Escape from the past

Before you sit down to write your plan to make next year rock, take a few minutes (or longer, if you’re serious about your goals) to decide what you need to unlearn. Over the course of your life, you’ve been infected by certain beliefs that you now hold as truths. You’ve learned to take certain actions based on those beliefs and to avoid other actions, some of which might have helped you produce much greater results.

I won’t lie to you—this isn’t easy to do. But growth only comes when you venture outside your comfort zone.

Escape from old, limiting beliefs and adopt new ones. Nothing has a greater impact on your results than your model of the world. This model is built on all your foundational beliefs, the rules you live by. There is nothing more powerful. And there is nothing so dangerous.

Here are some shockingly difficult questions you need to answer on your way to freedom from limiting beliefs:

• Which of your long-held beliefs are you willing to shed?
• What new beliefs are you willing to adopt to replace those beliefs?
• Do you believe that you need to wait for permission?
• Do you believe the kind of prospecting you don’t like to do doesn’t work anymore?
• Do you believe that your competitors are beating you on price and that there’s nothing you can do about it?
• Do you believe you’re not really big enough to make a difference?

We all have self-limiting beliefs. Each and every one of us believes the lies we tell ourselves because it helps maintain our illusions, our hallucinations and our models of the world.

Write down a long-held belief and then write the opposing belief next to it. Now see if you can make the counter-argument and explore what it would mean for you to hold that belief instead. (Pick a belief that you suspect may no longer be serving you.)