Stuck inside a box
Are you stuck inside a box, too afraid of trying something different – Afraid of being judged or perhaps failing and not living up to “someone’s” expectations?
Break down the box! Take a chance and try something new and different. If you stay in your current box for much longer you will eventually create another box and that box is a very lonely and depressing one and will consume your thoughts.
The reality is when you become afraid to leave the comfort of your box you are actually giving up your control. Whoever or whatever created those self-defeating false beliefs is what is keeping you stuck inside the box, and still has power over you.
New experiences are the key, which unlock doors leading to self-identity. It’s actually part of our natural psychosocial developmental process. What happens when we fail to continue to develop and stop the natural process? We create internal conflict – that’s what happens. Internal conflict is the foundation to the second box – a state of mind deep in thought, reliving almost every negative past experience. That’s torturous for the soul because it experiences the emotions all over again as if the experience were happening at this moment.
The mind cannot discern real from fiction. Stimulus is stimulus and the mind has no way of knowing the difference. Imagine reliving all those negative past experiences all day long with nothing else for the mind to see. Yes, physically you are here but mentally and emotionally you are in a state of dualism far away from reality.
By taking chances and by creating new experiences you allow the mind to continue the natural process of development, which by the way never ends. In each developmental stage you must meet the criteria or you might have difficulties fulfilling the criteria for the next stage. By giving up control and fearing new experiences it stops you from learning what you need so you could be successful in life. Long-term avoidance of this natural need will deepen your internal conflict and stump you from achieving true success.
Challenge your beliefs, take back control and break down the box. Those are the benefits you get from living life full of experiences.
Free yourself from dualism. Enjoy the moment! You have nothing to lose except for the box…
"I am not good enough"
Giving up on tasks, which seem difficult and that pose a potential failure, will only develop a false sense of self while reinforcing negative, self-defeating behaviors. It is these behaviors, which are at the root of most perceived failures and regret in life.
Ask yourself, Why did I give up? Did I find the task too difficult, was it out of my comfort zone, maybe I lacked the skill set to achieve it successfully. What did I tell myself so it would be okay to give-up?
When you give-up on tasks regardless of the reason, what you are doing is accepting defeat and confirming the underlying belief, “I am not good enough.” This false sense of self, albeit untrue, will limit the amount of success you will achieve in life.
What’s worse is that you don’t know what “good enough” even looks like. How can someone get something if they don’t know what it looks like? The bar you’re striving for is impossible to achieve because it is illusionary – it’s nonexistent. So it is an imaginary bar that’s then used to determine your capabilities – what you can and cannot accomplish, what you are and are not qualified to do, and whether or not you have the necessary skill set to try something new (which in itself represents change, uncertainty and the potential for failure).
Unfortunately, it is this kind of mindset, which misses out on many opportunities. It is also this mindset that will have many regrets throughout life, especially for the things that you wish you had done.
The Physical Symptoms of Anxiety and Stress
Physical symptoms of anxiety and stress are enough to knock anyone out. Do something about it before you are out for the count.
Anxiety isn’t something anyone enjoys. And in some cases it is debilitating. Reduce if not eliminate anxiety when you apply these techniques into your everyday routine.
Fears, phobias, false beliefs, and procrastination, these are just a few of the culprits, which cause anxiety. The trick to reducing if not eliminating anxiety is by identifying the root cause and changing the belief surrounding it. In many cases anxiety is caused by thoughts and can be treated without medication and with effective life coaching.
Phobia is an overwhelming feeling of anxiety caused by a fear of a certain situation or thing. It could be activities, animals, social settings, or a confined space. The symptoms are excessive and an unreasonable effort to avoid the situation. Phobias disrupt daily life.
To overcome phobias one must determine the false belief associated to it. E.g., The Bridge will collapse if I cross it therefore it is unsafe. The image in the mind is very vivid and real. The mind cannot distinguish reality from fiction and when it sees the image – survival is a human instinct so it warns the body of the looming danger – it reacts with anxiety, which is a natural human response. The trick is to replace the negative image with a positive one.
