135. 3 Beliefs That Keep You Stuck

Episode Transcript

Verbs Boyer:
Blake, Courtney, first of all, Courtney, I’m just glad you’re back. It was just me and Blake. We thought you would never return, but yet you’re here again. And so, I would say I’m grateful.

Blake Stratton:
We lost half our subscriber base.

Courtney Baker:
Give false-

Blake Stratton:
Couple episodes, is all it took.

Courtney Baker:
It’s good to be back.

Verbs Boyer:
There were many Peloton jokes going on in your absence-

Courtney Baker:
Oh, no [crosstalk 00:00:21]-

Verbs Boyer:
I want to tell you, I underscored none of them. I supported none.

Courtney Baker:
I need to catch up on those episodes. So, I don’t want to say that . . . it sounds like I don’t listen.

Blake Stratton:
It sounds like you’re telling the truth, is what it sounds like. You don’t want to do that here for focus.

Courtney Baker:
Well, they haven’t come out yet. I can’t listen to them.

Blake Stratton:
Oh, that’s true.

Courtney Baker:
It’s a hidden secret.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. I’m just trying to figure out a reasonable pivot here guys.

Blake Stratton:
Be unreasonable with it.

Verbs Boyer:
All right. So, guys [crosstalk 00:00:53]-

Blake Stratton:
Be like, wait a second.

Verbs Boyer:
Those dots don’t connect. So, guys, we are talking about limiting beliefs, liberating truths today. And I think most of us have gotten to the point, or hopefully we’ve gotten to the point just in our own thought, life, or in our own mindset that there’s something that I’m believing, that is hindering me for moving forward. I don’t know if you guys have ever felt like that, either one of you, but how much of an impact has a limiting belief or for that matter, a liberating truth, had on your life up to this point?

Blake Stratton:
How much of an impact? I mean, it’s everything. I think everything is a reflection of what we’re believing, not to be too deep too fast, someone just, “Oh, Blake, let me have a drink of coffee first, man, it’s Monday morning.” Where it’s most obvious is, when you feel stuck. Because stuckness is always a sign of a belief issue. And have I ever felt stuck? I would say only a few times in the last 24 hours.

Blake Stratton:
I’ve felt stuck . . . I was looking at this time and I was like . . . Oh, wow, this is like last night, I was totally feeling like, Boy, this isn’t how it was supposed to go, or I’m not where I think I should be, or I should be further along, or Am I just treading water here? Am I really moving to where I want? All of those types of questions and they can build on one another, and if you don’t tend to those thoughts almost like weeds in a garden, it can choke out a lot of your potential. And yeah, I felt that in a massive way.

Blake Stratton:
I feel like, as I age, I only become more and more aware of how connected the image I have in my mind … I was like, a hot air balloon, how they have all the ropes connected to the ground so it doesn’t float away. It’s almost like, one by one, I’m trying to snip away the ropes so it can float up. And then one day you guys will just be serenely cruising across the skyline and just waving, in my hot air balloon liberated, basking in my liberating truthful self.

Verbs Boyer:
Courtney, what about you? Do you feel like you’re a person that realizes I’m about to be stuck, or do you only realize it once you’re stuck? As far as maybe some limiting beliefs you’ve been.

Courtney Baker:
I would like to think I’ve worked on this quite a bit, especially honestly, within the last year. And I would like to say that I’ve made a lot of progress in this area. And so, I’m actively working to try to catch those things before, and really evaluate the thinking before, but there are certainly times, I mean, like Blake said, where you don’t and then you find yourself like, “Oh, okay, wow,” that I am stuck.

Courtney Baker:
Although I will say that’s the here and now, I would say in my lifetime, and I’ve talked about this on the podcast, I had a really strong limiting belief about having a career, and achieving in a career at a pace that I felt I was capable of and having children. That was a really big limiting belief there. And that was one, probably the biggest one, that I’ve had to overcome, that I’m aware of. I think-

Verbs Boyer:
Sure.

Courtney Baker:
Sometimes we have these limiting beliefs that we don’t … Again, it’s like, we don’t know them until we get stuck and then we have to examine to find them. But in my life, that’s probably the one that’s been the most prominent.

Verbs Boyer:
And even going with Blake’s garden example, I feel limiting beliefs are like the weeds, to where you can continue to work throughout your life eliminating and pulling up these weeds, but chances are, they’re still going to creep up in some way, shape, form, or fashion as you continue to grow.

