Last week we talked about the fact that to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to break up with your parents. You have to sever ties with the old view of who you are, and break up with the lies that limit profit.
We looked at the Cycle of Proving and how it leads us into believing the lie every time. So the question is, what do we do about it?
First thing, of course, is you need to recognize it.
Until you become aware that you’ve got a cycle that is running you, and specifically how it operates, you can’t transform it.
And you become aware by simply observing your current result, and backtracking to the belief that might be causing it.
This sounds so simple, but I must tell you that it can be next to impossible to do on your own.
“I don’t know who discovered water, but it sure wasn’t a fish.” – Albert Einstein
For example, I discovered my “Ungrateful Shrew” cycle I discussed in Part I by noticing that I was having trouble with a new person I had hired. I knew deep down that it wasn’t a good fit, and that we weren’t getting what we needed, yet saying so felt exactly like something an ungrateful shrew would do! Of course I didn’t make the connection on my own, I needed help to see it.
Let’s look at another scenario.
You are having trouble with sales. Well actually, you’re not having trouble with sales exactly, because you’re not making any sales calls! So you’re actually having a calling problem. You discover that the root of your calling problem is that you don’t want to bother people. No matter how you reframe it, it feels like an intrusion.
So you look at where you first got the idea that you might be a bother. You remember that after your parents’ divorce, you were shuffled back and forth between households, and you overheard conversations about who was going to take you that ended in arguments. And you recognize that you took on in that moment a commitment to proving you’re not a burden. All the while, holding a deep-seated belief that you actually are.
Wow! No wonder it’s so hard to make those calls. Every time you go to pick up the phone it’s as if you’re causing your parents to argue all over again!
The original lie – that you’re a burden – is the one you need to break up with to bring in sales (and profit).
But it’s not so simple as to say, “I’m valuable, I’m not a burden!” Because, you see, that’s more of the same. That’s the exact cycle of proving you’ve been stuck in your whole damn life!
I call this the “Old, Tired Path.”
See, when you’ve got a filter (like the water is for the fish) of “burden/not burden” everything that occurs for you comes through that filter, and it either matches your interpretation of “burden” or your interpretation of “not burden” (or valuable). There’s no in between and there’s no other measure.
So you’re constantly trying to prove you are valuable until you are so depleted, and in doing so you then create being a burden! The old tired path!
A family member of mine is convinced that they are the most giving, generous, thoughtful person around. It’s the identity this person has taken on. It’s what they are trying to prove. In turn, they are constantly judging others as being selfish and never thinking of them. Yet they can get so focused on how ‘right’ they are and how ‘wrong’ others are that they actually become completely self-absorbed in the judgment of it. In their mind they are doing everything possible to be selfless, yet they come across as being “all about them.” The old tired path. It FEELS real.
You’ve got to break up with the lie that created the path to begin with. And you do this by giving yourself a new experience that contradicts the lie.
If you believed that needing or asking for something meant being a burden, you must give yourself a new experience immediately upon recognizing that. It might mean actually trying to be a burden and living.
You might:
- Call everyone you have a phone number for until someone finally gets mad (it will probably take awhile).
- Ask for help with as many things as you can think of in a single day or week.
- Not step in to be the one who adds value when your tendency would be to help out and “earn your keep.” Instead, sit around and let others do it.
- Yell at someone, be loud, demand attention. Stand on a street corner and preach to passersby.
- Have a conversation with a parent about whether they thought you were a burden.
- Ask people in your life why, specifically, they think you are valuable.
- Ask yourself, if it made no difference whether I was a burden or not a burden, what would be available to me? Act on your immediate answer.
So to create a new experience outside of the old tired path, you must first get clear about what path you’re on. What is the cycle of proving that is running the show for you?
Next, you must give yourself a new experience! IMMEDIATELY.
If you’re not sure what path you are on, but you know you need a new experience, I invite you to join the upcoming teleclass: Inner Alignment: Break up with the lies that limit profit. We’ll give you an experience to allow the cycle of proving to surface and be transformed! Click here to register.