ACTION PLAN
1. Recognize the Power of Your Beliefs
“Our thoughts determine our lives,” as the Serbian monk Thaddeus of Vitovnica said. Both positively and negatively, your beliefs have tremendous impact on your experience of life. Recognizing that fact is the first stage in experiencing your best year ever.
2. Confront Your Limiting Beliefs
We all have limiting beliefs about the world, others, and ourselves. Four indicators you’re trapped in a limiting belief are whether your opinion is formed by:
It’s also important to identify the source of your limiting beliefs, whether it’s past experience, the news media, social media, or negative relationships.
3. Upgrade Your Beliefs
Get a notebook or a pad of paper and draw a line down the middle of the page so you have two columns. Now use this six-step process to swap your limiting beliefs for liberating truths.
- RECOGNIZE your limiting belief. Upgrading your thinking starts with awareness, so take a minute to reflect on what beliefs are holding you back.
- RECORD the belief. In the left-hand column, jot down the belief. Writing it down helps you externalize it.
- REVIEW the belief. Evaluate how the belief is serving you. Is it empowering? Is it helping you reach your goals?
- REJECT/REFRAME the belief. Sometimes you can simply contradict a limiting belief. Other times, you might need to build a case against it or look at your obstacles from a better angle.
- REVISE the belief. In the right-hand column write down a new liberating truth that corresponds to the old limiting belief.
- REORIENT yourself to the new belief. Commit to living as if it’s true.