Verbs Boyer:
So, there’s like, hey, this is the picture, perfect garden we want to be able to grow into, or be able to see come into fruition in our lives, and with each new thing that comes along, slowly but surely there’s a limiting belief that will creep in to undermine some of those liberating truths or even the newness of what you’re experiencing at that point in your lives.

Verbs Boyer:
So, today we’re going to walk through three beliefs that you need to abandon to really get unstuck and get into those liberating truths in your life. Welcome to another episode of Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. So, you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs here with Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to you two.

Blake Stratton:
Happy Monday to you, Verbs.

Courtney Baker:
Happy Monday.

Verbs Boyer:
So, guys, let’s get into this. We’re talking about limiting beliefs and liberating truths today, but what is the first belief that we would need to abandon to just make progress in our mindset here?

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. Well, the first one, this might seem obvious, but the first one is just beliefs about yourself or myself in this case obviously we don’t want to eliminate all of our beliefs about ourselves. We want to keep the ones that are positive, encouraging, that are affirming thoughts, we want to keep those around obviously, they really are the things that help us drive forward, but, unfortunately, it’s a lot easier to buy into the opposite end of those types of beliefs, the thing is like, “Oh, I’m not good at money, and I never can save.” Or like, “I’m just not smart enough to apply for that job or that promotion, I’m not a good writer,” things like that, take more prominence in our mindset.

Courtney Baker:
It’s especially possible that some of those beliefs have been true in the past. I think that’s what makes them so hard. It almost reminds me of … Did y’all ever read The Hobbit in school growing up? I can’t remember what grade I read The Hobbit. None of y’all read The Hobbit in school?

Verbs Boyer:
We did not. Anne of Green Gables, yes. Not The Hobbit.

Blake Stratton:
No. But I know The Hobbit. I know The Hobbit. It’s like, “Luke, I’m your father, and there’s this big deal, and they have a light saber fight.” I know it.

Courtney Baker:
So, The Hobbit, whenever I read it in school, it’s probably like sixth or seventh grade. I don’t know if that’s right. I don’t even know what [crosstalk 00:07:51] for 10. Okay. So, I read that book, and it was hard at that time to read, especially like all the names for the different cities. And I just remember it was hard. And so, when the movie, The Hobbit, came out, I was like, “Oh, I’m going to read The Hobbit again.” And I went into that book thinking, “Oh, this is going to be a really hard read.” Guys, The Hobbit is not a hard read, but it was like, because that had been true in the past-

Verbs Boyer:
Yes.

Courtney Baker:
The way that I approached The Hobbit as a grown adult was, “Oh, this is going to be a hard read,” but that had stuck with me. And again, it was true in the past, it was a challenging read when I was a child, but it’s no longer true. And I laughed at myself. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is hilarious, that I held that over.” And that’s a silly example, but that can happen in every realm of our lives. And we hopefully, are going to give you some ways to figure out how to get around those, or how to see those clearly for what they are.

Verbs Boyer:
I agree with the fact that we tend to believe them as true because they have been true in the past. And it’s almost like if you leave that limiting belief unchallenged, untested, and just say, “Well, I can’t do this, or I don’t do this, or I’m not cut out for whatever it is.” But then, once it’s challenged later on, again, as you grow as a human being, as a person, you come in to experiences new mindsets, and then you revisit that limiting belief at that point, you’re probably a whole different person who thinks differently, you’ve discovered, you’ve already had some breakthroughs in other areas of your life to where you’re willing to challenge that limiting belief again, and crack open that book of The Hobbit.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah, that-

Verbs Boyer:
And read it like in two hours.

Blake Stratton:
I think to try to make this practical or real for you listening, instead of just asking the question, “Hey, where do I have a limiting belief?” Maybe just ask yourself the question. Where do I currently feel stuck in my life? Where am I currently feeling stuck? Where am I currently feeling bad about myself? Or where am I current not getting … Maybe you don’t even feel stuck, but you’re hitting a wall repeatedly, you’re continually not getting the result that you want to get, and you’re trying tactic after tactic, but the results are never really what you want, and you’re feeling discouraged.

Blake Stratton:
I think maybe that’s not to dwell on what’s not going well, but when we’re talking about where there’s opportunity for a different belief about yourself, so much of those experiences come back to something, a perspective that we have, that we didn’t sometimes even know that we had.

