INTRO: 

Hey, it’s Julie and welcome to the Corporate Yogi podcast.

Did you know that identifying core beliefs and shifting them is one of the most common techniques I use with clients?

It is, it really is.

Because we all have core beliefs, most of them were developed at a very early age, often by age 7, bc these early years we’re not only in a physical growth spurt, we’re in a learning spurt, we are taking in and absorbing everything around us. We’re like a giant storage unit when we come into this world, we have all these compartments, and drawers and we’re hungry for data and information to fill them all up.   

When our core beliefs are established, we spent the rest of our years, living our lives and creating circumstances that will help us live out those beliefs, and prove that they are true.

For example, if you are choosing between 2 different job offers with one that was a safe choice – it was well within your comfort zone and you were fully qualified to do it, and the 2^nd job offer seemed way too good to be true, it was more of a risk, but it was doing work that you loved and the pay was 30% more than what you were currently making.
If you have a core belief that
“You can’t make good money doing what you love”, then you might opt for the 1^st choice, the safer choice because it makes you feel comfortable, and you know to expect.
What’s going on here is that your core belief of “You can’t make good money doing what you love” will override the desires of what you really want to do, and cause you to make a less empowered decision.
The 2^nd job offer might seem riskier to you, but it is really riskier, or does it just feel risky because it is challenging one of your core beliefs? This is what we call a battle between the head and the heart.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, no one would ever turn down their dream job because of a belief? And I’m here with your daily dose of tough love today to tell you that, Oh yes, they would, and they do.  

I watch people turn down opportunities all the time because it contradicts their core beliefs. The thing is, that it often goes unnoticed because it happens subconsciously, and our saboteurs step in to give us “seemingly logical” advice or considerations that lead us to make a less empowered choice.

So welcome to this 2 part series on Shifting your beliefs. I’m so glad you’re investing in yourself to learn how to do this. 

So what’s involved? Well, there are 2 steps or 2 processes to shift your beliefs.

In this first episode of this 2 part series today you will learn the first process, called Belief Mapping. This helps you get clear on what your core beliefs are in different areas of your life.

Then, In the next episode I’ll teach you the 2^nd process called Belief Laddering, where you learn how to shift your current belief to one that is more empowering and will help you say YES to that dream job you’ve always wanted.

Both these processes you’re aobut to learn in this series are proprietary, I’ve developed them over the years after 10 years of coaching and working with thousands of people, so don’t worry if you’ve never heard of them before. You couldn’t have. You are on the cutting edge of personal growth and development.  Pretty cool, huh? I’m so glad you tuned in to catch this episode today, because this is powerful work, it’s truly life altering.
So here’s a look at what you’re going to learn in today’s episode, Part 1 of the series:
1) First, I’m going to explain why it’s important to know our core beliefs
2) In the 2nd segment we’ll talk about facts Vs beliefs
3) in the 3^rd segment you’ll learn the process, belief mapping
4) In the 4th segment I’ll teach you HOW to do belief mapping
So get out of your head and into your heart and let’s dive right in shall we?

SEGMENT 1:

It’s important to understand our core beliefs because they are deeply held assumptions, we make about ourselves, about others and about the experiences we have in the world. 

And because they’re so deeply entrenched into our thinking, they have a big influence on the way we think, act or even when we don’t act.
Our core beliefs act as our Operating System or OS, running in the background. Let’s understand this by thinking about your phone. When you use your phone every day you typically interact with the apps you’ve either downloaded or possibly some came preconfigured on your phone. And while you may not think of it often, your phone also has an operating system, running in the background at all times. You don’t have to turn on your operating system every day, it just runs. And if you didn’t have an operating system, you wouldn’t be able to use your apps.

This is essentially how your core beliefs run. They’re in the background facilitating our life every single day, whether they’re powerful beliefs that are empowering and allow us to do courageous things, or if they’re limiting beliefs that hold us back from doing what we want. Most of our beliefs about life were developed in our formative years, often by age 7, and then as we get older we continue to add (at a slower pace) to our core beliefs.
It’s important to point out that we don’t get to choose our core beliefs and decide if we want to add them to our OS, we just observed or experienced something and from that experience a belief was added to our OS.
Back to the Phone metaphor and your Operating system, You don’t even likely spend time thinking about your operating system, just maybe once in a while when there are upgrades that are pushed out to you.
Now, what you DO likely do is spend time on the apps, and the apps are what you interact with on a daily basis. These apps represent our daily activities, tasks and activities, think of it as having a different app for a different aspect of your life- an app that represents your career, an app for your relationship with money, an app for your health. And the performance of these apps depends on what type of Operating system (or set of core beliefs) you are running.
Question:
Are we stuck with the operating system we established as a seven year old?
Absolutely not!  

That is exactly what we’re doing here today. We are on a mission to determine exactly what your core beliefs are, then we will work on shifting the ones that don’t serve you.
Question: Are all core beliefs negative?

