Transforming Limiting Beliefs: The 5 Primary Drivers
SUMMARY
“He who thinks he can, and he who thinks he can’t, are both right”– Henry Ford
Some of the deepest observations about the human condition can be found in some of the least likely places.
One of my personal favorites is the scene in Star Wars when Yoda is teaching Luke how to master his jedi powers. Luke is trying to raise his crashed fighter plane from the swamps of Dagoba using the “The Force” an energy that pervades the universe which can be harnessed to perform miracles. Luke, very much a skeptic in his early training, tells Yoda that he can’t possibly believe he can raise the several ton plan by simply using his mind.
“I can’t believe it”, says Luke
“That is why you fail”, responds Yoda.
In addition to being a pivotal scene in the movie as young Skywalker begins to step into his new magical powers, it also teaches one of the principle aspects of how all human beings operate, and what can often times keep us stuck.
I call this Principle the 5 Primary Drivers.
The 5 Primary Drivers state simply the following:
1- What we Believe determines what we Think
2- What we Think determines our Feelings
3- How we Feel determines our Actions
4- Our Actions, over time, become our Habits.
5- Our Habits determine the quality and ultimate outcome of our life or, our Destiny.
So often we run around talking about free will and how we have choices in our lives. I hate to tell you but this simply isn’t true. You, me and everyone else all act according to an operating system that works in a very consistent and predicable way.
We all operate according to the 5 Primary Drivers.
Most of our beliefs are simply conclusions we came to based on experiences we had early on in life. Perhaps we witnessed our parents struggling to earn income and we came to the conclusion that money was hard to come by. Perhaps our parents (dads are notoriously good at this) were critical of us and we concluded we needed to be perfect to be loved. Perhaps children at school who were themselves insecure picked on us, and we concluded we weren’t good enough. Too young to know that what we believed would determine the lens through which we looked at life, many of us adopted beliefs that were not only untrue, but tremendously disempowering.
As we’ve become more self-aware and have been able to gain tremendous insight through therapy, working the steps, or working other programs, many of our limiting beliefs have become clearer for us. However many others are still present and creating undesired feelings and outcomes in our life.
The 4th step is one tool we can use to inventory our limiting beliefs.
But for many of us, we’ve worked the steps and we still feel stuck in various aspects of our lives. Therein lies the clue that there is more inquiry to be done.
I’m often asked how one can uncover the limiting beliefs that might not yet be obvious. The answer is pretty straightforward. Wherever you are feeling stuck, you have a limiting belief.
Change your belief, change your feelings, change your action, change your life.
Lisa, one of my coaching clients, has been struggling to get a series of workshops going.
When we dug a little deeper we uncovered a core belief that she had which more or less guaranteed her inability to attract participants to her workshop. She believed that nobody wants to be sold to.
I’m sure you can quickly see how she was setting herself up for failure.
Going back to the 5 primary drivers, because Lisa held this belief, that nobody wants to be sold to, anytime she had an idea on how she could promote her workshops she would experience thoughts that would convince her otherwise.
“Why would they even want to attend,” she would think to herself. “They’ll probably be irritated with me if I promote my workshop to them.” These thoughts drove her action, which were predominately inactivity (worrying, procrastinating and doubting.)
Over time, her hopes and dreams for her workshops began to dissipate. She concluded that because she couldn’t get anyone to attend her workshops, that people weren’t interested, reinforcing her original belief. The reality of course was that no one attended her events because she never effectively promoted them.
And why would she if she believed that nobody would want to be sold to.
In identifying her limiting belief and creating a new, more appropriate one – that there were people who would very much appreciate exposure to her work – she began to think and act differently. Within a short period of time Lisa was taking the right action in not only filling seats, but fulfilling her dream.
Today, ask yourself the following questions:
Where are you feeling stuck in your life, and what is it you believe about that situation?
Is that necessarily true? Can you find any evidence in the world that might offer a different, more empowering perspective?
Are you willing to try on this new empowering belief for your life?
What new action could you take if you truly embraced this belief?
“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.” — Tony Robbins
Daily Distinction:
The quality of my life is determined by the quality of my beliefs about it. Everything I want for my life is available to me to the degree that I believe it is. Anywhere I’m not happy in my life I’m experiencing a limiting belief. While I may see myself as limited my Higher Power does not. Today I will begin to notice what I believe about the areas of my life where I’m dissatisfied. I am certain that if I look hard enough I can always find evidence for a more empowering way of looking at things. As I change my beliefs, I transform my life.
