171. 3 Steps to Stop Holding Yourself Back

Episode Transcript

Verbs Boyer:
Courtney, here we are again. I feel like it’s been a while, but in podcast land, it’s only been a week since last Monday, since we’ve spoken.

Courtney Baker:
Verbs don’t give away our secrets here out of the gate, but yes, it is really good to see you. Blake, hey buddy, how’s it going?

Blake Stratton:
Hi. Hi. I’m, I’m great. I’m a little sleepy, but the Stratton family’s been really productive recently, so we’re a little tired over here.

Courtney Baker:
That’s good.

Verbs Boyer:
Is it just regular holiday hustle and bustle or other things going on?

Blake Stratton:
Definitely some bustle. Definitely some bustle. I don’t know if you guys could sense, in the greater Nashville area, you probably sensed some more handsomeness in the atmosphere. And that’s because my son has arrived. My wife has given birth. Unto us. A son is born. Unto us a child is given, and his name is Elliot and he’s the best. Mostly hangs with his mom these days. But, we’re super happy and a little sleepy. If I slur my speech, ladies and gentlemen, it’s only because I’m so excited about perfect today.

Courtney Baker:
Let’s put some actual hours. How many hours of sleep did you get last night? By the way, congratulations. We did all the congratulations a second ago.

Verbs Boyer:
Right.

Blake Stratton:
People are like, “Wow, Courtney. Great.” That’s awesome. You guys really care. Thanks. It’s fine. It’s not that big a deal.

Courtney Baker:
What was hours sleep count last night?

Blake Stratton:
We definitely got to three hours Now. Did we get to four and a half? I don’t know. It’s hazy. It was hazy in there. It depends on what you define as sleep.

Courtney Baker:
I’m talking about your sleep. How many hours did you get?

Blake Stratton:
That’s what I’m talking about.

Courtney Baker:
Okay. Okay. I thought you had switched to Elliot and I was also concerned. Poor guy.

Blake Stratton:
Oh no, no. He’s sleeping, but he’s a little squirmy right now. He’s a little squirmy right now through the nights, through the nighttime. He thinks nighttime is party time. I get it. I get it. We’ve been playing a lot of No To Verbs in the house. He’s probably one to turn up the jams at night. Shake a tail feather.

Verbs Boyer:
That’s how to turn up a child, right there.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. Trying to teach him early. Get his groove going. But anyway. A little sleepy, but very excited. Very happy.

Courtney Baker:
That’s awesome. I’m so excited for y’all.

Blake Stratton:
All the parents listening, you guys know this. If I had gotten four hours of sleep last night and I didn’t have a child, I absolutely would’ve canceled. I was like, “Guys, I can’t do it. I can’t record the podcast.” There’s a level. You mine this level of dad strength or mom strength and moms have an even deeper reservoir of this, I think. But, you have this extra gear that you can tap into. I’m like, “Yeah, okay, let’s do it. I’ve got my coffee. I’m ready to go.”

Courtney Baker:
I actually love this because I think you just played into what we’re going to be talking about today. Actually, I think it is all about the thinking that you went into last night and into today with. Although, I do like the idea that we have mom superpowers that are stronger than everybody else’s. But, more likely it’s really about the thinking. Because I found the same thing when I had my daughter. If I was getting this little sleep, normally I would be the worst. But, I’m doing it and it’s working. I think it’s all about your thinking. Today we’re going to get into that a little bit.

Blake Stratton:
Oftentimes it starts between the ears. Our thinking is what holds us back. Today we’re going to dig into it. We’re going to do a little scuba diving, if you will. Talk about the limiting beliefs. The stuff that you can’t see that’s really holding you back. Before you set your goals for this upcoming year, you got to address your thinking. We’re going to share three steps for you to stop holding yourself back.

Verbs Boyer:
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 Blaker. Blaker? Courtney Blaker.

Blake Stratton:
Courtney Blaker.

Courtney Baker:
Courtney Blaker.

Nick Jaworski:
Courtney Blaker Stratton. Is that something?

Verbs Boyer:
Courtney Blaker Stratton.

Courtney Baker:
That’s our band.

Verbs Boyer:
I’m Verbs here with Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to you all.

Courtney Baker:
Happy Monday.

Blake Stratton:
Happy Monday unto you. All right, you guys we’re talking about limiting beliefs. I love this topic. But you know what? I used to not love this topic, but then I overcame my limiting belief about it. You got to go easy on me. The dad jokes are going to be a little raw. I’m a little sleep deprived.