False Beliefs can also be agreements one has with self about his or her capabilities. The belief has the power to build and destroy self-confidence. Low self-confidence can lead to avoiding experiences for fear of failure. The idea of trying something that poses failure creates an extraordinary amount of stress. It opens the sweat glands and a whirlwind of excuses.
But these are the lessons, which are invaluable, and needed throughout life. It doesn’t matter if the outcome is a positive one or a negative one because in the end the lessons learned from the experience outweigh any experience, which doesn’t require much thought at all. A positive affirmation to counter any false belief will help to reduce stress.
Procrastination is putting off or postponing something until sometime in the future. It is a way to not have to deal with the outcome to a particular situation because the image in the mind is a negative one. So the natural human response is to jolt the body with anxiety warning it of the looming danger.
It is another false belief represented by an image in the mind. The truth to the situation is on the other side. Change the image in the mind and deal with whatever is being avoided, now. Habitual procrastination will turn into guilt.
Bruno LoGreco Life Coach, Toronto Mentor & Motivational Speaker
Is False Information Instilling Fear In Your Mind?
Negativity is a limiting behavior. It prevents you from achieving your goals and living life to the fullest. It instills doubt in your mind and can destroy your confidence. It will create fear and false beliefs – roadblocks and obstacles that really don’t exist. It will limit your chance at succeeding at the very things you want to do.
Creating a negative mindset is easy. All it takes is one negative force within your environment; friend, family, teacher, anybody you spend time with, and you will easily adopt their negative views. Unfortunately, if you already are a negative person you will easily identify to the negativity and adopt it into your own internal belief system.
Negativity is often spoken with authority, it fools you into believing it is true. A naysayer could impart his or her wisdom, and if you have no prior experience with the subject matter, you may take it on as your own. With no supporting facts, you adopt their perspective – right or wrong, and begin to operate according to the naysayer when discussing that subject matter.
After your first, non-attempt, and perceived failure, you will have your own negative experience to contribute to the negativity within your environment. And without a doubt, you will believe something did not happen that you wanted, although you never tried, and you will impart your wisdom on to others. This is how negative behavior perpetuates throughout your environment.
- Take inventory of everything you want to accomplish in your life.
- Next to each one write what is holding you back from accomplishing it.
- For each fear, write the worst-case scenario, the one holing you back from tacking it.
- Ask yourself if the fear is based on fact or something you learned from someone.
- Take inventory of all the negative people in your life (Friends/Family/Teachers).
- Next to each person write his or her worst complaint/fear.
- Review your list of fears and verify if the fear is your own or a fear that belongs to someone on your list of negative people.
Words Of Wisdom
In general, everybody is a product of they’re environment. Do you ever stop and challenge what you believe? I bet if you challenged what you believe, you would learn the beliefs you hold near and dear to your heart are not true nor are they beliefs developed through facts or experience but rather comments directed at you that you unconsciously made your own.
During my early developmental years I was constantly exposed to untrue comments to prevent me from failing at accomplishing tasks I set out to achieve. The comments were not intended to deliberately derail me from succeeding, but rather to enforce fear so that I would succeed at accomplishing any task I put my mind to. Fortunately, I did not believe many of the comment, and more often than not I opted to try what I was told I would fail at. Each time I succeeded at what I was told I would fail at I would build a resistance for the person. With each comment I proved false, the less I listened to what people had to say, especially immediate influencers. Don’t get me wrong, I was not disrespectful, I just chose not to adapt their beliefs.
Today in many cultures children adapt learned behavior and false beliefs passed down to them from their immediately influencers. The false beliefs are not intended to hurt the children, but rather to help them along on their journey through life. Some false beliefs a child will carry into adulthood will contribute to the amount of stress and anxiety they will experience, and if they do not challenge their internal belief system and add facts to what they believe, their stress and anxiety level will increase and they will have no way of knowing why.
So the next time you have an overwhelming need to impart some words of wisdom onto anybody, ask yourself if what you are about say is something you know factually, through experience or if it’s something you heard along the way. And, If it is something you learned along the way and don’t know from where, I suggest you substantiate it with facts before imparting any words of wisdom.
