Unlock the Power of Core Beliefs to Transform Your Life

Your life is a reflection of your beliefs, woven deeply into the fabric of your daily existence. But what if we told you that a shift in these silent narratives could unlock a transformation like no other? This week, we aren't just scratching the surface; we're diving deep. 🤿

"To change your life, you have to change your behaviors. And to change those, you start with your beliefs." Have you felt stuck in a loop, witnessing the same outcomes, no matter how much effort you put in? It's time to pause and introspect: Could your beliefs be the director of this play?

Without new scripts, the actors of our lives can’t play out new scenes. We'll explore the powerful connection between what you believe and the reality you experience. More importantly, we'll discuss strategies to unearth and shift those belief systems that no longer serve you. 🌱

Do you carry beliefs that might be expired tickets to a show long over? It's time to exchange them for a pass to your own growth and transformation. Get ready to engage in an honest conversation with yourself, challenge the echoes of past narratives, and learn to script new ones that resonate with the life you aspire to live.

No guests, no distractions — just you, me, and a heart-to-heart about how foundational beliefs shape your world. And remember, self-exploration isn't about uncovering flaws. It's about meeting yourself at the crossroads of past experiences and future possibilities. 🚀

Tune in and take the first step toward not just changing, but truly elevating the quality of your life. Because when your beliefs shift, so does your reality.

Listen now, and reshape the contours of your life's story. 🎧✨

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Practical Growth podcast with me, ebi Johnson, author, nlpmp and cognitive reappraisal coach. This is the podcast created for people like you people looking for more, more health, more peace, more happiness. Each week, I explore new topic in pop psychology and help you build a better life and better relationships. Join me for special guests, exciting ideas and practical advice that you can use to improve your life from the inside out. Let's get into it. Hello, hello, hello, my lovelies. It is me, ebi, your favorite writer, your favorite podcast host, favorite TikTok coach and NLPMP, and I'm back bringing you another great episode. I'm really excited about this one. It's going to be a little bit different, it's going to be a little bit more focused and I think it's really going to focus you on the week ahead.

Speaker 1: 0:55

But before we get into it, I want to just ask you a couple of questions and I want you to really think about these questions. Have you ever felt like, or do you currently feel, like you're stuck in place? You're reading the books, you're reading the articles, you're here listening to podcasts, you probably follow a lot of development things on TikTok or Instagram or Medium, but you just feel like you're running in place. Have you ever felt that, or do you feel that now, do you feel like you've got all the pieces right, you've got all the knowledge, but for some reason, things just aren't sticking. They're just not quite changing, they're not quite taking on that radical transformation that you hoped that they would, even though you've put in a lot of effort and you really are trying. Well, that is what we are going to touch on today. We're going to touch on the core of that issue getting stuck in place, because for so many of us, that actually comes down to our core beliefs. Okay, which is something we don't really spend enough time talking about, we don't really spend enough time addressing. We have this bad habit of, when we're on these personal growth journeys, just going right. Here's the problem. What's the action to fix it, without really digging down to the root of the issue. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. We are going to be talking about your beliefs. We're going to dive in to the power of beliefs. We're going to talk about how they shape your life. We're going to explore how to identify and challenge your limiting beliefs and, last, we're going to kind of talk about the techniques that you need to adopt new, empowering beliefs. Okay, that will allow you to really unlock that transformation and tap into that full potential that you've been trying to reach all this time.

Speaker 1: 2:46

Just before we jump in, I just want to give you a little quick update and reminder. The wait list is now open for my one-on-one coaching program. That is right. If you would like to work with me one-on-one and kind of give yourself the tools that you need to not just rebuild your self-esteem and your confidence, but to actually improve your cognitive capabilities, to improve your working memory, if you want to give yourself the emotional regulation tools that you need to kind of find some peace as you're working through trauma, you should apply to work with me. Okay, I have a program that's developed by me using NLP and P-Techniques, which is all about giving you the tools for emotional stability, especially if you're healing from narcissistic abuse or a toxic relationship. What does that look like? It looks like doing a lot of neuroplastic work together. It looks like doing a lot of somatic exercises together and it looks like doing a lot of cognitive reappraisals so that you can change your behaviors, improve your relationships and take charge of your life and your future. So if that sounds like something that you want to do, then head over to therealebjohnsoncom and click on Working With Me to Apply Again. This waitlist is open. It won't be open for very long, so if you want to work with me, make sure you go and head over there and apply now at therealebjohnsoncom.