Blake Stratton:
So, if I think about where these come up, probably most often for people is, finances, relationships and work. And so, maybe for you, you’re like, “Oh, I don’t have the relationship in my life that I want yet.” And that’s really hard. And I feel stuck. And maybe, you’ve gone on some dates and you’ve talked to some dudes that were bad news, and you go, “Oh, there’s no good people, there’s no good guys in my area.” Right? Or online dating or whatever, I don’t know. I dated and got married I think before the app thing was like, had reached-

Courtney Baker:
[inaudible 00:11:13] say, this example is really cracking me up right now. It’s good. It’s like-

Blake Stratton:
It’s like a lot of … I’m definitely shooting from the hip here, because I’m happily married and have been for a while. And also I met my wife when I was a 12 year old. So, I’ve kind of had my eye in her for a little while. But, I know that’s a real thing for people.

Blake Stratton:
I’ve had conversations with good friends, and it’s this feeling of stuckness. And you may find yourself as you’re thinking through that, just discovering, “Oh, I’m not good at approaching people that I’m interested in,” for instance, or I’m not confident enough to ask this person out, or something like that, or that’s something that I’m more bold … I’m a shy person or I’m an introverted person. So, therefore, I have to be stuck here is the answer, that means there’s probably a limiting belief about yourself. Right? And that could apply to any category of life, but I think that’s what you guys were saying earlier.

Blake Stratton:
I think it’s always, or maybe not always, but it’s typically an experience that we’ve had in the past, or something that someone that was part of shaping our identity, whether it’s a parent, a coach, a sibling, or just other kids on the playground, people that were speaking into our life and our identity at those formative years, so often it’s like, “Oh yeah, that’s where I picked that thing up.” And how ridiculous is it to say, “Oh, so the next 40 years of my life and potential to have great relationships is going to be influenced by a conversation a kid had with me when I was seven.”

Courtney Baker:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
Right?

Courtney Baker:
Well, I think where this is really interesting, going back to your example of, if you started to say, “There’s no good dudes,” I think that’s what you said, in my area, I think where this becomes really practical is like that thinking impacts your actions. If that’s your thinking … Like I’m probably not going to go out, and try to meet new people or, or take the risk to start new conversations with people.

Courtney Baker:
If you’re thinking is, “Hey, there is somebody out there for me, I’m just in the process of finding them.” That’s a different place to your actions from that thinking, are going to produce better results. And I think so many times we think that it’s our actions that get our results. But again, it is actually much deeper. It goes all the way back to our thinking, which is why we talk about this topic so much, because it’s really, really important.

Blake Stratton:
So, I have a real-life example fresh as last night, I was thinking about this. I didn’t know I had this belief about … I don’t even know how to phrase it, but almost this thing of “I’m too young, or I’m too inexperienced, or I don’t have the resume to do X, Y, or Z thing. And I look … I won’t say the names of any of these people, but I just started looking at people that I noticed I follow online who are doing things that I would like to be doing in my life at sub-capacity. And I was doing the Wikipedia search on the origin story. And the first [inaudible 00:14:42] was the first guy I looked at was a year younger than me, and I’m like, “Oh, why am I making up this narrative?”

Blake Stratton:
And then I look back at the history, and it’s like, Oh. No one gave this person some honorary award. I heard Bear Grylls speak … Bear Grylls is the opposite. He climbed Everest when he was like 17 or 18. He deserves it. Right. But a lot of folks I was looking at, I was like, wait, they haven’t done … Or when they first started doing this thing, they weren’t a known person. They didn’t have any major accomplishment.

Blake Stratton:
In fact, a lot of them were living in their parent’s basement and just trying to figure out what they were going to do. And then all of a sudden, one thing, they started building momentum. So, it helped dispel this belief that I had of … wait a second, I didn’t even realize that I’m not, as you said Courtney, I’m not acting like my future self wants to be, because I have this belief that my future self can never arrive, because I haven’t accomplished enough yet, or I’m not old enough yet. Does that make sense?

Verbs Boyer:
Blake, let me ask you this before we go to the next one.

Blake Stratton:
No, this is not a therapy session, Verbs. No follow ups.

Verbs Boyer:
It’s too late.

Blake Stratton:
Don’t go down this path.

Verbs Boyer:
It’s too late. Strapping on the tanks, we’re going scuba. What would you foresee 60-year-old Blake saying to today Blake? What advice would you give him concerning Young Blake’s limiting beliefs?

Blake Stratton:
60-year-old Blake, what advice would he give?

Verbs Boyer:
Yap.

Blake Stratton:
Oh, gosh.

Verbs Boyer:
Specifically about limiting beliefs that he may be experiencing now.

