A Toast; You’re Toast No More!
Getting Healthy – Part 6 of 6
If I could show you a life-changing method with which to approach decisions, would you be open to that?
Recently I heard Eric Worre speak to salespeople about overcoming objections. Pre-lecture he’d invited submissions of the litany of reasons, excuses, and even threatening retorts salespeople meet with when offering an opportunity to others. It was the context within which he framed his lecture.
And yet…
It turns out that what drives objections applies to EVERY choice, decision, roadblock, and opportunity people face.
I know this because I reflected on each fork I have come to in the road, the choices I made at every critical juncture, and the consequences of my decisions.
Every question and objection, every choice and decision, every action or lack thereof, comes down to only two things. Just two! In your entire lifetime! That’s powerful! Because it’s manageable. No longer do you need an encyclopedia of knowledge. You simply need to filter everything through one of two funnels. Knowing this will alter how you interact with your life, for the rest of your life.
Either you have a limiting belief about yourself – or – you have a limiting belief about something external. Here you insert any of the following: a product, a service, an industry, a company, an organization, a person, a relationship, a situation.
Lest you brush this off as simplistic and insignificant, I want you to sit with it and examine it.
You have an opportunity to compete for a job in your company with increased responsibility and compensation, yet you don’t. Why? You don’t believe you’ll be successful in getting or filling the position (because you have a limiting belief about yourself.) It can’t be that you have a limiting belief about your company since you already work there, implicitly approving it, right? Or not? See how this works?
Think about a relationship. If you don’t pursue someone to whom you are initially attracted, you either have a limiting belief about yourself or about the other person – you can’t trust them or they aren’t kind or they’re not responsible… or some internal mechanism whispers that you don’t deserve happiness.
Think about a product, say a nutrition product. You want to lose weight but you don’t make a purchase because either you don’t believe in the product or the company behind it, or you don’t believe (deep down, when you honestly move past your knee jerk objections) in your own commitment to apply yourself and successfully lose weight.
A fascinating yet unfortunate reality is that frequently you’ll shift the responsibility to the external circumstance because you won’t take a true look introspectively; you won’t acknowledge it’s really your limiting beliefs about yourself that are preventing you from moving forward. You will give up before you start rather than require yourself to push and grow, while redirecting attention away from yourself onto the external factor.
Don’t dive into a spiral of blame here, and don’t continue to dwell in denial. Use this as the powerful and motivating enlightenment that it is! Life is simplified and you are in charge because now you clearly understand what drives your responses!
EVERY decision can be boiled down to a limiting belief about a product, service, or opportunity or a limiting belief about yourself. You can’t move, you can’t travel, you can’t invest in yourself, you can’t survive by yourself, you can’t afford (fill in the blank), you don’t deserve (fill in the blank), you’re not like them, you’re not like him/her, you don’t have, you can’t be, you can’t do….
Wow! Oh, wow! Sooooo simple yet so very profound.
So let’s look at getting healthy financially, taking a deep dive into one aspect in particular that’s a limiting belief about yourself when it comes to money.
You can’t receive.
What do I mean by that? Last week I spoke with a Chicago woman who runs a charitable organization helping women get into the workforce. We discussed the dangers inherent in working for others because you remain vulnerable to getting downsized; I had suggested entrepreneurship and network marketing as viable options to looking for employment.
She agreed in theory but explained these women have a ‘poverty mindset’ that has to be overcome before they can work for themselves and reap those rewards. Experiencing only poverty, and socializing and being influenced by only with those with similar life events, none can envision themselves functioning at a different level. In other words if you handed them wealth they would find a way to let it slip away, just like lottery winners statistically return to their comfort zone after a frenzied spending spree. Is this because poor people are ‘bad’, ‘stupid’, ‘lazy’ or other judgmental words? No, it’s because they have a block against receiving, a block that keeps them impoverished.
When you look around you it’s possible to observe people stuck at every level. You can have millions but wish you were more like Richard Branson or Warren Buffet. You stay stuck because you have a limiting belief that blocks you from opening up to receive at that level; you don’t believe you can do the work to get there and you don’t believe you deserve to be there – you won’t let yourself receive.
Think about these statements:
Money doesn’t grow on trees – limiting belief about you or the pieces of paper?
Money is the root of all evil – limiting belief about money or the people controlling the money? (And if this were a true statement why is the Vatican worth about $15 billion inclusive of holdings in real estate, chemicals, banking, insurance, steel, and more, all holdings of which are tax-free?)
Money isn’t everything – limiting belief about the tool – money – or about justification when you are ‘making do’?
Getting healthy financially may require a tremendous amount of psychological work. Our relationship to money, how we think about it, how it makes us feel, how we judge ourselves for having it or not, or how we subconsciously do everything to only have so much, how we make (erroneous, often) judgments about those who have it, how we define ourselves somehow as more pure, more creative, if we claim not to be motivated by money – all of these things and more are rooted in our culture, our parents and family, our church, our society, and our experiences.
In other words, you could be free to have lots and lots and lots of money and not have that be a ‘bad’ thing. And you can be free to have no money, like Mother Teresa, and make that work for you. But most of us have a little money, a lot of debt, a lot of stress, a lot of stories in our head that we tell our spouses, our children, and ourselves about the ‘why’ of it all, and they are mostly false. Because ultimately it comes down to two things; you don’t handle your money in a constructive way that works for you and your family because you have a limiting belief about yourself or you have a limiting belief about something external.
I am NOT saying that if you are materialistic and greedy you must have a healthy relationship with money because you have decided to acquire – and spend – a lot of it. I am saying that money is a tool, much can be accomplished with it, it is what drives the vast majority of the world as capitalism spreads farther and wider, and understanding your own interactions with it can free you of its hold. This, in turn, will free you to receive – and it will free you to understand, and therefore be able to overcome, any limiting beliefs you subconsciously have about yourself.
Here’s to recognizing your limiting beliefs, to receiving openly, and to your financial health! Cheers!
Beaufort resident Jamie Wolf is the author of “Start Over! Start Now! Ten Keys to Success in Business and Life” available on Amazon with 10 accompanying guidebooks. She has started over a number of times and now focuses on helping people who are ready to Start Over with their health
and wealth through getting fit, feeling fabulous, and becoming financially free. She can be reached at jamie.wolf@thestartover.com