Speaker 1: 4:13

All right, beliefs, beliefs. Let's get right into it. Let's get into the good stuff. Before you can understand you know what your beliefs are and take action to change them, you first need to understand what your beliefs are, because they often get confused with values and they are not the same thing. Okay, specifically, our beliefs are the deeply, deeply held convictions and opinions that we have about ourselves, others and the world around us. Okay, it is what you know to be fundamentally true in your reality and the people that you interact with and the reactions that you have to stress and to other people. Okay, and our beliefs are a foundation of who we are as a person. They shape our thoughts, they shape our emotions and, as I've mentioned, they shape our behaviors.

Speaker 1: 5:03

Okay, but what's really kind of important to remember here, before we get into the meat of how these beliefs are preventing you from changing your life in the ways you want to do, is to realize that your beliefs are the filters through which you perceive reality. Okay, they are the lens through which you see the world and react to it. So, if you are someone who has been doing a lot of work, doing a lot of soul searching, who has been really kind of digging deep and learning and learning and learning, but you just feel like things aren't changing, you keep sliding back into the same kinds of relationships, the same kinds of behaviors for yourself that you want to change. Your beliefs are going to be underlying that, right. So we have to address and identify those beliefs and change them so that the way you react to the world is fundamentally different.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Now, what do I mean when I say that your beliefs are the foundations of the quality of your life? That seems quite broad, right. That seems quite meta, quite grandiose, it's not? It's pretty simple. You can imagine, if this helps imagine, that your beliefs are the engine of your life, right? Your life is a car and you are on a journey to whatever destination. It is that you're kind of like ultimate destination. You make improvements to this car and things along the way. Your beliefs are the engine, all right, they are what runs that vehicle, they define how that vehicle is going to run, how far it's going to make it, the quality of journey that you're going to have and the obstacles that are going to happen along the way some of them, at least, right. There might be, you know, weather and stuff, but you might have some vehicular obstacles too. If this engine isn't you know, let's say, fuel-bright. Okay, what kind of fuel are you using in that engine? That's kind of what we're asking ourselves when we're looking at these beliefs. Just like the quality of fuel affects a car's performance, the quality of beliefs that we have about ourselves, about other people. They determine the direction and the speed of our lives and the quality of that journey that we are on.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Okay, the power and the impact of our beliefs reaches into our thoughts, our emotions and our actions. Let's just look at let's say that you have the belief that you have to buy the love of people. Okay, let's say that you think that you have to provide tangible physical things to them for them to love you. Okay, how is that going to change your relationships? How is that going to change your relationship trajectory, your relationship journey, the way you move through these relationships. It's going to be pretty turbulent, isn't it. They affect our emotions as well.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Let's say, you know, you are someone in the arts. Okay, this is a great example for anyone who's a creative, a writer, a painter, a sculptor, anything, anything. Let's say that you are someone who has these deeply held beliefs that in order to be loved, you have to create something great, that people have to love what you do, and it has to be perfect. Okay, that's a pretty common problem. What's going to happen when you encounter rejection? When you get a no, even though it's just a business note right, it's like no, not for us, not right now, not at this time, but that's not what you're going to feel, right, because you have this belief that it has to be perfect in order to be worthy, and yada, yada, yada. So when you get that no, your emotional response to it is going to be out of whack.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Alright, our beliefs are deeply ingrained. Okay, they're often formed in childhood, from experience or teachings that we get from parents, from literal teachers, from our peers, and again, they become that lens through which we see and interpret the world around us. So, depending on your beliefs, they can limit or they can expand your potential. You know, believing that you're not good enough, for example, can hold you back from taking on new challenges. It might, you know, keep you from taking on that project at work that would get you to that big promotion that you've wanted for so long. And the reverse is also true. Right, the reverse is also true when you believe in your abilities. When you believe in your capabilities, you can go on to achieve your ideals. You can go on to achieve great things, unexpected things, because you believed in your abilities and you followed through with the types of behaviors and actions that led to that ultimate success. Alright, so this is what we're talking about, when your beliefs are the foundation of it all. So if you're not doing work to change those beliefs, I'm really sorry, but you're not going to get the kind of transformation that you're looking for.

Speaker 1: 10:04

This is the point in the conversation, especially when I'm talking about this kind of shift in beliefs with my clients, because that's a fundamental part of the work that we do together is the necessity right, the absolute necessity. And I like to kind of illustrate that point to them, because that's always the best is to illustrate the point, and one of the simplest ones, the simplest examples I like to use is the story of a friend of mine. I'll call her Mia because obviously I'm not going to use her real name and let thousands of you go and hunt her down. But Mia, I think, kind of remains a great example of this. So Mia was a childhood friend that I had through middle school and high school and then into college, went to the same college, and Mia grew up way rougher than I did and I know you guys know how I grew up so you can imagine Mia's life was tenfold hell and she kind of grew up in this physically brutal household where she physically had to fight to keep herself safe and to kind of have her own spaces and that obviously translated in school.