Courtney Baker:
I know.

Blake Stratton:
All right? Okay, I’m sorry.

Courtney Baker:
I’ve seen this happen.

Blake Stratton:
I heard 50 people unsubscribed. People just unsubscribed just now, I heard it.

Courtney Baker:
Every time a new dad has a child, just off the charts with the dad jokes.

Blake Stratton:
All right. We got three steps to overcome these limiting beliefs that hold us back. I’ll let one of y’all take the lead here. What’s the first step?

Verbs Boyer:
Step number one is finding your limiting belief. Finding your limiting belief. Blake, you mentioned something at the top of the podcast where you said you had to go and find another gear to really kick into, to push past the sleepiness, and actually log on for this podcast recording this morning. First of all, high fives and kudos to you for doing that. But, I do think it is, in a similar way, we do have to do some work to actually identify these limiting beliefs that pop up because chances are it’s just so embedded into our normal way of thinking, our normal conversation.
We don’t necessarily catch it when it comes out. There’s three categories. Limiting beliefs can be about the world, it can be about others, and then it could also be about yourself. These clue words that you might hear yourself saying, whether it be in conversation or maybe just internally, are words like, “I can’t do this at this stage of life because of my age.” Or, “Always something happens when I try to engage in this sort of activity. Whether it be building a business, whether it be starting some kind of a new venture.” Or just simply never. The word never comes out quite a bit. These are some of the words that you may find yourself saying. Once you hear them, you want to identify those, capture those to actually get on to the next phase of where your thinking needs to go.

Courtney Baker:
I think this is one of those times where we have to reset within ourselves and acknowledge, even though it feels like our thinking is truth, that it’s not. Because of how our brains work, we think it is all factual. The things happening in our head. I think it also gives you a sense of compassion for yourself because sometimes we have limiting beliefs because we’ve gone through something that was painful or hard. We did fail at something or something didn’t work the way that we wanted to. But, what happens is we take those stories and apply them as truths for the future. Have compassion for yourself. Most likely it was a hard lesson that you learned. But, what we want to do is help you find where those limiting beliefs are and see how we can rewrite those.

Blake Stratton:
I remember being in a specific sales role. This comes up a lot I think in that arena of life. If you’re listening and you are in sales, maybe you hear yourself saying, “It’s just this time of year.” Or, “Leads from this source are never good.” Or, “We can’t hit this number because no one has done that number.” That’s the evidence. Sometimes it’s hard to find the limiting belief yourself and because you don’t really listen to yourself that critically. But, I think if you find yourself being stumped about your goals, that’s sometimes an indicator that there’s probably a limiting belief. Because you’re naturally creative and visionary even if you don’t think you are. These limiting beliefs can show up in those devious ways, you feel stumped about the future. It’s probably because you’ve got a limited belief about what’s actually possible. Nothing really excites you. Keep an eye out for those words and have compassion on yourself when you find them.

Verbs Boyer:
Blake, I think that’s an important distinction that you just mentioned, is really thinking about what’s actually possible, even though there was a past experience that was steeped in some truth. Like you just mentioned, “We’ve never hit these numbers before.” That may be the case, but there’s something that’s left that’s possible for you to actually put your thinking on and then develop a goal based on that. It’s going to transcend whatever might have happened in the past. You can now move on to what’s possible for the future. Good point.

Courtney Baker:
Step number two. Now, that you’ve found your limiting belief is naming your limiting belief. Once you suspect that, I’m just going to use your example Blake of, “This sales number, we never hit that sales number.” Once you’ve discovered that, spend some time writing it. Maybe it’s a few sentences around your thinking. Why do you think that? What’s going on in your head? What were the relevant reasons or experiences that are contributing to that thought process? This is really just trying to distill down and naming that limiting belief in a sentence. Really making it concise of what you are telling yourself.

Blake Stratton:
You’re not saying I’ve got to name my limited belief like Horace or something like that? You’re just saying…

Courtney Baker:
That might be helpful for some. But, really just getting a little sentence together of what you’re limiting belief is can be really helpful. I think what’s really helpful here is, because our internal narrator is just going all the time, that if we don’t spend the time trying to distill this down, we can just go round and round and miss it easily. It’s just lying there under the foundation of everything. Just spending a few minutes intentionally thinking it through. I think it makes it feel more like a thing. I know you’re joking about Horace, but it’s easier when it comes up again to be like, “Dang you, Horace. You’re a jerk.”

Blake Stratton:
Get out of here.

