How to dissect disempowering beliefs

Good morning you beautiful soul. Thank you for your patience. I had a bit of trouble with motivating myself to write this newsletter. I did quite some work on dissecting toxic thoughts and disempowering beliefs and received some interesting insights into seemingly simple and obvious things, that I want to share with you today.

This newsletter is supposed to motivate you, but I don't want to be the next quick dopamine hit for you. We have way too many short lived pleasures in our environment already. Lasting change can only come from deep understanding and awareness in combination with self directed neuroplastic changes and actions that are aligned with that new found belief.

I came across a technique called the Neurocycle. With this technique you are supposed to create a metacog (from meta cognition) to help you visualise the toxic thought or disempowering belief that you want to remodel. The brain is a pattern recognition machine and works in an associative manner rather than in full sentence semantics as we are used to write out our thoughts. The brain works much better with images that are reflecting an understanding that can't be expressed in a single word.

A metacog can be extremely powerful, as it is revealing the relationship of certain words or sentences to each other. So for example I am doing it with the belief that I need to "do more!", which I find disempowering since my inner driver won't shut up as soon as I am trying to do nothing, be still, be with myself and relax.

Not always though as you can see from the picture above. The feeling that "I've got this" won't manifest when I am with myself, not doing anything AND procrastinate and ruminate at the same time. On the other hand I can have that feeling when I find clarity, create structure in my mind and in my work and when I am working on things that really matter to me.

So it's not about not doing anything or doing hard work per se. It's never the extremes. The interesting part I thought was that I can find healthy habits like "being still / not moving" and "solitude / being alone" on the "dark side". Those things are not bad per se, it's just my perspective and my behaviour that make them feel bad. If combined with healthy habits and directed action on the left side (clarity & structure / meaningful work), they become the opposite side of the balance that is needed to stay happy and productive.

This is a pattern that I recognise in many of my coaching clients as well. They are performing at very high levels for years and as soon as they quit their job, start freelancing or just take some time off, their brain is switching into rumination mode and makes the freed up time not enjoyable to say the least.

Now we could dive into how to create meaningful goals and systems, but the ground work is always awareness. Becoming aware of these thinking patterns will help you later on to not fall back into despair when things don't go your way. And it all starts with how you think and how you talk, since this is creating the belief patterns in your subconscious mind. If you think you can't get it right you most certainly won't.

Disempowering beliefs are like a virus in your operating system. Your brain wants to feel balanced. It constantly tries to get back into balance, but you have the power to override that tendency. In the book "The Ten Worlds - The new psychology of Happiness" the authors write "...people with a negative self-explanatory style, characterized by a belief in ones powerlessness, were more likely to become depressed in response to negative life events."

So it's never really that "facts" that you're looking at. Your current reality is a direct reflection of your thinking patterns. It's your tainted perspective on what is and you can change that lens every day. Some lenses are dirtier than others, but starting to become aware of the fact that there is a malicious piece of software running your operating system is a good start.

What's a disempowering belief you could dissect and remodel this week? Take some time to write things down, talk to a friend or watch a YouTube video about a related topic. I am wishing you a wonderful start into the week and hope that it will be blessed with an epiphany about a disempowering belief.

Much love,

Jan