Speaker 1: 11:05

People were quite scared of her and as an adult this carried on. This was kind of her personality and it wasn't always physical fighting, but she was never one who was going to back down. She kind of, because she had been raised in this turbulent household, she kind of developed this mindset of if I won and I have to fight for it and no one's going to take it from me. I mean, she was like this she-wolf. Just like people think I'm intimidating, she was ten times as intimidating right as she got into college she matured a bit and that changed a little bit but it did, in a degree, even follow her to the workplace and it got her fired from several quite good jobs because she was quite a confrontational personality, because she had this fundamental belief and once she lost, she had this really really good corporate kind of position, like junior corporate position, and she ended up losing it and she went and did all these retreats because they had told her that they had let her go. But it kind of come with this addendum of like go and get help maybe, do some anger management and some workplace kind of things and then come back and talk to us, kind of thing. She did it right. She did all the retreats and she started doing all this meditation work and reading all the books and going to courses and lectures and all this kind of stuff. She did her anger management and things, but kind of she didn't love the just kind of like public classes but she did therapy and all of that.

Speaker 1: 12:33

But she still, when she went on to a new job, she still found herself with this urge to do it. She still found herself running into the same problems and she's like I don't understand. I've done all this work, I've changed all this stuff. Like, why is this not shifting? For me, it was because she still had that belief. She still had not addressed that core belief. She had not sat down face to face with herself and said you believe that you have to fight for this because you did at one time. That was your reality. It's not reality anymore. That belief is no longer fitting for you. You don't have to fight. Things can come easily to you. They can come normally to you, just like they come to everyone else, because you're safe. Now You've done the work, you've made yourself safe.

Speaker 1: 13:13

And it wasn't until she kind of had that aha moment and did that work of confronting that belief and consistently consciously backing it down. Nothing changed. But once she did that, it did. It unlocked everything. She just walked past confrontation. It just no longer held any value to her and she saw it as a hindrance instead of like a this is me protecting mine and what's mine, and blah, blah, blah, blah. So you get it right. You understand that what you believe about yourself, about your career, about your relationships, yada, yada, yada, everything in your life, what you believe, your core ideological beliefs about those things affects how you live out your life in action. Okay, it affects how you live your life in action. So for you to really get that changed life, that completely different person that you were trying to reach, you have to actively change your core beliefs.

Speaker 1: 14:15

Okay, and that's what we're going to do now. This is what I'm going to talk to you about doing now, and we're going to do it in a little exercise. So I want you to just hit pause here for a second. Go and get a pen and some paper, make sure you got a nice big blank page and we are going to do a little sketching. We're going to do a little sketching and we're going to look at what your beliefs are and what fruit they're bearing in your life. All right, you ready? Here's what I want you to do.

Speaker 1: 14:43

I want you to pick three of your core beliefs. Let's say one of them is family, one of them is relationships and one of them is self. I want you to draw each one of those as a tree. It doesn't matter where you put them on the paper, just you know you've got plenty of room. I want you to draw them as a tree. It doesn't need to be a work of art.

Speaker 1: 15:05

Okay, and now, off the branches of those trees, I want you to imagine that there are fruit hanging there. Okay, just pick a handful of fruit. So, let's say, with family, you've got your relationships with your children, your relationships with your parents, your relationships with your siblings. What, what kind of fruit are they? What is the quality of those fruit? Are they delicious, juicy, healthy, ripe and thriving? Or are they withered, tasteless, rotten? Okay, I want you to do that for each one of these trees and I want you to really just kind of it's more about seeing this in your mind. Imagine that you've got this forest of beliefs and you rely on this forest to support you. Okay, you look for the fruit from the trees, the shade, all of those things. What, what kind of shelter is this forest providing you? What kind of goodness, what kind of food? What is the quality of that? That's really what we're getting at here with your beliefs, okay.