Verbs Boyer:
I feel like even though we joke about this, often when we talk about the topic of journaling, but I do feel like, for instance, our resident master journaler, Blake, would do excellent at this because there’s already thoughts that he’s processed to put on paper. It could be a situation where you’re just going back and reflecting on certain seasons or phases where you were in a certain mindset. Going back through those pages will help you name that. Whereas Courtney or myself would probably have extra work to do to make sure that that happens. This would be our starting point to write those things down.

Courtney Baker:
It would be really interesting to know, for people that do journal, is it easier for them to identify them? Or do they know them? Are they able to find limiting beliefs and transform them?

Blake Stratton:
I’d like to suggest it’s less about journaling so much as it is awareness of your emotions. We can use a negative emotion, a sad, anxious, stressed, stuck type of emotion to be the trigger that clues us in that we’re probably activating a limiting belief. It probably feels very true. We don’t even conscious of it, but we can be conscious of those negative emotions. If you pay attention to those, simply asking yourself, “Where is this coming from?” Can lead you.
I recommend taking out a pen and journaling about it or typing about it. But, asking where is this emotion really coming from? That will lead you right into that perspective, that limiting belief that’s holding you back. When you can name it or distill it down, the power of this step is that it separates you from the belief. Whether you think it’s true or not, the first step is can you extract it from… It’s so close to you. A fish doesn’t know it’s wet, type of thing. Where you can separate it from you enough to actually look at it objectively and then question it. This belief is clearly not serving me. What do I want to do with it? That leads us right into the third step.
In the third step, after we’ve found our limiting belief, we’ve named our limiting belief. The third step is to rewrite your limiting belief, to rewrite it. One phrase that I’ve heard Michael use, we use it Full Focus, is this phrase liberating truth. That’s what we’re doing here. If the limiting belief is holding you back like a ball and chain around your leg, a truth, a flipping of this perspective or a change into this belief can unlock those chains. You can break free of the chains with a liberating truth. Courtney, Verbs, where do we even start? Once we’ve named the belief, how do we start rewriting this, so it’s actually a liberating thing rather than a constraint on us?

Verbs Boyer:
I think it’s important during this process, we talked about giving yourself grace. We talked about allowing yourself to get to the space to where you’re recognizing these limiting beliefs. As we get into rewriting them and there’s a flipping of that statement or whatever replays in your head most of the time, when you’re getting into that space, is figuring out, maybe starting on what is the opposite. If you say something like, “I’m not a good cook.” Then you go to straight to, “I am a good cook.” There probably has to be something in the middle of that to actually make it something that’s more true versus just a delusional sort of flip. Or, “I’m not good at painting.” Then you can’t just say, “I’m a great painter.” But, there has to be something in the middle that connects that to the liberating part of it.
You may try something like, “I’m on my way to becoming a great cook.” Or, “Becoming a good cook through time and practice.” Something that’s actually connecting it to make it likely and possible. Because again, we’re talking about what is possible to get to the place that you want to go. Saying that to say, my suggestion is, as you flip it, just think about what does the process look like to get with where I want to land from where I am now so I’m not just stuck on the limiting belief and caged in by it.

Courtney Baker:
You are still saying the opposite because I think that is helpful. Finding that middle ground to make it fit. I mean think there are some times where even the opposite is actually true. I don’t know if you’ve ever had those friends that they’re like, “No, I’m really not.” This feels so serious, but, “I’m just not a good friend.” And you’re like, “No, you’re actually an amazing friend.” You’ve had experiences with certain things I’ve made you think actually the direct opposite. You just have to distill that down and start telling yourself what is empowering. I think to Blake’s point earlier, so many times these limiting beliefs, they don’t have a good brand. They don’t empower us. They don’t make us feel good. They certainly don’t produce the actions that are going to get us the results that we want.

Verbs Boyer:
In short, we could say, turn it around to actually make it fit.

Courtney Baker:
Yep, that’s great.

Blake Stratton:
I mentioned you can listen to what your feelings are telling you to discover your limiting beliefs. I recommend, if you’re willing to go ahead and sit with that negative feeling, because when you’re rewriting it, you can actually check in with yourself. Let’s say, if you go from, “I’m a terrible friend. I must be an awful friend.” Or, “No one likes me. No one wants to be my friend.”
That’s a limiting belief, to go, “Everyone wants to be my friend.” How does that feel? It doesn’t feel as bad, but it doesn’t quite feel great because maybe it doesn’t feel completely true. Maybe you’ve got to say, “I can become friends with as many people as I want.” Okay, maybe that feels a little bit better. Or, “All the relationships I want are out there for me to discover and I’m in process of finding all my friends.” Okay, maybe that feels even better. It’ll land differently for you. Pay attention to that because this is a liberating truth. How do you know if something’s liberating? You got to listen to your old heart. Listen to your heart. All right Nick, we can’t cut that. We got to pay the royalty on that.

