Negative beliefs and thoughts can end up impacting your entire life in a “butterfly effect” type way. If you think that you are worthless, then this can change the way you stand, the chances you take, and opportunities that you believe are available to you. The result is that you make a worse impression on others, and don’t take full advantage of your innate skills and abilities.
But did you know that similar beliefs can affect you on a day to day level? Hidden beliefs that you aren’t aware of can change the very way you approach tasks… or fail to.
The example we’re going to use here is a busy day in the office. Let’s say that you get to work and you find that things have really piled up. There are 100 (angry) emails to answer, you have one project that’s late, and you have another one that you haven’t even started yet that is going to be horrible to work on.
You now find yourself frozen. Without knowing which thing to start on first, you might find yourself doing nothing.
Likewise, you might find yourself wasting time thinking of ways to outsource the work (palm it off) or otherwise not do it. Great if it works… not so great if you spend 20 minutes looking for a shortcut and get nothing for your efforts!
You might write a to do list or find other ways to procrastinate.
But here’s what you really need to do: start.
While you can wallow and feel sorry for yourself all you like, while you can try and “get out of it,” the truth is that things will only get worse the more you put if off. If you just dive in and start, you’ll at least make positive headway. And you’ll feel MUCH better as a result.
Another one we love is the “one minute rule.” This states that if something takes less than a minute… you should just do it!
To get to this point though, you need to learn to better recognize your own thoughts and emotions, and to better understand how to take them and transform them into positive beliefs and thoughts – determinations that help you to get work done.
This comes from two places:
- Changing your deeply felt beliefs about you, what you’re capable of, and what “worth” you have
- Becoming better at identifying unhelpful thoughts and immediately swapping them for better ones
Once you can do this, you’ll completely change your ability and your life.