Now, another way to look at Beliefs is to look at an area of life where we are not taking the actions we would like to take, or feeling the way we’d like to feel in certain situations, and check in with ourselves and see what Belief might be holding us back.

For example, let’s say I didn’t like talking to Strangers, but I don’t know what the exact belief is holding me back. What I can do to find out the belief that is likely to be holding me back is to ask myself this question:

In order to feel like this or act like this in this situation what must I believe about myself, about others and the world in general?

You’ll be surprised how new ideas and thoughts can spring to mind when you ask better questions of yourself……too often we say “Why can’t I do this?” and answer ourselves in a way that is not very helpful….

So apply this method to anything you want to work on, or what would be even better is to notice over the next little while any bad emotions you get or feelings, or anything you hold back from doing and simply say to yourself:

“In order to feel like this or act like this in this situation what must I believe about myself, about others and the world in general?”

One of the things I’d really like you to do is become more aware of when fears come up or negative emotions, perhaps it’s even when you get annoyed if something is not going your way. Notice these times and ask yourself the above question.

Often we are all too familiar with our day to day emotions that although we feel them, we just accept them, they have always been there. If we take time to notice them and pay attention to them, and ask ourselves the above question, then we become more aware of how we work. Once you know how something works it is so much easier to improve it.

Mark Rhodes

It’s not about getting outside your comfort zone it’s about expanding it.

Some people say that they are happiest inside their comfort zone and therefore design their life and ambitions to not cause them to need to expand or get outside their comfort zones.

This is fine unless of course you hit a problem when you ask yourself this simple question:

“Is living inside my comfort zone giving me the results, the passion, the fun and the excitement I REALLY desire in life?”

If not you need to accept that for things to change, you need to change and part of that could well involve expanding your comfort zone. It’s natural, we all have comfort zones, they are just at different places. If you are not pushing your comfort zone you are not growing as a human being.

Think about what small thing could you do differently this week to what you would normally do, something that will just push your comfort zone a little, where you don’t risk a lot but look back with pride and say “I wouldn’t have done that before”

Perhaps its as simple as making a call when usually you’d send an email “because if felt easier”, maybe it is saying “Good Morning” to someone you pass in a store or see at a bus stop.

The outcome of any of these type of things doesn’t really matter, regardles of outcome you have made progress and expanded your comfort zone by doing something you wouldn’t normally do.

I usually expand my comfort zone by thinking how great it will be when the thing in question is done or over, or I give myself some reward, no matter how small, if I do that thing that feels uncomfortable.

Play with it, and have fun. When you feel that comfort zone feeling come in, get curious, ask yourself “What must I believe about me, the situation or others in order to feel like this?”

Then apply the questions and tasks in the free ebook available on the website.

Thank you to all those that attended, details of the next one about recession success further down but first here are just a few of the comments that came in within hours of the seminar finishing:

“I really enjoyed your seminar. Thanks for inviting me, and thanks for offering it. We all need to know and remember it. You are a living proof that your methods work. It was value from start to finish.

It is phenomenal technology that I could sit in my home in South Africa in a very small village far away from everything, where it is unsafe to go out at night, and I could hear you clearly from the UK! Now we need some Webinar concerts!” R.S.

“Thanks for your inspiring and insightful talk on Thursday. I enjoyed it very much.” E.

“Mark is a kind, friendly, down to earth, highly trusthworthy person.
I listened to your seminar and I found it superb. All those treated concepts were known to me and with your explanations, I truly apprehended them. I enjoyed it heartily. I look forward for the next webseminar.” M.C.

“I only managed to catch the last 15 minutes of the Webinar. I was very upset that I missed most of it, but the little I saw had me totally glued to my screen.” P.H.

“I would like to thank you for a very thought provoking seminar last night. The thing that hit me the most was, whenever I want to do something I see it done, and then do it. But, other times it does not work and only when you said “willpower” did it make sense to me. The times I did not get whatever right was when I was doing it with willpower and forgetting the visualization.” S.D.

“Simply Brilliant – Thanks for your valuable insight and guidance during the last hour.

I’m smiling and laughing as I type this – can I do it? I have requested your free eBook to overcome the icant virus! – look forward to reading and applying it. “L.B.

“Just wanted to congratulate you on a brilliant webinar.” G.T.

This was a FREE seminar with huge value relating to building a success mindset and being more successful.

I discussed how change occurs and why so often people give up too easily and went on to explain how we should think about the change process and our attempts at change in order to stay with it and make the change.

We also looked at Values, what are our life values, how can we discover and understand them.

There is another free seminar coming up on Thursday 1st October – this time the subject is the mindset needed for “Success in a Recession” how we can maximize our success in current times and avoid the mistakes most people are making right now.

This topic is my most requested topic by companies and networking organisations when I speak at their events.

Booking for this next FREE online seminar opens on Tuesday 15th September so check back at the site then, it will be centre stage of the home page of this site.

Mark Rhodes.

For most of us in addition to our Limiting Beliefs we also have one of them that dominates our thoughts, not usually in the form of the belief but more in the form of what the belief means to our lifes.

You need to uncover your dominant thought, you’ll probably realise it before the end of this article, or you’ll notice it in the next day or two.

It’s the thought that occurs most of the time, most often in the form of a question we keep asking ourselves over and over, trying to get an answer or some internal assurance that everything will be OK.

If you’ve not yet realised what yours is, here are some of the ones my clients have shared with me over the years:

When will I have enough money?
How am I going to meet all the bills this month?
What will they think?
What will people think of me?
Am I going to be ok?
What else is going to go wrong?

and so many others.

What we need to understand firstly is what is our dominant thought? Once we know that we need to ask ourselves what the Belief is behind that, quite simply by asking ourselves:

“What must I believe in order to keep thinking this?”

Ideas will come up and one will feel more true than the others.

For example a client who recently had the dominant thought of “What will people think of me?” realised they must believe they are not good enough. This in turn obviously leads us to the realisation that it’s not really about what other people think, but this statement comes to mind because we ourselves are afraid we might not be good enough.

Once you get to what you believe or “must believe” in order to have that thought you need to realise firstly it is not reality it is just a belief or way of thinking.

The next step is to start to breakdown this belief and that can be done in many ways two of which are:

(1) Make a list of all the reasons why this belief is not true, write down all the arguments, reasons and evidence in your life that actually disprove the belief.  So often our beliefs are generalised statements that get out of hand over time and affect what we notice in the world.
(2) Another way is to use the “I can’t Virus” questions from the free eBook available on this site here

Once we have started to break down the belief come up with a new dominating thought that aknowledges the old one but is an empowering thought that you can start to think of instead, one that points you in the right direction.

You need the persistance and discipline that everytime you notice the old thought coming up you say the new one 5 times or more.

Mark Rhodes

So, what is confidence?

It’s basically how certain we feel about something, be that ourselves in a given situation or an outcome etc.

At the end of the day confidence is a word to describe how we feel about something which comes from whether we have overall limiting beliefs about ourselves or the activity in question, or if we have overall empowering beliefs.

Remove limiting beliefs, build up empowering beliefs, and what do you have? Confidence.

Our “confidence” also forms our Comfort Zone which is also defined by the limiting beliefs we have, our empowering beliefs and our Values.

If you’ve not attended an event or been part of a coaching program with me then a great place to find out more about getting more understanding on Limiting Beliefs and Confidence is in the Free eBook you can download from this website .

Mark Rhodes