Blake Stratton:
[crosstalk 00:16:24] there’s a lot of …

Verbs Boyer:
There’s a … I can go Many ways.

Blake Stratton:
A lot of feedback he might give me at this point?

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
60-year-old, as he runs his hands through his thick, wavy hair and you can’t help but see the pectoral muscles just flex and he’s got funny old guy abs, like still has that. Let me lose … I think he would say, it’s simpler and easier than you think. Which goes to the whole … We talked about … I don’t know if this will have made the cut or not but, Nick, our producer and I are both [inaudible 00:17:07], and part of that whole psychology is, things just have to be complicated.

Blake Stratton:
And because I’m such a special unicorn, this stuff won’t work for me, right? And I think that’s where a lot of my limiting beliefs might originate from, is that, it has to be difficult, too complicated, or whatever, and when I think about that, I mean, I don’t even have to be 60. When I look back at 20-year-old Blake or 25 year old Blake, five year ago, it would just be, “Hey, everything’s working for you, it’s not happening to you, and it’s simpler than you realize.”

Verbs Boyer:
All right. So next is, beliefs about others. I think this is a super big one, if I could use that adjective. I’ll comment later, but I want you guys to comment first, just as far as beliefs about others, because this one is huge because, now it’s going from internal to external, and how we view those around us and how we move about different groups and environments and all that kind of thing. But what’s your, guys, thoughts on beliefs about others?

Courtney Baker:
The other day, I had a great example of this. There was a car in front of me and my daughter who’s five and a half, and the car in front of me … And I was like, he or she, I should say, just turned into a road. And it was on a highway that was like 55 miles an hour. And I was like, “Man, use your blinker.” And my five-and-a-half-year-old daughter said, “What do you mean mom?” And I said, “Well, he didn’t use his blinker, to let me know that he was turning, and so it was hard to hit my brakes to slow down.” And she said, “Well, he must not know that he needs to use his blinker.” And I thought, what an interesting … Yeah, that is another interpretation of what just happened. Now we Would all be like, “That person had to take a driver’s test.” Well, it could’ve been a somebody, a teenager-

Blake Stratton:
Hey, we’re in Tennessee. Maybe not-

Courtney Baker:
Maybe not. But I just, in that moment-

Verbs Boyer:
Easy.

Courtney Baker:
[inaudible 00:19:26] to myself, that her interpretation and my interpretation, obviously we’re very different. But also produce a different set of actions. If I would’ve looked at it and be like, “Well, they must not know how to use a blinker, it doesn’t produce road rage.” And my thinking of like, “Oh, come on, use your blinker, this is so frustrating, I could have hit you.” It was just a relief funny moment.

Courtney Baker:
But I think, again, the idea here is that, this thinking that these perceptions that we put on other people can be unfair to them, and can create distance between you and another person, that sometimes hard to pinpoint. But I think that’s because comes back to this thinking, that we’re crediting this thinking as facts when really it’s interpretations on things that are happening.

Verbs Boyer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Blake Stratton:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That’s a great point. I see this a lot in my job. I mostly have sales conversations all day, most days. And I notice so often that if I have a thought about somebody, that isn’t really serving the conversation like, “Oh, this person …” they won’t want to invest because I could just tell. Then that can affect … I start treating them like someone that doesn’t want to invest, and then guess what it actually it’s circular because, then they don’t invest, and then I go see, it reaffirms my judgment of my assessment versus going, “They seem reserved.” Something must be under the surface because, of course they want to invest, but something’s holding them back. Right?

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
There’s I can’t remember-

Courtney Baker:
They’re reserved and may need to know more facts about the program than other people, or may need to ask more questions.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
Absolutely. And there’s advice … I can’t remember which book I even read this from, so, apologies if you’re listening, I’m sure all the greats of sales are listening to this podcast just for their own personal productivity, so, if you’re listening and I’m quoting you, I’m sorry. But the advice was just, “The best time to make sales calls is right after you close a deal.” And nothing’s changed about the prospect, but what’s changed is your belief about yourself and your belief about prospects, right? Because you’re coming off of that recent history of like, “Oh, yeah. People do want to buy, and I can sell,” right? And it’s so interesting how our circumstances can really affect those beliefs.

Blake Stratton:
But just the awareness of that, even if you’re not coming off of a sale can affect … At least in my case, as we’re having this conversation, I go, “Oh yeah.” I could check those beliefs as they’re forming, even in real time with prospects. Yeah.

