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I want to introduce you to a concept today that’s been one of the most consistently useful things I’ve ever taken into a coaching session, and I’ve been using it for long enough now that I can say with some confidence it works – not just for my clients, but for me too, on the occasions when I’ve needed to sit down and do the work myself rather than just facilitate it for others. We all have a museum. Most of us just don’t know we’re running one. It’s full of old exhibits – beliefs we picked up somewhere along the way, usually a long time ago, usually from someone who had no real authority to hand them to us in the first place, but which we’ve been carrying around and treating as fact ever since. Things like I’m not clever enough, or I’m not the kind of person who succeeds at things like that, or people like me don’t get to have that kind of life. Old artefacts from old chapters, still on display, still shaping the way we see ourselves and what we believe is possible.
The museum is the problem. Not you. Where the exhibits come from. Most of our limiting beliefs have an origin story, and when we actually trace them back to their source, they tend to look considerably less substantial than they’ve been feeling. A teacher who told you that you’d never amount to much. A parent who, with the best of intentions, steered you away from the thing you wanted because they were afraid for you. A partner who chipped away at your confidence so gradually you didn’t notice until it was gone. A moment of public embarrassment that your brain filed under evidence and has been pulling out ever since whenever you’ve considered trying something similar. These things happened. The feelings they created were real. The conclusions we drew from them, though – the beliefs we installed as a result – those deserve a much closer look than most of us have ever given them, because very often they were the beliefs of a much younger, much less resourced version of us, drawn from a single data point and never updated. The exercise. This is something I take clients through, and I want to offer you a version of it today. Pick one belief you’ve been carrying that’s been getting in your way – something in the territory of I’m not good enough, or I always mess things up, or it’s too late for me now. Write it at the top of a page. Underneath it, write the heading Proof and list every piece of evidence you can find to support that belief. Then, and this is where it gets interesting, go through each piece of evidence and challenge it, one by one. Is it actually true? Is it the only possible interpretation of what happened? Was it one person’s opinion on one occasion, or is it a universal law you’ve been treating as though it is? Most of the time, when we do this properly, the proof starts to look a lot thinner than it felt. If you find a piece of evidence that genuinely holds up under scrutiny, move to the next heading: Solutions. For every real obstacle, there’s usually a real way around it, through it or over it – write those down too. Then, for the beliefs you’ve managed to challenge and dismantle, write one final heading: Museum. This is where they live now. In the past. Behind glass. Interesting to look at, perhaps, as a reminder of how far you’ve come, but no longer running the show. Write each dismantled belief in the past tense – because that’s where it belongs. The thing about museums. Museums are wonderful places. I love a good museum. They preserve important things, they tell us where we’ve been, they give context to the present – and then we walk back out into the world and get on with living, because nobody makes their home in a museum. Your limiting beliefs deserve exactly the same treatment. Worth understanding, worth examining, worth knowing about – and then very firmly in the past, where they can stop costing you the future. |
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Taz
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