Verbs Boyer:
No, we should leave all of that in because they won’t recognize.

Blake Stratton:
No. It was way too pitchy for anything.

Verbs Boyer:
But wait, Blake, you just said something that was like a light bulb. In a limiting belief, it has been limiting to you in the past. In a liberating truth, you are in the process of being free from that because it’s not a liberated truth quite yet because you’re growing into it. It’s liberating you at each step you take. Like you said, however you feel like it lands for you, each of those is a liberating process until you get to where you want to land and where you want to be and where your mindset is anchored more into that truth at that point. It’s a process.

Blake Stratton:
If you really want some to supercharge this, your new belief, usually the limiting belief is coming from our perception of ourselves in the past. What I’ve told my clients to do is, if they’ve got a belief that they’re trying to practice, is to look backwards for evidence that that’s actually true. Because their brain’s already attached itself to evidence that the negative is true. But usually, let’s say, “I’m a really good friend and people want to be my friend.” I can go back and find examples of people wanting to be my friend.
There’s just that one painful example that feels more vivid to me right now. Go back and journal. “Will this person want to be my friend? I made friends with this person, this person.” Before you knew it, you play lawyer a little bit here and you can build a case that that limited belief really is true and you don’t have to just try to convince yourself, saying it into the mirror. You can actually convince yourself by looking backwards and building the case for it. That’s, I think, where you can really activate some of this freedom from a liberating truth.

Courtney Baker:
Hey guys. I am here with Garrison. Garrison sent our team a question recently. As soon as I saw it come in, I was like, “Why don’t we have him join us on the Focus On This podcast and actually talk about this question?” Because I think it’s one that many of you may experience from time to time. Before I get to the question, Garrison, thanks for joining us today.

Garrison Frick:
For sure. Thank you guys for taking the question, for having me join.

Courtney Baker:
What was your question? Let’s jump into it.

Garrison Frick:
If it’s okay, I’m just going to go ahead and read this instead of try and paraphrase it from memory. I started using the Full Focus planner about a year and a half ago. And it’s been immensely helpful to me in setting goals and priorities. I also love the podcast. Appreciate everything you guys are doing. I work in the live event/ entertainment industry. It can get pretty chaotic at times, especially with all the uncertainty during and since the pandemic over the last couple of years.
I’ve been setting priorities and focusing a lot on, at least setting a daily big three. But a lot of the time, or even most of the time, arguably, there’s one or more urgent things that pop up throughout my day that force me to redirect my focus and end up, more or less, throwing my day off track versus following the plan that I had. More often than not, I end the day having not completed all of my daily big three, even though I know I resolved a lot of other important things that came up. Those couldn’t be avoided. Question is, do you have any advice or thoughts on an approach to the planner or the daily big three that will help me be flexible for the last minute, urgent things that inevitably pop up throughout the day but, also keep some structure and be able to plan for some productivity that I need to get done?

Courtney Baker:
This is such a great question. I feel like a lot of people probably have this, in some form, one way or the other. I do have one question before I jump in. When these unexpected items come in, are they coming from a specific person? Or are they coming from a certain area that you work with? Or are they coming from yourself? You realize, “Oh my gosh, I forgot that thing, that really important thing.” Where are they coming from?

Garrison Frick:
Good question. The majority of the time, they’re coming from one of many colleagues. In my role, I assist with a lot of different departments and a lot of different functions of our company. It could be 50 people in the pool who could message me or stop by my desk and bring up something that just has to be addressed today. Might only take a few minutes. Or it might take a longer chunk of my time. But it’s like, “This is a thing and we need to take care of it today.” Sometimes it comes from my direct supervisor, but not super often. But, usually colleagues.

Courtney Baker:
Colleagues? Okay. That’s interesting. I always wonder, are you in an environment where they can just stop by where you’re working and say, “We need to get this done today. Can you handle that?”

Garrison Frick:
Usually. I’m working in the office more often than not.