Speaker 1: 16:08

So now you've got to change that. If you are not getting high quality results from the beliefs that you hold about yourself, about your relationships, about your family, then you need to change them. Something has to change in the soil of those beliefs. The best way to start that is number one. By journaling. You've done a drawing. That's excellent. Now you need to sit down 10 minutes a day for a couple of weeks and really face yourself. What do you actually believe about everything important, everything fundamental God, spirituality, your children, your parents, your partner, your pets, the world, your politics, whatever it is, what do you fundamentally believe is important? And then I want you to boil it down to your three biggest beliefs, your three most important beliefs, the ones that, just like, charge you up, the beliefs that you just inherently know are true beyond the shadow of a doubt. Where is that conviction? Okay, that's the first step. That's the first step, and as you're doing this, you might uncover some beliefs that you have. You should uncover some beliefs that you have that make you go. I don't think that fits anymore. That's the point. That's what we're trying to get to, okay, and a lot of that's gonna start by journaling.

Speaker 1: 17:27

The second thing I want you to do if you've spent some time journaling, I want you to find somebody safe, whether that's a coach or whether that's a therapist, a friend, your partner, your mom, your dad, whatever it is sit down and talk to them. Talk to them about beliefs. What do they believe. What do you believe? Have an open and honest conversation. It doesn't need to be hot, doesn't need to be heavy, doesn't need to be controversial, just, you know, talk it out. We find ourselves through communicating with others. Okay, they're kind of like a sounding board for us, and that can be really, really positive when we use it with some emotional intelligence. So, sit down and have a conversation about beliefs. What do you believe? Figure it out.

Speaker 1: 18:08

The third thing that you can do, if you really really are serious about changing these core beliefs, is doing the shadow work. Man, doing the shadow work. That is where you will uncover your most unhelpful beliefs, your outdated beliefs, the beliefs that are tied to your childhood trauma, to your relationship traumas, all of these things. Right, we do this through shadow work, by embracing those parts of ourselves, uncovering those parts of ourselves that we're ashamed of, that make us feel guilty, that we try to hide, okay, so that we can be more authentic, that we can, you know, love ourselves more honestly. So do the shadow work. Do the shadow work and, last but not least, and this is one that I really push with all of my clients, so, if you choose to work with me, this is one that you will be getting to engage in as well.

Speaker 1: 18:55

It's one of the most fun ways to kind of get our beliefs on track, to get our lives on track, and that is doing your inner child work. Do your inner child work. A lot of our core beliefs developmentally happen somewhere between like the ages of 3 and 15. It's very weird, so I can't remember the exact scale in there, according to the development theory, but essentially very young. Our core beliefs about life, about ourselves, about the world, are formed when we are very, very young.

Speaker 1: 19:29

So for you to get down to the root of some of these beliefs that you have, some of these outdated beliefs, so that you can change them, you're going to find it when you're doing your inner child work, when you're digging out that kid, digging out those memories, and the best way to do that is by having fun, by doing things that that kid would have loved to do Watching movies, playing with toys, doing art, those kinds of things. So anything you're, you're, you were interested in in childhood, that you loved, bring that out, break that out and start bringing that inner child up to the surface and remembering, recalling what they believe and why they believe those things. Because once you see that you can change it, that kind of puts us where we need to be with beliefs. We've kind of laid it out all. We've kind of laid everything out on the table now and taken an honest look at what our beliefs are, how they affect our thoughts, our emotions, our behaviors, and what we can do to change them.

Speaker 1: 20:31

And that's the really important component there, right, is that taking action. It's not enough to just know the issue. It's not enough to just crack open the wounds. You then have to take action to change them, to improve the quality of your life, because, like it or not, your beliefs are the blueprint of your destiny. It's never too late to redraw the lines towards a life that you deserve, but you're going to have to do the work, the shadow work, the inner child work, the journaling, the questioning yourself, the facing yourself. Okay, you're gonna have to do all of that to get there, and that is gonna be it.

Speaker 1: 21:09

Thank you so, so much for listening to this episode today. I hope it's inspired you. I hope it has motivated you to take some action and to change your beliefs and to improve your life. Don't forget, if you'd like to learn more, you can always connect with me on TikTok, on Medium and on Instagram and you know, if you're serious about taking the first step towards a groundbreaking self-recovery, then apply to work with me one-on-one by visiting therealebjohnsoncom and clicking on Working With Me to apply. If you found today's episode helpful, then head over to Apple Podcasts and please leave me a quick five-star review. It helps other people find the podcast. It kind of helps me get the word out there and exposes more people to the podcast, right. So I would be super grateful if you could do that. Head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a five-star review For everyone else. Keep challenging your beliefs and watch your world transform. Until next time, remember you have the power to craft your reality. Keep your head up and keep your eyes on the stars. Bye-bye.