Over the years I have had the opportunity to speak to many people I’ve met on courses, at meetings, or just in everyday life. As someone who devotes a great deal of time to personal development and considers it to be a vital part of growing as a person, I am always surprised how many people limit themselves in what they can achieve both through their beliefs and through the excuses they make.
Let me give you an example. My wife, in recent years, has taken up running. It was a surprise to me; she had ever been keen at all in the past! But she has found a group of like-minded friends and they train together, and the group is growing all the time. She has one friend, however, who spends a good deal of time bemoaning her excess baby weight that isn’t shifting. So the group suggested she join them and start running. Her response to this was ‘I don’t run’. And she refuses to try and continues to moan about her weight. Let’s just look at that statement, ‘I don’t run’. Clearly it’s not actually true. She has two legs and healthy lungs. The only thing stopping her running is her belief about running – that she can’t, or rather won’t. Consequently she doesn’t lose weight and continues to be unhappy about it. If we allow our beliefs to stop us attempting new experiences then we stagnate and we don’t open ourselves up to the possibility of finding we can be good at things and derive pleasure from.
We need to realise that it’s not just us that gets affected by limiting self beliefs. Adults have a lot of influence, both consciously and unconsciously on children who will imitate the behaviour of the important adults in their lives. Needless to say the lady I mentioned earlier is constantly frustrated by her children’s inability to attempt new tasks and their usual response to being asked to do something is to refuse, cry or outright ignore her. She doesn’t recognise that they are imitating her method of dealing with new experiences and that, as the most important person in their lives, she is their role model. I find it very frustrating to watch this happening as her children’s future is being compromised by her attitude. However, in cases like this, it is not possible to effect change externally – however hard it is to stand by and observe, change can only happen when she is willing to take steps.
One of the most rewarding aspects of my work whether I am coaching an individual or presenting to a group is to see the light bulb moment that happens when people recognise their use of limiting self beliefs and see that it is within their power to change if they make the choice to. I can see the leap they have made when they come to set a goal which is always bigger and more ambitious than anything they have considered at the beginning of our session. And the resultant rise in their self-esteem when they achieve their goal is also great to see, their personal growth continues and they see the possibility of moving on to bigger and better experiences. Limiting self-beliefs have a very negative effect on people but another factor that is lesser but, nonetheless, just as insidious is the making of excuses. Making excuses is very common. What is less common is the ability to recognise an excuse as an excuse, instead of passing it off as a reason! When I was swimming competitively I had lots of reasons why I hadn’t made it into the national team. I wasn’t tall enough, my hands and feet were too small to be effective and I lacked natural talent. Of course none of these were true – there were shorter swimmers out there with little feet going five seconds faster than me, but I chose to overlook them in my efforts to make my theory work! It wasn’t a physical inability that was causing me to fail, it was a mental inability to succeed. I had trained my brain to expect failure through my negative approach. What I needed to do, as well as work hard in the pool, was work on my own self-belief, to take the positive from my achievements and build on them, rather than seeing only the bad bits. It was at this point I began to swim faster again and, just as importantly, to enjoy my sport which, in turn, led me to work harder and continue improving my results. Becoming aware of passing off excuses as reasons made me realise when my self-belief was slipping and I could then consciously take steps to make sure I could cope again.
So, what can we do to make sure the children we have influence over have every opportunity to grow into confident learners that love to embrace new experiences? We have to realise that the buck stops with us, that every action, every reaction, every utterance we make is subconsciously shaping the way the children view the world – we can make it a world of possibility or a world of impossibility for them. Which would you prefer? I think the choice is obvious!