Skip to main content

HOW TO BREAK THE BELIEFS THAT HOLD YOU BACK

 In the beginning, repeating a habit is essential to build up evidence of your desired identity. As you latch on to that new identity, however, those same beliefs can hold you back from the next level of growth.

When working against you, your identity creates a kind of “pride” that encourages you to deny your weak spots and prevents you from truly growing. This is one of the greatest downsides of building habits.

The more sacred an idea is to us—that is, the more deeply it is tied to our identity—the more strongly we will defend it against criticism. You see this in every industry. The schoolteacher who ignores innovative teaching methods and sticks with her tried-and-true lesson plans. The veteran manager who is committed to doing things “his way.” The surgeon who dismisses the ideas of her younger colleagues. The band who produces a mind-blowing first album and then gets stuck in a rut. The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

One solution is to avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are. In the words of investor Paul Graham, “keep your identity small.” The more you let a single belief define you, the less capable you are of adapting when life challenges you. If you tie everything up in being the point guard or the partner at the firm or whatever else, then the loss of that facet of your life will wreck you. If you’re a vegan and then develop a health condition that forces you to change your diet, you’ll have an identity crisis on your hands. When you cling too tightly to one identity, you become brittle. Lose that one thing and you lose yourself.

When you spend your whole life defining yourself in one way and that disappears, who are you now?
Military veterans and former entrepreneurs report similar feelings. If your identity is wrapped up in a belief like “I’m a great soldier,” what happens when your period of service ends? For many business owners, their identity is something along the lines of “I’m the CEO” or “I’m the founder.” If you have spent every waking moment working on your business, how will you feel after you sell the company?

The key to mitigating these losses of identity is to redefine yourself such that you get to keep important aspects of your identity even if your particular role changes. 

Ex.
“I’m the CEO/leader” translates to “I’m the type of person who builds and creates/innovate things, give jobs to people and also help other people to grow as an individual” 

When chosen effectively, an identity can be flexible rather than brittle. Like water flowing around an obstacle, your identity works with the changing circumstances rather than against them.

Habits deliver numerous benefits, but the downside is that they can lock us into our previous patterns of thinking and acting—even when the world is shifting around us. Everything is impermanent. Life is constantly changing, so you need to periodically check in to see if your old habits and beliefs are still serving you.

A lack of self-awareness is poison. Reflection and review is the antidote.

Chapter Summary 

  • The upside of habits is that we can do things without thinking. The downside is that we stop paying attention to little errors.
  • Habits + Deliberate Practice = Mastery
  • Reflection and review is a process that allows you to remain conscious of your performance over time.
  • The tighter we cling to an identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

 Loss is painful, guilt can be devastating. Worse than losing one's dream is the knowledge that the loss was self-inflicted. Problems are solutions that have outlived their usefulness. Problems are pattern that were learned in emotional circumstances during one period of life and that now have taken an existence of their own. Many times, outdated solutions replay themselves in a variety of life situations, leaving people mindlessly repeating their mistakes in work, love, and trading. There can be no free will for people who are locked into patterns developed for past challenges. Successful traders are therapists both learn to do what comes unnaturally. The resolution to problems can be found in what people are doing when those problems are not occurring. The problem with many traders is not that they have problems, but that they are focused on their problems. It is this problem focus that prevents them from appreciating what they are doing right, that blinds them to solutions alrea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Three Choices

When we are unhappy and our Life Conditions do not match our Blueprint, we have three choices as to how we’re going to handle the challenge: First Choice: Blame The first choice people have is to assign blame, and there are three things you can blame: a) Event . There’s a story, something that happened, behind why things are the way they are. However accurate the story may be, blaming an event is convenient because it helps preserve an identity designed to shield us from our true fears: fear of failure and fear of not being loved or accepted. b) Others . “I’m in this situation because this person …” Similarly, the story may be true, but it’s convenient and gives you comfort in the moment. “There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s this other person. There’s nothing I need to change.”  c) Yourself . Most people think that this is being responsible, but blaming yourself will not make it better. There’s a difference between responsibility and beating yourself up—between “Here’s a pattern th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wealth File #15 Rich people have their money work hard for them. Poor people work hard for their money

Working hard is important, but working hard alone will never make you rich. Rich people can spend their days playing and relaxing because they work smart. They understand and use leverage. They employ other people to work for them and their money to work for them. You do have to work hard for money. For rich people, however, this is a temporary situation. For poor people, it's permanent.. Rich people understand that "you" have to work hard until your "money" works hard enough to take your place they understand  the more your money works, the less you will have to work. To win the money game, the goal is to earn enough passive income to pay for your desired lifestyle. In short, you become financially free when your passive income exceeds your expenses. Rich people think long-term. They balance their spending on enjoyment today with investing for freedom tomorrow. Poor people think short-term. They run their lives based on immediate gratifications. To in...
Post a Comment
Read more