What Must You Believe

Hey Geniuses, how’s it going? We are three weeks, four weeks into the new year, and I’m just coming in to check on you because in episode 136, I challenged you to keep your promise to yourself. I just want to know how is that going? If you’re anything like me, you can find that keeping your promises to yourself can be a little bit challenging, but it’s not impossible. And I know that keeping your promise to yourself can be challenging for many reasons. And today I’m going to go over just a few of them that I’ve experienced myself and that I’ve heard other people talk about. Keeping your promise to yourself can be challenging because… One, it means showing up when you really don’t want to. Two, it means disappointing other people sometimes. And three, you can’t see yourself as the end result of what you’re working towards. If that’s you, keep listening.  

Welcome back to the Own Your Genius podcast where we discuss building businesses, growing brands and what else? Only your genius. I’m your host, Attorney LaConya Murray, owner of Off The Mark IP Solutions. Off the Mark is a boutique intellectual property firm representing innovative entrepreneurs aka geniuses who are looking to protect their brand and grow their business with ongoing legal support and business mentorship. We have a good one for you today, so let’s get started. 

What do you do? What do you do when you have a problem showing up? Like if it’s challenging to get things done. One thing I would say or suggest is give yourself some flexibility. Give yourself some flexibility in how you will achieve your goal. That makes sense. So instead of saying that I’m going to wake up at 5 a.m. every day so that I can have some time to myself, consider changing that to ‘I will spend 30 minutes a day with myself with no distractions.’ Because when you do that, now you take that time element out of it, and you’re not trying to beat yourself up and trying to do all the things to get up at five o’clock in the morning, because sometimes it’s just not happening. But the important thing is not necessarily the 5 a.m., it’s the fact that you are getting to spend some time with yourself in your thoughts, in your prayers, just recouping. Whether you’re getting up at 5 a.m. to do that, or whether you’re sitting in the car for 30 minutes, you know, before you go in the house, you have kept your promise to yourself by spending 30 minutes a day with no distractions.  
 
The second one is disappointing others. And that can be tough. Disappointing others is the fear, I would say, of disappointing others can be a challenge. The first thing that I would suggest is, first of all, make sure that the people that you’re worried about disappointing are your people. If they don’t care about you, if they don’t have your best interest in mind, you shouldn’t put too much weight on whether or not your actions are going to disappoint them. But if they are your people, these people do care about you. They want the best for you. I would suggest sharing your goal with them, letting them know that, ‘Hey, I’m focusing on getting better with money.’ And then after you set that goal, or once you communicate what you’re doing, set the expectation ahead of time. Then you set the expectation. And if you’re worried about disappointing your family because of how you are getting better with money will affect them, then just let them know, not only, hey, I’m trying to get better with money, but this is what this means. So set that expectation. This means that our vacation will be shorter this year. This can help the person understand and kind of soften that disappointment. It won’t alleviate it. 

It’s not gonna go away completely, but at least they’ll have some understanding, and it can make it a little bit better. Another thing I consider when I think about whether my actions will disappoint someone, I always think about my intentions. Am I acting with malice or am I acting with ill will? If not, then I’m going to keep it moving. Because one of the things that I learned in therapy, I cannot control how other people react. That was a huge thing for me, like trying to control situations and how people react. The therapist told me to let that go. I can’t do that, I can’t do that. So that’s how I deal with, you know, disappointing others or with my actions I’m going to disappoint others.  

First, I make sure that these are people that it’s worth having that concern about. And then I just talk to them. And then, even if they’re still disappointed and then I have a problem. I just go back to my attention to that. Well, I understand that they’re disappointed, but I’m not doing this to be mean. I’m not doing this to hurt anybody. I’m really doing this for the betterment of me. And then depending on who they are, it’s probably the betterment of them as well. That’s how I deal with that. And then finally, the mindset piece, you know, can you see yourself as the result or what it is you’re trying to achieve Meaning if you go back to the example in the last one being better financially, can you see what that looks like? What does it feel like? What are you doing now that you are financially in a better place? You’re better with money, you’re getting more financially literate, you’re learning how to invest, learning how to save. What does that look like? Can you visually picture it? Sometimes I picture it so much that I can like, I feel it inside of, inside me. Like I can feel the joy, I can feel the peace, I can feel what it is that I’m trying to achieve. I saw a post a couple of weeks ago, it was about goal setting and this commenter, he said that when it comes to setting his goals, you know, he says his goals and then he says, now what must I believe? What must I believe to achieve this? Like what must I… What must I know is true? And I thought that was so brilliant, so brilliant, because our mindsets can literally make us, or they can break us.  

My question is, what do you need to believe to keep your promise to yourself? And once you determine that, that belief or beliefs, I challenge you to make it a habit to tell yourself that multiple times a day. And personally, and you guys know this, I tell myself before I go to bed and when I wake up in the morning, I just feel like that’s been very powerful to me being able to have the right mindset to be able to achieve the goals that I’m setting for myself and just better off just being a better place mentally. And then I also have this other trick that I saw, I can’t remember where I saw it from, but I used the reminder app in my iPhone to send affirmations to myself daily. Like I have them scheduled out randomly, a few of them, and it just pops up and says, hey, this, that, the other. So that’s also been helpful. But we’re almost at the end of January and have you been keeping your promise to yourself? If you have, kudos, kudos to you for keeping your promise to yourself.  

Maybe these tips that I shared will keep you going for the rest of the year. If you’ve fallen off, do not beat yourself up. This is a sign to try something else. There’s a saying, I have no idea what this saying came from and it’s kind of creepy really if you think about it. So don’t think about it too much. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat. If your way isn’t working, try something else. Start by asking yourself, what do you need to believe? Like, I want to do this, what do I need to believe to make this happen? And once you have that belief, do me a favor, share it in the comments, let us know, put it out there.  

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