Bruno LoGreco Master Life Coach & Mentor
Challenge What You Believe
I’m at the end of my 2008 Christmas vacation. I fly home Monday morning with new goals and aspirations for 2009. When I land in Toronto Monday, I will arrive to a full schedule: New life coaching clients, and a new thriving business, that I started with less than $100 dollars. A few weeks ago I posted a challenge – Make Monday With No Money. I’m of the mindset that you practice what you preach, so I entered the challenge myself.
During my radio appearance on CFRB, I spoke about starting a business with no money and using barter as a means to exchange for services. Websites like craigslist.com and others allow you to post free ads. I put my words to the challenge and posted a few ads on craigslist.com for different kind of service providers. It wasn’t long before my inbox started to accumulate resumes. After a few telephone calls and two reference checks, I now have consultants sitting on the sideline waiting for my instructions.
The economy is grim and a lot of people are looking for work to make ends meet, all it takes is a great deal to hire a commission based sales person to generate leads and sales. And that’s exactly what I did. I contracted a commission based sales person to generate leads and to close sales for the new company. Of course there is the promise of a full time opportunity when the company becomes successful – That is only fair. And lastly I reviewed the pool of talent that is immediately available to me thanks to Linkedin.com.
So in less than thirty-days (30) since I started the challenge – Make Money With No Money, I have a full fledge business with consultants, paying clients, revenue exceeding four digits and enough closed business to see five-digit revenue for the month of January. I was able to make this all happen for less than $100 dollars.
Fear is what will keep you right where you are, stuck in your little box somewhere on your life journey. In 2009 make it a point to ditch all your false beliefs and stop listening to what you hear. Challenge what you believe and put it to the test – don’t make another persons knowledge one of your core beliefs – test what you believe for validity and you will unlock the door to your little box.
Best Wishes, Success, and Prosperity for 2009
Bruno LoGreco Master Life Coach and Mentor
False Belief
Last night I did something that I thought I could never do. Another false belief I held on to for a very long time. Last night I was a keynote speaker, speaking about entrepreneurship for the town of Richmond Hill, a suburb of Toronto.
Prior to last night, I did not believe I could introduce myself to a crowd nor give a little bio about myself. The facilitator was ecstatic that I was the keynote speaker. She felt I should enlighten the crowd by adding my recent guest appearance on the W Network in my introduction. I thought that was bragging, but the facilitator thought the crowd would be inspired and motivated to learn where I came from and where I am in my life now.
The false belief I carried for a very long time was that I could not open a seminar without the help of my partner because I speak fast. I’ve been known to speak fast, and have also been told to slow down. I am aware of this behavior that is caused by nervousness. With the help of my partner and her ability to speak to a crowd, I would adapt my energy and tempo to her tempo. It’s like having a drummer keep pace on a dragon boat, but last night, I was the drummer, I had to set my own pace.
My partner was called to a family emergency at the eleventh hour last night. That left me with all of 00:00 time to prepare for the other half of the seminar. I apologized to the crowd I let them know that my partner was called away to a family emergency, and that I would do my best not to stumble over her part. I did well overall – I screwed up a few statistics but the crowd was engaged and asked lots of questions, not sure they even noticed.
I did become slightly nerved at first when I stumbled over the first statistic. I broke a sweat, I caught myself wanting to race – Slow down batman, I whispered to myself, catch the comma, take a breather – only you know you made an error, they don’t. From that second on I reduced the tempo and moved forward with the presentation.
Even I, a Life Coach still to this day doubt my abilities. This was an automatic reflex, a learned behavior that I had not challenged until last night. If it were not for my business partner being called away, I would still be operating with a false belief today. The false belief was that I could not open nor close a seminar and as of last night I proved that false belief wrong
Master Life Coach, Toronto Mentor Bruno LoGreco
False Belief
Yesterday I dragged my feet the entire day. I was exhausted from the lack of sleep that was caused by all the excitement. From the initial call, to meeting with the producers, to filming on Wednesday, I did not sleep. It was one week ago today that I received the phone call from the executive producer, and last night was the first night I finally slept for seven consecutive hours.
