Special Episode | Seeing Your Choices
This is a [Special] episode today. Seeing your choices is about voting. It is about diving deep into your beliefs to uncover the real choices that are available to you. To grow and reach your potential you have to be willing to look for the choices — all of them — if you want to get new results. Seeing your choices is a skill that you can develop. Seeing your choices will give you the options you need to make a commitment to your growth.
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Seeing Your Choices: The Transcript
Hi, this is a special episode that I wanted to create because we have a lot going on right now. It’s first Tuesday in November and it is Election Day. And that means choice. Now this is not about politics at all, but it’s just so much has been going on around voting that voting is another way to say that we have to make a choice. And I’m not going to get into the politics of it, but let’s talk about your business and how you look at the choice you have day in and day out.
Now I have been thinking about this for a couple of days now because of, I guess all of the negative ads going on, and the things that are happening. And I voted early because I wanted to make sure that I got it taken care of and had a few things going on today. So I have already exercised my right to vote, but I want to talk to you about the choice you have in your business and how you look at those choices.
Now I put a few notes here before so I may look down a little bit, but you have to realize that you have a choice, you have to realize that you don’t have to do what you’ve always done. Because doing what you’ve always done will get you the results that you’ve always gotten. And you’ve probably heard something similar to that before because a lot of people have said that, so I wouldn’t know who to attribute it to, but the real thing here is what is new that is gonna take us to that next level? If you’re thinking about growing your business, if you’re thinking about being a better leader, if you’re thinking about being a better father, being a better husband, what are the choices in front of you? Because you always have a choice and the problem is we get clouded with those choices, we really let our core beliefs drive what we see as possible. Now those beliefs can be empowering, or they can be limiting, you’ve probably heard that as well. But let’s dive into each of those.
Empowering beliefs are those that lift you up, that cause more energy to be flowing through in a very positive kind of way, that really get you excited, maybe activate some passion inside of you. Maybe they activate your the energy you have toward moving toward something that you really want. Or maybe it’s moving away from pain that you have. Now a limiting belief is something that’s really hard for you to see because you believe it’s just a belief. And I know that’s kind of a little circle there, but a limiting belief is something that happens to hold you back and you don’t even know it.
A limiting belief is something that it takes usually an outsider, a coach, a friend, someone else that’s not emotionally attached, not inside the journey that you’re in right now, not inside the problem, not inside whatever choice you have in front of you. And they are able to see so much more with more clarity than you can because you have a limiting belief. I wanna share this with you because it’s really hard for us to distinguish between our limiting beliefs and our empowering beliefs.
We just look at the beliefs we have. We really think we’re operating within our own values, and our own identity, and that couldn’t be further from the truth because those limiting beliefs, I guess they are your identity. So I’ll go back and really clear that, but they’re not the identity that you need to move forward. A lot of these beliefs come from childhood, the mother and fathers, they way they treated us, they way they exercised, communicated with us, the way they lifted us up, or didn’t lift us up.
I’ve heard so many stories about people who have been physically abused or emotionally abused by fathers or mothers and I’ve written about it in my book about how Tony Robbins was emotionally abused by his mother. And he said he wouldn’t be the man he is today without her her being the way she was. And if she had loved him as a traditional mother would, and as he wanted her to at the time, he wouldn’t be the person he is today. Now think about that for a second. He can look back now and look at how bad it was and how it shaped who he is today. And you may not like Tony Robbins, I totally get that, but the story reigns true.
Think about your life, think about what’s going on within those decisions you’re making, the beliefs that you’ve been handed from your parents. You can also look at media. Media tells us what we should be buying, or how we should be looking at new technology or how we should be doing something else. And maybe it’s about being thinner, maybe it’s about being more attractive. Whatever it is, media shapes our beliefs. Another thing that shapes our beliefs is our circle of friends.
The circle of friends, the people we hang out with. If you hang out with people who have a ton of limiting belief, you’ll accept their beliefs as being grounded and just that’s the way it is. But if you hang out with people that look at life differently, then you will begin to look at life differently. And that’s the key. That’s what I want you to see is the beliefs shape who we are and who we become. What we see is possible, those choices in front of us. And if you want to make good choices, you’ve got to really look inside yourself. Another thing that really shapes this is the experiences in our life shape our beliefs, the things that we’ve been through. I’ve been through some hard times, you’ve been through some hard times. I lost millions of dollars on a deal and it shaped me. And in fact, I wouldn’t go back and change that because it made me who I am today. I needed to go through that to get where I am today. Now what do you do with all this?
This special episode around choices is I want you to be more clear and intentional about the choices you have. And about really questioning the beliefs that make up your choices and make what you see as possible. So next time you sit down and you’re facing a choice, I want you to, of course, write down the things that first come to mind. And then I want you to ask yourself some questions. I want you to ask what’s the opposite of what I’ve normally put down? What is scaring you? Really think about something, write down something that scares you inside that choice. And then also write down and write down what would be the hardest choice to make.
What would be the hardest choice to make? And if you’ve started looking at all of your choices, say you have five choices in front of you, and you had a really hard one. You had one that was an opposite, you had one that was the way you always look at it, and you have a couple of others that come in just out of, challenge yourself to think differently. You have five choices in front of you. And you’re able to look at them and think about them maybe for a day, maybe for two days. But really take some time to think about that choice because what happens next really matters. Making a choice is about knowing that you have choices and then you decide. You can’t have your mentor do if
for you, you can’t have your wife do it for you, or your husband, you can’t have your business partner. You guys can make choices together, but for the most part, you’ve got to make these choices yourself. Because when you make the choice, you’re empowered to make that happen. Your commitment level is much higher than if someone handed you the choice. When you have no choice, you’re not as engaged into it, you don’t have ownership. And so this whole video is about realizing that you have choice and helping you find choices that you couldn’t even discover without it.
This is part of coaching, it’s hard to do this on video, it’s much easier to do this one on one ’cause I can get to the heart of it. I can get to the core issue of choice. And then once you’ve made that choice, we get into what’s called commitment. How bad do you want it, how important is this to you? Are you willing to engage everything? I always talk about if you’re in a fight, ’cause I trained a Brazilian jiu-jitsu. You don’t wanna fight with one arm behind your back, you want to fight with everything you’ve got. You wanna bring everything to the commitment that you made. So if you wanna go deeper with this commitment, you can grab my book The Trap of Success here.
In page six we go through breaking the reactive, which is just, I know a lot of people struggle with being too reactive in the world and not being proactive. And I go through some specific things that you can shift that will help you with your body, emotion, and language. I’m not going to go into ’em today, but I wanted to put this video to help you understand that you have choices.
You’re voting for that, right? And that you absolutely can make a commitment and if you choose something new, if you choose something maybe the opposite of what you’ve ever chosen before, I know it’s going to be hard. You know it’s going to be hard. But usually the hard choice is the right choice. Too often we default to the easy choice because that’s comfortable. That’s my piece today. I want you to really think about this. If you have any questions or any comments or you wanna share something with me, please do so, reach out to me, I’m everywhere on social media. You can go to my email at [email protected]. But I’d love to hear from you. As always, lead with courage and I’ll see ya next time.
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