What if the way you see yourself is keeping you stuck?
Have you ever wondered why you keep doing the same things, even though you know they aren’t getting you where you want to go?
Yet there is something you need to do that you keep avoiding.
Perhaps you know you need to make a decision, have a difficult conversation, put yourself out there, start something new or finally do something you’ve been thinking about for months, and somehow you keep finding reasons not to do it.
You might tell yourself that you don’t know what to do, that you need more time, that you need more confidence or that you need to work out what the right thing is.
And you might genuinely believe that is the problem.
I see it differently.
I believe that ‘you live like the person you think you are’, and if you are feeling stuck, it is worth looking at the person you believe yourself to be, because those beliefs influence far more of your life than you probably realise.
What if feeling stuck isn’t really about knowing what to do?
Throughout our lives, we collect stories, beliefs and assumptions about ourselves, often without consciously deciding whether they are true or whether they are still relevant.
It could be that something happens, someone says something, we have an experience, we make a decision about what that means about us and, over time, that becomes part of the story we tell ourselves.
That story then influences the way we think.
The way we think influences the way we feel, and the way we feel influences how we show up, how we behave, the decisions we make and the actions we take, which ultimately creates the results and experiences we have.
So if you believe you aren’t confident, you will behave differently from someone who believes they are confident.
If you believe you aren’t good enough, you will make different decisions from someone who believes they are capable.
If you believe you don’t know what you are doing, you might wait until you feel more certain before taking action, while someone who believes they can work things out as they go may simply get started.
Neither person necessarily has more knowledge, ability or experience. They are simply operating from a different belief about who they are.
And I know this because I’ve done it myself.
I thought I was starting from a blank piece of paper
Maria Newman Coaching isn’t my first experience of business.
My first business was called Fill That Space, which was about promoting local Bristol artists, and I was really excited because, as far as I was concerned, what wasn’t exciting about running your own business?
The problem was that I completely disregarded the 17 years of experience I already had.
Before starting my business, I had had a successful career as a project manager at Rolls-Royce, despite not having any engineering qualifications or engineering experience myself.
From a technical point of view, I knew very little about engineering, yet that didn’t stop me from project managing highly complex projects.
I had spent 17 years solving problems, managing complexity, leading people and getting things done when I didn’t necessarily know all the answers myself.
Then I started my own business and somehow decided that none of that counted.
As far as I was concerned, I was starting from a blank piece of paper.
I knew nothing.
I was constantly questioning myself. Would anybody buy from me? Did I actually know what I was doing? Who was I to be running a business?
I remember going to networking meetings and looking at all these business owners in awe, thinking that they were really successful people who knew what they were doing, while I felt like the child who had somehow been allowed to sit at the grown-ups’ table.
I thought that maybe, just maybe, one day I would become like them.
I didn’t realise that the way I was thinking about myself was influencing the way I was showing up.
And the results reflected that.
Sales didn’t go particularly well. Most days I didn’t make a sale, I was spending more than I was making and eventually I decided to close the business.
If only I knew then what I know now.
I understand now that the way you think, the stories you tell yourself and the beliefs you have about yourself will influence the reality you experience.
So if you are wondering how to stop feeling stuck, perhaps the first question isn’t ‘What should I do?’
Perhaps it is ‘Who do I believe I am?’
So, who do you think you are?
I want you to take a moment and think about yourself, whether that is in your business, your career, your relationships or your life generally.
Who do you think you are?
And then think about how that person shows up.
If you believe you are someone who lacks confidence, how does that person behave when an opportunity comes along?
If you believe you are someone who always puts everyone else first, what decisions do you make?
If you believe you are someone who isn’t good at making decisions, how long do you spend going backwards and forwards before finally deciding what to do?
You might think that your behaviour is simply a reflection of who you are, when actually the way you see yourself is what influences your behaviour every day.
And once you become aware of that, you have something you can work with.
3 ways to start becoming the person you want to be
Decide who you want to be, not just what you want to achieve
When people feel stuck, they often concentrate on what they want to achieve.They want more money, a different job, a successful business, better relationships, more confidence or more time for themselves, and there is nothing wrong with wanting any of those things.
I simply want you to take it one step further and ask yourself ‘who you need to be to create that life?’
Perhaps you want to be someone who is confident, decisive and willing to take opportunities.
Perhaps you want to be someone who trusts herself, speaks up and doesn’t spend hours worrying about what everyone else thinks.
Perhaps you want to be someone who looks after herself rather than always putting herself at the bottom of the list.
Why is this useful?
Because once you know who you want to be, you can start looking at your decisions and asking whether they fit with that person.
Instead of continually asking yourself, ‘What should I do?’, you can ask, ‘What would the person I want to be do in this situation?’
How do you use it?
Write down three words that describe the person you want to be, then choose one area of your life where you would like things to be different and start noticing whether your current behaviour reflects those three words.
You aren’t trying to become a completely different person overnight; you are becoming more conscious of the person you are choosing to be.
What could change?
You may find that decisions become easier because you have something to guide them, and you may start doing things that you previously talked yourself out of because you are no longer making every decision from the same old version of yourself.