Back in May I posted a blog titled Insecurity. In this post (I often chuckle when I read older posts –bad English LOL) I wrote about the evolution of my blog, as well as one of my fears. I don’t think I’ve written about this fear since that day–but cameras, or being in front of one once scared the bleep out of me.
In this same post I described what I feared, the judgment by others for making a mistake. Because I created this illusion an illusion so vivid in my head, it paralyzed me at the thought of being remotely close to a camera. I found out later the illusion I’d created, the root cause to my fear, was so deeply rooted that even if I did act like myself, I still felt like I could not be in front of a camera.
The feeling I experienced after writing the Insecurity post went from being paralyzed to sweats and heart thumping only at the thought of cameras. That meant I was close but I still hadn’t found the root cause to my fear. There was something else that was causing this fear, bigger than others judging me.
I was still holding on to a belief, a false belief that I learned to believe at a very young age. I put my entire faith into this one belief, not only in my personal life, but also in my professional life. It wasn’t until I let go of this false belief, the illusion I had created about what would happen “IF” anyone ever found out about my secret, more specifically, my immediate family. And it wasn’t until I no longer believed what would happen, IF my family member ever figure out my secret, that I was finally confident in myself to pursue my long life dream.
No longer than two months after I let go of my false belief, one of my dreams came to fruition – Talk about the Laws Of Attractions working in parallel with the Universe. Not only did I get to live my dream this past week, but it also was filmed in my own home. The cameras did not intimidate me in the least, I felt very relaxed and comfortable with the camera in my face.
Master Life Coach, Toronto native Bruno LoGreco
Take 10
Okay, it’s almost a wrap. All that is left for me to do is give an interview — my thought about the subject. Overall I did well until they wanted me to start acting. Not such a good actor, but definitely did well over all. Of course I have no way of knowing, not until the show airs or I receive a copy.
It was definitely a great experience- I learned a lot and I would most certainly do it again. I don’t think I was afraid of the camera once. Did I really have a fear, or did I put my faith into a false belief, a false belief that I’ve held onto for many many years? It was a false belief – Life seems a lot easier all of a sudden.
More as we move towards wrapping.
False Belief and Confidence
What is confidence? Why do so many people lack confidence, while others exude confidence in every aspect of their life?
Confidence is a feeling or a belief of one’s self-assurance of his or her abilities or qualities. In the absence confidence, a person’s life could come to grinding halt, lowering their self-esteem, leaving the person feeling less than the world around them.
Often time life coaches and therapists will use positive affirmations to paint over the negative self-talk that is often spoken by a person that lacks confidence. Positive affirmations are definitely needed, however, positive affirmations only serve as nice decoration to fill the wounds temporarily. Don’t get me wrong, I also use positive affirmation, but only after the root cause has been determined. By covering up negative self-talk with positive affirmation, the problem is only temporarily fixed until the positive affirmation runs its course and the person goes back to their regular negative self-talk.
Positive affirmations are like planting flowers around a tree stump. Sooner or later someone is going to trip over the tree stump because the root system that is well beneath the ground is still intact, holding the tree stump in place. It’s not until you get to the root of the tree and remove all it’s roots that the risk of someone tripping over the stump is eliminated. The same holds true for a person that carries false beliefs about themselves. They will continue to trip over their stump until the root cause is exposed.
Confidence is a belief, and when you lack confidence in a certain aspect of your life, it means you believe and that you have put your entire faith/trust (not the religious kind) into some sort of comparison (the root). Based on this comparison, each time a situation presents itself within your environment, the judge (negative self-talk) digs into the back of your brain, compares your current situation with that of a false belief stored deep In your root system, and returns a negative value, “I can’t do this, I’m not good enough, There is no value in doing this, etc.”, leaving you feeling like a victim.
The comparison is the root cause, the false belief you’ve put your entire faith/trust into. Undoing the false belief is as easy as not believing it anymore, but first you must find the root cause, the false belief.
The truth about self is liberating. I trust you will find at least one false belief in your root system today, and take back your faith/trust, as you rebuild your confidence.
Rebuild your confidence with Master Life Coach, Toronto native Bruno LoGreco