Courtney Baker:
I think one of the most dangerous beliefs about others that I see occasionally in myself is like, when I perceive, or I have a belief that someone thinks I’m failing, it’s usually situational. It’s not like, “Oh, this person always thinks I’m failing.” But like, if there’s you a promotion that doesn’t go the way that it was expected, and I think, “Oh, that person thinks I’m failing,” And then I start to see everything they do as like, affirmation to that belief, when really it’s just because I’m looking at everything through that funnel.

Courtney Baker:
And what can happen is all of a sudden you start going into a spiral. And I’ve seen this with people that I’ve worked with before. It seems like such a small beginning, but it starts this whole loop of failure, you start seeing people, they think I’m failing, you just start reaffirming, and again, it’s like that self-fulfilling, that circular thing, you start actually failing, because you’re telling yourself, “Oh, they think I’m failing, then I am failing,” and then you get the results from that.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. You start acting like someone that deserves that type of attention.

Courtney Baker:
Right.

Verbs Boyer:
That’s good.

Blake Stratton:
It’s that … This comes up even in my marriage a lot. One of the best parts about marriage is that it can unravel, or reveal all these limiting beliefs that you have about yourself, that you have about other people because it can come out, in that context of marriage. I see that a lot where, if I’m thinking something about, “Oh, this is what my wife is like, or this is what she’s thinking about me,” it’s like, let’s say the thought is she doesn’t understand me. Yeah, she doesn’t understand me, right? Then all of a sudden I start acting in this way or I withdraw, or I don’t share things, and then guess what? She actually doesn’t understand me. But it’s not for her fault, it’s really just because I’ve started creating that environment where I’m hard to understand and then its a “See, I knew you didn’t understand.”

Courtney Baker:
Yeah.

Verbs Boyer:
I’ll say too. I think another important one that I often affects what we believe about others is like what Courtney mentioned, there’s experiences that inform our beliefs, or experiences that we’ve held onto as far as how we interpreted those experiences, especially and obviously over the last few years, it’s just been … Has risen to the top, but especially culturally, whether its ethnically or culture in general, whenever we’re moving in different spaces, there’s thoughts that we have about certain people.

Verbs Boyer:
So, if it’s me, as a person of color, going into an environment where I may be the only one or one of a few, it’s easy for me to think, “Okay, I have to be on heightened alert, because I know that . . .” Or I would think that there’s people in this room that may see me a certain way or vice versa.

Verbs Boyer:
And so, I think it’s important for all of us to understand that these beliefs about others are shaped often because of, maybe it is an experience, maybe it’s something we viewed in the media, maybe it’s a very personal experience or interaction that shaped the belief about someone else, or maybe it could be something as simple as just a cultural thing that we’re confronting, that shapes that belief that we have about others, but may have only been specific to that interaction or that transaction that we’ve experienced, that we’ve gone through.

Verbs Boyer:
So, I think we all just need to be mindful of that, just as much as we are mindful about what we believe about ourselves, and even as we go into this next one, just to be aware that I can’t let one situation, one interaction, forever interpret my dealings with … Again, we talked about in a business sense, but especially culturally and all of that, because I feel we can cheat ourselves out of a life-giving relationship when we have those limiting beliefs about other people around us.

Courtney Baker:
I feel like what you just shared is really, I mean, a great segue into this point of like, we take experiences instead of applying them just to one individual, to another person, we actually apply it to a whole group of people and make a global belief about the situation. For example, we may say like, “The politicians are all crooked, they’re all terrible.” Or the leadership in this company just doesn’t understand the people on the ground doing the day in day out work, we just take a-

Verbs Boyer:
Kind of broad stroke people.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. We just basically broad strokes. And sometimes these can be very powerful, and sometimes very hard to identify. I think, those examples are funny. The funniest one in our script though is, men are emotionally constipated, it’s like talking to a wall a…

Verbs Boyer:
Emotionally constipated.

Courtney Baker:
Oh, my gosh. I’m going to make T-shirt for y’all. Yeah. And so, I think what that does though, when we have those beliefs about the world, just to what you shared, Verbs, it really does narrow our view of the world. We narrow the possibilities of what might be possible for us. And because of that, we put up defenses around those things because again, we so rarely see these things as beliefs, we actually see them as facts. We see our thinking as facts, which is the really scary part in all of this.

