Limiting & Empowering beliefs

I was working with a client who struggled to delegate. Despite having a team of perfectly capable people, he took on most tasks himself and he was starting to burn out. I worked with him to explore and identify his empowering and limiting beliefs. He came up with a handful of empowering beliefs and a handful of limiting beliefs.

For his empowering beliefs, I asked him to write them on some A4 posters and put them up around an area in his house where he spends a lot of time.

He said - I can’t do that. 

I asked him - What’s stopping you? 

He said - It will look silly! 

I asked him - Who says it will look silly?

He did not have an answer to that.

After our session, he chose to put his empowering beliefs up on the wall around his computer screen so he could see them everyday as he was working in his home office.

As the days went on and he looked at the little posters every day, he started to read them aloud to himself. They became more familiar and felt more comfortable. My client felt more and more able to accept these empowering beliefs.

A week or so later, his young daughter came into his office. She looked at the posters and said - Wow dad, they’re all true!

For the limiting beliefs which stopped my client feeling able to delegate to his team, we took each on in turn. I asked him to associate himself into a situation in the future where these limiting beliefs are present, and I asked him “What will it cost you in your life if you don't let go of those limiting beliefs?”.

After this simple exercise my client felt more able to challenge some of these beliefs, and when he came across a situation where he would have let that old belief control his decisions, he could comfortably take the leap and move on, unencumbered. 

For more insight into how we teach our brains to think, check out my blog post Tell your brain what to think.