Summary: This is the third of a five-part series covering insights from Tony Robbins’ Unleash the Power Within in Los Angeles on March 14-17, 2019. We will publish each section every two days. Be sure to stick around for the shocking conclusion in Part Five – you are not going to want to miss it!
It’s nearly impossible to boil down a four day event, where Tony Robbins talks for 15 hours straight on two of the four days, to ONE key insight.
But we’re going to try because if we don’t, you (our readers) will lose interest and/or get lost in the details of everything that happened over the four days. [Author’s Note: we’ve read several accounts of the meeting from other bloggers and felt exactly this way]
So what was the ONE key insight from the meeting?
It is this: Your limiting beliefs are keeping you from achieving the results you want out of life.
What are limiting beliefs?
Limiting beliefs are the thoughts that you create in your mind that hold you back from achieving your goals. They are mental road blocks.
Over the fours days, we heard numerous examples of limiting beliefs. Here are some of them:
- Middle aged sales professional – he wants to lead real estate syndications but believes it will take years to achieve that goal. He tells himself that he doesn’t have the connections or knowledge to achieve the goal more quickly.
- Thirteen-year old boy in middle school – he loves basketball but whenever he plays he just keeps thinking that he is going to “screw up” and embarrass himself. He believes he is not as good as other players and worries about what they will think.
- Married homemaker in her 20s – she wants to play a bigger role in helping the family achieve financial independence. However, she believes that because she isn’t college educated, she can’t do much more than helping her husband with administrative tasks.
- Thirty-something teacher – she knows that the education system has flaws, but does not believe she can effect any change. She believes she is powerless.
As you might imagine, if you have a limiting belief, you usually do not try to overcome it. You just avoid the situation.
Moreover, if someone carries around a limiting belief but he/she tries to take action, the belief is disabling and reinforcing.
Let us give you an example. Let’s say the teacher who holds the belief that she cannot effect change chooses to speak up in a PTA meeting to point out how something can be improved. Do you think she is speaking from a position of confidence? How do you think she carries herself when she does not believe she can effect change in the first place. Likewise, what happens when she gets ignored or someone pushes back against her opinion? Instead of presenting a counter argument, she’ll be much more likely to withdraw, reinforcing the belief that she cannot effect change. Now that she knows that she cannot make change (after all, she just saw it!), she’s even less likely to speak up next time.
She shoots herself in the foot before she even starts. She will also continue to carry her limiting belief into the future, further shackling herself at work and perhaps even in her personal life.
What you believe controls what you do.
So what can you do?
Each of us have a set of very significant limiting beliefs that keeps us from achieving our potential.
One way to elicit your limiting beliefs is to challenge yourself with an audacious goal.
For example, maybe you are a new graduate with a considerable amount of school debt and you give yourself a huge financial goal: I want to achieve a $5 million net worth in 5 years.
Once you set that goal, you then ask yourself, what is getting in the way of achieving that goal? Maybe you feel you don’t have enough time? Maybe you feel you aren’t connected to the right people? Maybe you feel that you don’t have the right skills or knowledge?
These are common limiting beliefs.
Once you identify your limiting beliefs, the next step is to question whether or not these beliefs are true.
Most people feel they don’t have enough time. But does a really successful person, juggling family and a multi-million dollar business, really have more time than you?
Many people feel they don’t have the right connections. But are you capable of going to meetings, social events or be in the same place as the people you want to meet?
Many people feel they don’t have the right skills or knowledge. But are you capable of signing up for courses, attending conferences, or reading every book or online resource in the area of your interest?
The key to ridding yourself of limiting beliefs is to recognize them as such. So when you hear yourself making excuses or repeating the same old mantra to yourself about your limitations, you must stop yourself and recognize this as a limiting belief. It is not the truth. It is just a belief you hold. And beliefs can be changed.
Once you are able to quickly identify your limiting beliefs and immediately change the narrative in your head, you will “unleash” yourself to get the results you want out of life.
Uncovering our own limiting beliefs
What did we do to uncover our own limiting beliefs?
As we described in Part 2, we set in front of ourselves a huge challenge – to grow our net worth to $100 million in 5 years.
You can probably imagine all of the limiting beliefs that poured out of us when faced with such a monumental challenge.
This is what happens at a Tony Robbins’ event. You practice identifying your limiting beliefs to the point that you not only recognize it immediately in yourself but in others as well.
In fact, there is a small group of us who attended the same conference, and we found that we were calling each other out so much on limiting beliefs that we now call them “LBs” for short. It has become part of our everyday language!
Now it’s your turn.
Be sure to stick around for the shocking conclusion to this five part series, where we will reveal our leap of faith decision!
What are your limiting beliefs? How would life be different if you overcame your limiting beliefs?
