There is a question that I get asked repeatedly. MBA students at top business schools have asked me this. So have successful entrepreneurs who wish to be even more successful. So have home-makers who wish to have some income of their own.
The question is: “Professor Rao, I know I can accomplish much more than I have so for. What is holding me back is the thought that I cannot. How can I get rid of self-limiting beliefs?”
Our society relentlessly drills into us that we can do anything if we set our mind to it. There are any number of inspirational stories of someone who overcame tremendous odds to achieve a goal that they set for themselves. They did it. So, you can too.
If you don’t succeed, then you are not trying hard enough. Or maybe you need to use more skillful means. And, of course, you have to get rid of your self-limiting beliefs. You have to kill that nagging little voice that tells you that you ae not good enough. That you just don’t have what it takes to reach your goal.
I have written a blog about the Imposter Syndrome. This is the belief that you don’t deserve the success that you have achieved. That you are a fraud. And that someone will discover this and expose you.
The way to deal with the imposter syndrome is to acknowledge that whatever you have achieved, whatever you have accomplished is because some force – call it by whatever name you please – acted through you. You were merely an instrument.
Use the same method to deal with your thoughts that you are ‘not good enough’. That you ‘do not have what it takes’ to accomplish your goals.
Acknowledge that you cannot do it – whatever it is – by yourself. But you are in partnership with that same force and, in that partnership, all things are possible.
In Galatians 2-20 St. Paul said, “I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me.”
Can you get to that same space when you are viscerally embedded in the knowledge that the universe is acting through you for some purpose that is for the benefit of all?
Yes, you can. This is a rest-of-your-life journey.
But just beginning the journey will start dissolving your self-limiting beliefs.
Peace!
