Beliefs & energy
When it comes to thriving and having the right energy to perform I think of four sources
- Personal energy, that which we bring ourselves to the party
- Creative energy, to see solutions through problems
- Connective energy, our power to forge connections with others and collaborate
- Catalytic energy, our power as leaders to inspire and invoke energy in others
In the last few articles of this series on personal energy I’m going to explore the three main issues that block our own personal energy and some simple strategies for tackling them. Some you may have heard of but they’re nonetheless surprisingly common.
Very often the energy we crave is right in front of us but blocked by something, often ourselves. So in this next two short articles we’ll look at some relatively instant energy fixes that you can try right now.
Back in the 1950s it was a fairly accepted notion that the physiology of the human body, bio-mechanics and the capacity of lungs and heart created a fixed limit as to how far someone could run. And then came Roger Bannister who completed the mile in Oxford in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds. All of a sudden, the calamities that doctors had assured us WOULD happen, didn’t.
It was, for Roger, an immense achievement. Something no-one else had done, he had defied the notion of physiology that had stood for decades and I’d add relative today with extremely dodgy footwear and equipment.
Yet it was short-lived. For whilst the previous record for speed running had stood for a very long time, within a matter of months, Bannister’s record was overtaken. History is littered with these examples – circumnavigating the globe, flying to the moon.
In all these examples how was it that records stood for such a long time or no-one had ever done this before and then all of a sudden people are smashing records everywhere. Incremental scientific advances have a part to play but a big role is belief. The belief that something is impossible, until someone makes it possible.
Even back in the 1980s medical students were being taught the human brain reached its point of growth maturity at around age 23. With the advent of MRI scanners, it’s now accepted wisdom that the human brain never stops growing neural pathways. Yet centuries of medical practice became built on a single belief and not just that – centuries of business practice became wedded to the same concept – that only young people entering a workforce can learn and grow and if they didn’t show signs of being a genius in their early twenties then they’d never be destined for greatness. This point of course never lost on women who tended to find a good part of their twenties raising children for male leaders.
Recognising that beliefs are just what it says on the tin, creations, sometimes rationale but often irrational of our minds means that beliefs can change.
What often holds us back when we’re facing energy battles such as stress, overwork, anxiety, exhaustion are beliefs that constrain us from thinking of other options and making the situation better. Once you overcome a limiting belief, it can no longer stop you or constrain you. Its power over you is gone in an instant.
Spencer Silver of 3M was famously bad at creating glue. His formulations and creations didn’t seem to have sticking power, literally. Glue that doesn’t stick isn’t useful. Or so esteemed wisdom at 3M thought until his supervisor was one day sitting in church with notes in his bible and noticing how hard it was to keep all the bookmarks in place. He couldn’t glue the bookmarks in for the day’s service without then damaging the precious bible taking them back out.
Glue is only useful when it holds things in place permanently. It turns out not so.
How do you spot your personal limiting beliefs? Here are a few ways you can analyse the voice in your head because we tend to phrase limiting beliefs in a certain tell-tale way.
I am not …… enough. This is most common. I am not clever enough. I am not good looking enough. I am not ambitious enough. I am not deserving. And this is the reason why good things don’t happen.
Often these beliefs are sown in our early years through teachers, early instances in our careers and through feedback that might have been well intentioned but poorly delivered and almost certainly subjective but also back to the old notion that our brains are fixed and therefore judgement pronounced on us when we’re young are who we’re going to be forever.
We can also conjure limiting beliefs in relation to others as well. This comes from a more complex blend of our own personal experiences and the world around us. When we do this as leaders, we also start labelling others with our own limiting beliefs – turn this into feedback and you very quickly find yourself indoctrinating someone else with the unhelpful scripts in your life.
People are not trustworthy
Asking for help is a sign of weakness
My team cannot cope without me
The speed of my response is a sign of my professionalism
At this point it’s tempting to just dismiss these as all words and yet everything we know about limiting beliefs is that the cognitive miser tendency in our brain will turn limiting beliefs into unconscious action. In other words when faced with a crossroads between an opportunity and repeating what you’d normally do, your unconscious brain will choose to repeat your normal choice and not even flag to you that there was ever an alternative route.
Your brain does this for you because hey, your day is filled with thousands of choices and if it didn’t you’d likely not get out of the house in the morning. But this tendency of your brain is only helpful if the choices it’s making for you are helpful.
If you find yourself repeatedly being pulled into poor choices, then you have to retrain your brain to make the better choice. And here are some tips on how to do it.
Try the exercise of identifying your own limiting beliefs – the not xyz enough phrasing is a helpful start.
Now challenge yourself with these questions.
What evidence is there that this is ALWAYS true?
When has this NOT been true?
What has been the impact for me of this belief?
How does this belief help me?
How does this belief hold me back?
What opportunities might be created if I chose not to believe this?
Self-doubt destroys our energy. Self-doubt creates a script that is designed to trick your brain into finding the evidence to prove the limiting belief. Take some of the common ones in business leadership that I work with often with my clients.
I am not good at presenting. This is likely to have been formed through a discomfort with a new experience and possibly negative feedback in a past experience. What tends to happen with a limiting belief is our brains then seek out evidence to validate the belief. We go in to a presentation, come out and believing we are not good at presenting, we focus and selectively remember the things we’re less happy about and none of the good bits.
I am not creative
I am not good at challenging conversations
I am not clever enough for this role – the imposter syndrome
A CAUTIONARY WORD TO LEADERS
I’m sure you and your organisations have opportunities for training and development, have great structures for appraisal and development plans and yet you will have people in your team who just seem to be stuck with something they need to develop and no matter what the training, it doesn’t seem to be working.
In your 121s instead of just prescribing training like some kind of development doctor, explore your team member’s limiting beliefs. It’s not going to be easy because we tend not to love disclosing these even if we’re aware of them. But here’s the thing, you can throw whatever training you like at someone holding a strong limiting belief and likely is they will not be able to absorb what is on offer because their mindset is fixed that this mode of working is unshakeable and is a set part of them.
Often I will hear leaders bemoan the fact they’d like members of their team to exhibit a growth mindset. Well the thing is cultivating a growth mindset in a team comes from the leader, you need to show vulnerability yourself and help others uncover and reword unhelpful scripts from their past. Just announcing “we need a growth mindset” has no impact. Delve deeper and you will tap in to a rich vein of energy in your teams that you’ll greatly appreciate.
