanted to play music, but then when it was time for him to get up and like sing or talk about it, he completely shut down because of a highly charged negative experience. Like people laughed at him the last time he talked because people couldn't understand him because he had a thick Mexican accent. And the guy that I was talking to the other day, I understood every single word he was saying, but he had this negative charge in his mind that if he got up on stage in church and he talked to the church, the church would laugh at him. And we talked last episode or episode before about how we make these things up in our mind and we convince ourselves that it's true. So that highly charged negative experience was preventing him from having the impact in church that he wanted to have. And then number 3, this is our environment, the people that we're around and trust. One of my very, very good friends, and you know, truth be told, you know, this life coaching journey that I'm, that I'm on, this has probably been the hardest thing I've ever done. Starting a business, trying to, you know, grow the business, actually, you know, make enough money to where, you know, it's lucrative.. And it's been the hardest thing I've ever done. And, you know, I don't sit here and act like it's been easy because it hasn't. And so I was having dinner, uh, my spouse and I were having dinner with some friends a couple, couple of weeks ago or so, you know, maybe about 2 months or so ago. And this, this thing, I've had to do some work because of it. And so we were having dinner and one of my friends, we were talking about coaching and how much I, you know, that I'm still coaching and all these things, and I have clients and I love my clients and I love the work that I'm doing. And, you know, but I, I admitted, I said, I'm not making the money that I need to make. And she said, when are you going to give that up? And I was dumbfounded. I didn't know honestly how to respond because I just never expected that comment. When are you going to give that up? I'm like, this is my life. This is my mission. I'm never gonna give it up. And so that comment, I really had to sit down and do some thought downloads. I had to figure out what was this comment doing to me, you know, and, and who was this person that I was, that I had allowed in my environment, in my inner circle, That was like, when are you gonna give that up? So to be honest, I was feeling some kind of way. Now everybody's entitled to have their own opinion, and that's true, but it almost made me feel like I had misjudged a friend who would say that to me. And so when we think about it, these 3 things and the beliefs that you are carrying into your life today in 2024, I want you to think about when my first example that I gave you, whose belief was it that money was hard to earn? I wasn't born with that belief. That began with my mother. Whose belief was it that the guy that I was talking to should, you know, just keep his mouth shut and not embarrass himself by trying to speak with a thick accent, speak English with a thick accent? Was that his belief? Whose belief was it that I should give up my dream and my passion? That when are you going to give that up? Because that's not something that, you know, the everyday person is doing. That's not lucrative. That's not, you know, it's not even a real job. What is that life coaching thing? That's the way I interpreted it. So I did a whole lot of work on that. And so I want you to now think and ask yourself, If the beliefs you believe in, the beliefs that, you know, guide your life, if those beliefs are even yours to begin with, are those beliefs ones that you yourself actually chose? Because we have these thoughts and beliefs that we repeat and then automate. These beliefs become an automatic way of living, like a song, a CD, an audio track that plays in your head. Because when you continually repeat the thought and the actions you take as a result of the thought, your brain automates it. It's like driving. When you first learned to drive, you thought about, oh, I gotta take my right foot and press the accelerator. Now I gotta take my left foot. No, not my left foot. I use the same foot that I press the gas to press the brake. And now I don't confuse, oh, but what about if I'm driving a stick? I need both feet. You no longer think about that stuff because you repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. And with repetition, it became a habit. And so the actions that you take as a result of the thought, your brain automates it. So you don't consciously make those decisions anymore. Your brain just does it for you. So when someone says something, when someone's chuckling and you want to talk and you feel an insecurity about speaking in front of a crowd, what's your brain going to automatically do? It's going to automatically shut you down. If that's what you've been doing. And so at this point, we totally believe the thoughts and then we work to prove them true. We actually fight for our limitations. We fight for our limitations by being resistant to change. When we don't set goals, when we continually replay past mistakes and we then make decisions, present decisions, today decisions based on things and the way things happened in the past. And then we show up and we blame other people. And so one more time, your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny. Mahatma God— Mahatma Gandhi. So think about what you want in life. Think about what you say to yourself about it, because how can we expect to create something that we want if at our core we don't believe we can really have it? Because what we believe at our core is what manifests in our lives, and this happens through our habits. So recognizing the patterns that contribute to self-limiting beliefs, that negative self-talk, is the first step toward breaking free. From those constraints and, and, and helps to unlock your full potential, my full potential, which is exactly what we're going to dive into next week. All right, my peeps, that's what I have for you this week. I hope you're finding value from this podcast. And one more time, I would love it if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps people to find the podcast. It helps it to be ranked higher with Apple Podcasts, also, you know, in Google, and share it with someone else that you think could find value. And if I could be of service, if I could answer a question for you, I would love for you to email me at travia@traviasteward.com. I would love to answer your question live on the podcast. All right, my peeps, take care and we'll talk next week.