Verbs Boyer:
That’s a good point, Courtney, because I think we can see them as facts again, as we mentioned, because they may have been true in the past, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t broaden our foundation of how we view the world, just because of one thing that we experienced. Because again, I think we’re cutting ourselves off at the legs, if we continue to believe that about how the world functions or how we perceive it to function.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. I can relate to this one specifically when it comes to money, and now that I feel … And I still probably have a ways to go with this. There’s always new levels probably to ascend when it comes to what you believe, but it’s funny looking back to 10 years later, going to starting that journey, seeing people who are both angry, that they don’t have money, but simultaneously angry at people who do have money. And I think that’s very bizarre. It feels logical when you’re in it, it’s like, “Oh rich people.” But what you don’t realize is like, well, if you believe that it’s bad to be rich, then by your thoughts, by your actions, by your … How you connect with people or what you choose to ask, if you have a hard time asking for appropriate compensation and it’s like, you’ll end up staying broke.

Verbs Boyer:
That’s a good one.

Blake Stratton:
It’s pretty logical, right? If you aren’t where you’re at financially, that’s a great way to tell that you have limiting beliefs about money, or about wealth, or about people that can accumulate money, or can charge a lot for what they do. For me, that was just massive to go through this and go, “Oh, I didn’t realize.” I actually thought it was selfish, to want to have money.

Blake Stratton:
So, of course I don’t have money because, I don’t want to be a selfish person. Or I believe that if I have a lot of money, then I may have to in some ways hurt other people. Right? Because there’s a limited amount of money, and so therefore, I should only have what I absolutely need. Right? That’s not actually true, but I believed it was true, and so therefore, I only ever had what I actually truly needed to literally survive.

Blake Stratton:
So, I spent a lot of years being super, super broke and I don’t think it was because I was untalented or because I didn’t try at different things I did, but just through reading, through mentorship, through examinations, through study, unraveled some of these beliefs about money, and it’s made a massive … I mean that type of work is some of the most important, probably I’ve done in my adult life, just because of the actual impact that it has had, in every other area.

Verbs Boyer:
This is a popular mantra. I think over the last few years we’ve heard it more is, just live your truth. But I think in the case of even what we talked about today, if you’re perceiving something to be true, that truth could still be limited, but there’s opportunity for you to have the attached liberating truth to that as far as what could be possible, what could be true, to counteract that limiting belief. So, to say, not to say-

Courtney Baker:
That is really … I’ve never made that connection-

Verbs Boyer:
I didn’t either until just now.

Courtney Baker:
What’s really was … Yeah.

Verbs Boyer:
I think I just impressed myself, but thank you for underscoring. But I’m joking.

Courtney Baker:
That’s a really, yeah.

Verbs Boyer:
To say that, hey, that as long as it’s a healthy truth, yes, live it to your heart’s content. But just make sure you’re examining the state of what we are calling true. So, it may feel really familiar at this point, but you don’t have to stay stuck where you are. You can live more fully into the life you want by abandoning your limiting beliefs about yourself, other people and the world around you, Courtney, Blake, any final thoughts for our Focus on This listeners? This was a good episode.

Blake Stratton:
Do we have time for one last scuba?

Courtney Baker:
I think so.

Verbs Boyer:
Go for it.

Blake Stratton:
What I would say a really important question is, how do I know if I have a limiting belief? Or how do I know if what I’m believing is helping me, or hurting me, or if I need to turn over a rock? And I’m sure you guys have good thoughts on this, but what comes to my mind is, how do you feel? Because what’s anchoring your feelings are perspectives. So, if you are feeling really excited, really joyful, really generous, really at peace, there is a good chance that there’s perspectives that are liberating, that are causing those feelings that are energy giving, life giving for you and everyone around you.

Blake Stratton:
Conversely, if you feel very frustrated or every time you go to work, you start to feel annoyed, or frustrated, or angry, that’s a great place to start, and just simply pull out a journal and go, “I feel angry because, dot, dot, dot.” And honestly, that’s just where it begins, I think.

Blake Stratton:
There’s a lot we could talk about how to really unpack stuff, but that’s a great place to start, because you go, well, I feel angry because so and so just doesn’t understand me, right? Well, that’s a belief about them. That belief is generating this feeling, which is then probably generating a bad day in the making, right? So, that would be my final thought is just to examine your emotions and let those illuminate where you have those limiting beliefs and take it from there.

Verbs Boyer:
So, thank you for joining us on Focus on This. This is the most productive podcast on the internet. So, please share it with your friends. Don’t forget to join our Full Focus Planner Community, right there on Facebook. We’ll be here next week with another, great episode. But until then, stay-

Courtney Baker:
Stay focused.

Blake Stratton:
Stay focused.

Verbs Boyer:
Focused.