Listen to the conversation you are having with yourself
Once you have decided who you want to be, I want you to think about how that person would think.
What would their inner dialogue sound like?
How would they talk to themselves when something goes wrong?
What would they say when they make a mistake?
How would they talk about themselves to other people?
This is important because the conversation you have with yourself is happening all day long, and most of the time you probably aren’t even aware of it because you have become so used to hearing it.
You might say:
- I’m not good enough.
- I don’t know what I’m doing.
- What if I get it wrong?
- What will people think?
- Someone else could do this much better than me.
Now imagine that you are the person you have decided you want to be.
Would she talk to herself like that? Probably not.
Why is this useful?
Because you can’t keep having the same thoughts and expect yourself to consistently behave differently.
If your inner dialogue is constantly telling you that you aren’t capable, you are likely to feel uncertain, and when you feel uncertain you may avoid taking the very action that could give you the result you want.
How do you use it?
Start noticing what you say to yourself, particularly when you are faced with something that makes you uncomfortable.
When you catch yourself saying something that keeps you stuck, ask yourself, ‘Is this how the person I want to be would talk to herself?’
If it isn’t, choose a different thought that supports the person you want to be.
You don’t have to convince yourself that you are amazing or pretend that everything is fine; you simply need to start having a more useful conversation with yourself.
What could change?
You may start feeling more capable because instead of constantly reinforcing the reasons you can’t do something, you are giving yourself permission to work things out, make mistakes and keep going.
Start being that person, one step at a time
You don’t have to change everything about your life at once, and I wouldn’t recommend trying to, because when you give yourself a huge list of things you need to change, it can become another reason to feel overwhelmed.
Instead, choose one thing.
If you have decided you want to be someone who speaks up, look for one opportunity to speak up.
If you want to be someone who makes decisions confidently, make one decision without asking everybody else what they think.
If you want to be someone who takes better care of herself, make one decision that puts your wellbeing higher on the list.
Then do it again. And once that starts to feel more natural, add something else.
Why is this useful?
Because you start to give yourself evidence that you really are capable of being this person.
You aren’t simply telling yourself that you are confident; you are behaving in a way that demonstrates confidence to yourself.
Let me give you an example. I remember being at my parents’ house and seeing my dad prepare himself to go up the stairs.
I remember seeing him standing at the bottom of the stairs, just about to walk up, and before he took his first step he sighed.
I asked him what he was doing and he said, ‘What?’
I said, ‘That sigh. What were you thinking?’
He told me that he was thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ve got to walk up these stairs.’
I said, ‘What if you simply thought, I’m going to walk up these stairs?’
He paused and said, ‘Do you know what? That might make a difference.’
And it did.
I watched his posture change, his shoulders went back and he walked up the stairs.
The stairs hadn’t changed.
What changed was the way he was approaching them.
How do you use it?
Don’t wait until you feel like the person you want to be before you start behaving like her.
Choose one small thing you can do differently today, then keep doing it until it becomes part of who you are, before gradually adding something else.
What could change?
You start creating evidence for yourself that you can trust yourself, that you can take action and that you are capable of doing things you previously believed were beyond you.
And that can change much more than the one thing you started with.
You don’t have to know everything before you start
This is something I now recognise when I work with my clients.
When someone tells me they feel stuck, unsure or frustrated because they don’t know what to do next, I don’t immediately tell them what they should do.
We start by looking at what is actually going on.
What are they telling themselves?
- What do they believe about themselves?
- What assumptions are they making?
- What are they worried might happen?
- What would they do if they weren’t questioning themselves quite so much?
Often, the answers are already there.
They just haven’t been able to see them clearly because they are looking at their situation through the beliefs and assumptions they have been carrying around with them.
My job is to ask the questions that help them uncover what is underneath it, and then we can start looking at what they want and what needs to happen next.
It isn’t about becoming somebody completely different.
It is about becoming more aware of who you are being now, deciding who you want to be and then starting to behave like that person.
What would happen if you started living like the person you believe you can be?
Imagine making decisions from the belief that you are capable rather than constantly questioning whether you are good enough.
Imagine taking an opportunity without spending days worrying about what other people will think.
Imagine making a mistake without using it as evidence that you can’t do something.
Imagine speaking to yourself in the same way you would speak to somebody you care about.
Imagine deciding what you want and then actually doing something about it.
Your circumstances won’t necessarily change overnight, yet the way you respond to those circumstances can change, and when the way you respond changes, your actions change too.
That is why, when you are feeling stuck in life or business, I don’t think the answer is always to find another strategy, another course or another thing to do.
Sometimes you need to stop and look at ‘who you believe you are’, because you will continue to make decisions from that belief until you become aware of it and decide that you want something different.
So ask yourself:
Who am I being right now? And Who do I want to be?
And then, perhaps most importantly: What would that person do next?
Start with one thing and then do it again.
And slowly, you might find that you aren’t just thinking differently about yourself. You are becoming the person you decided you wanted to be.
If you’ve read this and thought, “this is me”, this is your next step. Click the LINK to find out more.
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