Courtney Baker:
One idea here, to just streamline this is, sometimes people come up with urgent things for us because just by being visible to them. Actually, if we were virtual, you may not get the task either so urgently or it may come in a form that’s actually more helpful for you to process. Wouldn’t have to stop doing whatever you’re doing right now to say, “All right, I hear you. Let me go take that.”
One idea might be for you to say, “I hear you on that.” It sounds like you’re already clarifying, does it have to be today?

Garrison Frick:
Try to, yeah.

Courtney Baker:
Could I turn this in tomorrow? Basically, trying to frame up priority. Another idea, which, if it’s a coworker, may not be as helpful, but definitely with supervisors. I say this too, for people listening, is to say, “These are the things that I’ve got I’ve prioritized for today. Can you help me prioritize? Does this take priority above those things?”
Again, that may not be as helpful with a colleague because they’re like, “I just want you to get my thing done.” It may be the most important thing that they need. It may not be the most important thing you need. As those are coming in, it may be helpful for you to, for example, our team, we have a marketing request form. People can’t just throw in slack or, “Can you go fix this bug on the website?”
It needs to go through our process so that it gets accounted for and it gets systematized in a way that, even if it’s urgent, it has to get done today, something’s wrong on the website. It comes in a way that’s more actionable. We’re not having to just take a verbal command in passing in the hallway, try to remember it and get it done for the day. Those are some ideas on just those inputs coming in. The next thing that I would say is, how is your weekly preview going?

Garrison Frick:
Good question. There were probably a handful of times in the year and a half I’ve been using the planner that I feel like I have nailed it. I’ve spent some time on the weekly preview and gotten the most out of it that I can. Not very many times. Definitely an area I could focus on a little more and try to prioritize for myself.

Courtney Baker:
Thank you for sharing honestly, because I think this is an area that’s really going to help you with this. We talk all the time about the weekly preview being the secret sauce to the system. I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but I do think this is the area that you’re really going to find traction. What I want you to do, when you get to your weekly preview, you have what’s called an after action review. I want you to be really mindful of this specific issue. What you’re going to be looking for is what worked, what didn’t work. You’re going to be looking for trends. “Every day I had an hour of work that came in that I was not anticipating.” As you’re doing that after action review, you’re going to start to see trends.
It may be that each day you can’t do a daily big three, professionally. Maybe one of your daily big three is going to be something personal related. When it comes to work prioritization, a daily big two is going to be appropriate for you because you’re like, “Every day, I’ve tried all these things. Really, it’s going to be two things that I actually have the capacity to get done because I’ve got to account for these fires that arise.”
Obviously, we want to do some things to try to help those urgent things come down. We want to suppress that as much as possible. But again, there are certain roles and fields where that is the nature of the role. Rather than saying, “How do we work against that?” We say, “Okay, we see that, we get that. Now how do we account for it in a way that still makes me successful?”
Again, I hate to be the weekly preview cheerleader here, but I am. That’s what I would say, is really committing to that weekly preview and seeing, really tallying up what you have each day that’s coming in and start to notice those trends. You may even block it on your calendar each day. “Here’s my hour that I’m just going to take care of these.” I want to call them low leverage. It doesn’t sound like they necessarily are. “But, they’re just popup urgent things that do need to get done because of the role that I sit in.”

Garrison Frick:
That makes a lot of sense.

Courtney Baker:
Hopefully, this helps a lot of people that may run into this, especially if it’s consistently. Obviously, we all have times where what we planned doesn’t happen the way we planned it, even though I do wish it did. But, I would love for you to try that out, Garrison. Maybe even let us know in the Full Focus community how it’s going after consistently doing that weekly preview for a month and the changes that you are able to make when you take the time to reflect on that previous week.

Garrison Frick:
That’s a great idea. I will try and focus on that a little bit more.

Courtney Baker:
Maybe my answer should be, focus on weekly preview. My new series will be just filling in the blank for people. For you Garrison, focus on the weekly preview. Garrison, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for sending in your question, and thanks for joining me on the show.

Garrison Frick:
For sure. Thank you guys so much. Appreciate the time and the feedback.

Verbs Boyer:
Today’s tip to level up your focus is watch your language and your thinking. Keep something handy close to you to write or record down any sentences that you hear either yourself saying or come up in your own head that include, I can’t or always or never. These are good candidates that you can use for a liberating truth transformational statement. Thanks for joining us on Focus On This.

Courtney Baker:
This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so share it with your friends. Don’t forget to join us in the Full Focus Planner community on Facebook. We’ll be back next week with another great episode. Until then stay focused.

Verbs Boyer:
Stay focused.

Blake Stratton:
Stay focused.