So the next step, Step 2 is to believe and expect that you will achieve those goals, so believing and expecting that you will achieve them. Up until now do you believe and expect that you will achieve your goals? Have you been perhaps waiting to see what might happen rather than committing 100%? E.g. if you know that someone has said oh yeah, I have achieved really good results with this diet plan and you have thought, oh no, that is not for me, I am not willing to commit to that. That is kind of saying I don’t believe or expect that that will work for me or with the sessions that you are coming to here if you are a current client have you been not making the time necessarily to come here as many times as you could be coming really and you haven’t perhaps been believing that this will work for you. It will work for someone else perhaps but it won’t necessarily work for you so you haven’t been believing and expecting that what you are doing to achieve your goals will actually work. Does that make sense? It will all become clear with the activity we are going to do. Some beliefs that you might have might be holding you back and we are going to try and get to the bottom of those beliefs right now in this room. So I have an exercise for you, all you need to do, you don’t need pens or papers, all you need to do is just be open to discovering what some of your, not necessarily negative beliefs, but some of your limiting beliefs may be and what has been holding you back and why perhaps you have not been 1005 committed to achieving your goals in the past and then perhaps you haven’t achieved them in the past because you haven’t been 100% committed. Ok? So we are going to go over some of those now. So you don’t need your pen and paper like I said but you just need to be able to move, so as long as you have enough space, those on the back row if you haven’t then move the chairs forward a little bit. I am going to read out some statements and if you believe that the statement applies to you, so when I read it out you think ‘yes, that’s what I think or that is what I believe about myself, or yes I say that a lot’, if it resonates with you, you need to move. So we will all start sitting down, so when I read a statement out if you think it applies to you then stand up. If you are standing up and I say another one and that applies to you then sit down. So that is the movement that I want you to do, so stand up or sit down. No-one here is that close to anyone else, a couple of you are related so I don’t want you to nudge each other and say that is you and you need to stand up. If you like then close your eyes and try and get into the zone a little bit and be open to experiencing some emotions as well when you are hearing these statements and then we are going to do an exercise based on what we find from this one. So all you need to do right now is listen and move, stand up or sit down if you think it applies to you.
So, I don’t have the right personality to succeed. I can’t keep up. I lack focus. I’m not worth it. Now is not the time. I will get overwhelmed. I can’t have it all. I don’t have what it takes. I don’t know enough. I don’t have enough time. I’m a failure. I have to be fake for people to like me. I can’t do this. I’m no good at dieting. I can’t handle more things to do. Who am I to be successful? I don’t have all the answers. I won’t be able to handle extra commitments. I’ll have to do a half-hearted job. I will spread myself too thin. I don’t deserve this. This is hard work. It will all be taken away when I get it. I can’t afford to get help. I don’t have money to spend on myself. I am already too busy. I am too disorganised. I am not motivated enough. I won’t enjoy it. It won’t work for me. I won’t be able to have a life. What if people laugh at me? I will have to work too hard to succeed. People won’t like me if I am successful. It can’t be easy, it must be hard. I might have to give up too much time. I have kids, I have to put them first. What if I get good results and then loose it all? I can’t be a good parent and be in good shape, something has to give. Who do I think I am anyway? My partner will leave me if I am fitter than him. What will my family think? What will my friends think? I never succeed so why even bother?
So now everyone sit down and if you go to your first Activity SheetActivity Sheet there should be a list of the potential obstacles that I just read out. What I want you to do is to go through that and circle or star or highlight all of the ones that you moved on. So when you think about what your old belief was which is basically what the statement there that we have written down in front of you. Have a think about some of the highlighted ones, where they came from. For example, if you highlighted I’m not worth it, where might that have come from? Has someone told you that? So beliefs are formed when someone with authority tells you something. It can usually be from childhood or early ages so parents who are obviously authority, teachers, grandparents, so someone with authority, so when you are small someone who is bigger than you, that is automatically authority. They are bigger than you, even when you are at school and one of the older children tells you something, you believe them because actually if someone older has told you then they have authority over you so you should believe what they say. So someone with authority. Or when they do it with impact, so if someone shouts at you, that is going to emphasise it a lot more. So if I shouted at Joanne for example and said ‘you are amazing’ loudly, does that stick with you a little bit? You are not just going to ignore that are you? If I shouted you are amazing over and over constantly I would like to think that you would walk away going, yeah I am pretty damn amazing. You would start to believe it; I am amazing because Becky said it. Even just the fact I am stood up and you guys are sat down, I am presenting to you and I have a bit more authority right now over you guys. So whatever I tell you now I would like to think you would say, actually yes, that makes sense, it must be true as she is saying it stood up in front of me and she knows what she is talking about. So there is authority, impact and repetition. When someone tells you something over and over. For example if one of your beliefs was I’m not worth it, perhaps someone has told you, it doesn’t matter who it was, perhaps someone has told you that you are not worth it, you are not important. Maybe not necessarily those words but they might have said something that has lead to you putting it into those words and they might have not meant it to affect you so much that you had to take it to heart, but it does, if someone with authority or doing it repeatedly or with impact you will start to believe it and that is a limiting belief for you.
So think about where they come from. Is there a possibility they might be false? Is there a possibility that that person who told you that you are not worth it is lying? Who are they to say you are not worth whatever the value is. Actually you are worth it and they are wrong. Is there a possibility that that could be true? How would you life change if you chose not to believe whatever it is you have written down? How would your life change? If you chose to believe that you are worth it and when you invest money or time into yourself you can say you are worth it. You deserve to have that and you deserve to achieve your goals then how would your life change if you started to change your thoughts? What could you replace the old belief with that could be aligned with your goals that you have written down at the start?
Some of you have already started, you might have done this one before so what you are going to do is on the worksheet that you did at the start on the back there is a table that has 10 lines in it and 2 columns. I want you to quickly jot down 10 because there are 10 lines, but if you have more limiting beliefs than that, that is fine as well but we just need to do a bit of extra work on them. Write down 10 limiting beliefs in the left hand column and then write a new belief. Example – I am not worth it becomes I am most definitely worth it. Or you could say, I deserve this. You use the language that you want to but we are going to write down the opposite so your new belief will be a new positive, helpful belief. What I would like you to do at home is to be reinforcing those new beliefs with yourself; you can work with a partner if you want, me or someone you know, a partner or a colleague or friend or whoever. So someone with authority, so someone you respect and are going to listen to so that when they tell you something you believe it is true. So someone with impact. A good way of doing that if you are on your own is to look at yourself in the mirror, eye to eye, look at yourself eye to eye in the mirror and saying the new belief. So if it’s I’m not worth it, it’s saying I am most definitely worth it. I am worth it 100%. I am most definitely worth every penny that I spend on myself. Whatever it is look at yourself in the mirror and say it 6 times, that will really help you doing that every day. You can also do it in your car if you drive to work, or if you are walking it is good to talk out loud. It is always better to say it out loud than in your head. It does help saying it in your head but saying it out loud reinforces it more and the repetitiveness of doing it 6 times every day for 2 or 3 weeks will really help you to change.