Absolutely not! Most people have a mix of empowering and disempowering beliefs. We want to make them all conscious, so we know what we’re working with. It’s great to reveal the really empowering core beliefs in your life, because you’ll likely notice that these are areas of your life where you thrive, just naturally, and never struggle. It’s good to take stock of those areas of your life, so you know what we’re aspiring for.

And likewise, the areas where you have limiting beliefs typically map to the areas in your life where you’re on the struggle train.
OK, let’s recap:
– core beliefs are deeply held assumptions we make about ourselves, others and about the world. 

– Our core beliefs act as our Operating System or OS, running in the background.

– In order to upgrade our OS, we need to figure out what our core beliefs are
– And that is exactly what you’re doing IN this episode.

SEGMENT 2:
Hey, do you want to know something really annoying I do with clients sometimes?

When I notice they’re in a really stuck place and they think they have a perfectly good reason why they can’t do something, 

….. I ask them if that thought is a fact or a belief.

And truthfully, whenever I bust out that question, they always smile, and often don’t even answer my question, because they know what the answer is. They know they’re trying to pass something off as a fact, when really it’s a belief.

Facts and beliefs – it can be a tricky distinction, but a very important one, especially when we’re talking about our mindset! 

Like it or not, our beliefs really do create our reality.

We need to understand what they are, so that we know what we are working with. Having this intelligence about what we believe helps us troubleshoot any areas of our life where we might be struggling.
And what is a belief, really? 

Well a belief is just a thought we keep thinking, over and over again, until we think it long enough, it mutates into a fact for us.
And then it becomes part of our core Operating System or inner script.
And with these core beliefs, if we think them for long enough, we start to believe they are FACTS.
Let me prove it to you.

We all know now that the world is round.
Well, most of us do, expect for a few flat earthers out there who choose not to believe it.
HOWEVER, there was a time in history where the majority of people thought the world was FLAT. Explorers actually had concerns about sailing too far in one direction for fear that they might actually fall off the edge of the earth. It was a belief at the time that the earth was flat, and enough people believed that it was true, that it became a fact.

And this is a danger with a lot of “lack thinking” in our society, either around having enough money, or that you’re only allowed a certain amount of success.
If enough people think these thoughts and live by these thoughts and share these thoughts, and invest energy perpetuating these thoughts, then these limiting beliefs not only live in our individual OS, they start to take shape in our collective consciousness and as a society we start to believe them to be true, and if we all believe them strong enough, then they become facts to us and become part of our cultural awareness, and we develop proof points to back them up. A great example is the creation and frequent use of the “starving artist” archetype.
I’m sure you’ve heard it, or maybe used it.
It’s a belief that if you want to make it as an artist, you’re going to have to sacrifice financial abundance, because you won’t be able to make a lot of money as an artist while you are alive.
Enough people believed that, and embedded it into their OS, and it started to take root in our collective consciousness, and then we made it true through the creation of an archetype (startving artist) and it becomes part of our culture landscape.

Let me share a story.

Years ago when I was hosting a workshop I had a participant tell me her number #1 goal was to become a lawyer and make lots of money, because by doing that then she would be able to do what she was really passionate about, which was to focus on her acting and modelling career. She was early in her career, and also a regular in one of my early morning yoga classes I taught downtown.
I asked her, if acting and modelling are what you’re truly passionate about, then why don’t you just build your career in that? Do you know what she said? I bet you do.
Perfectly on cue she said, because you can’t make any money as an actress. So I have to become a lawyer to make lots of money, to facilitate this side passion and maybe act in a theatre house on the evenings and weekends.

This was such a heartbreaking moment that she was about to buy a one-way ticket on the struggle train, like so many people do, and choose a career path that she had zero interest or passion in at all, in order to live her dream in evenings and weekends. And for those of you who are lawyers or know lawyers, you know there is no “spare time” when you first start out, no evenings or weekends as you’re on a path to partner. So she wouldn’t have had any free time to pursue her acting career. 

For me, it was a massive red flag to hear her limiting belief that:
You can’t earn money doing what you love.
She had another belief of the “starving artist” archetype, that artists don’t make money while they’re alive. 

I’m happy to report that after the workshop, she changed her career path, didn’t apply for law school, and pursued a career doing what she loved and has travelled all around the world doing it.

So, that’s the thing with limiting beliefs, where they’re ours and we’re in them, they seem so real. We’re convinced by them and feel like fact.

And the challenge with having all these beliefs imprinted in our society, and shared in our collective consciousness, is that we start to limit ourselves because of them.
To recap:
– I’m really annoying to my clients when I look at them with my “serious Julie” face and say, is that a fact or a belief.
– A fact is just a thought that we keep thinking, over and over again.
– Beliefs are engrained in our core operating system that influences how we act, or when we don’t act
– and if enough of us hold a belief in our Operating System it becomes part of our collective consciousness, and is embedded in our culture and society

SEGMENT 3:
Now, I’d like to introduce you to the process of Belief Mapping.
Through this process we discover the beliefs you hold in your core OS, or Operating System

Think of Belief Mapping as the foundational part of the process where you get conscious and reveal what your beliefs are. We are literally extracting them from your subconscious mind.

Then once we know what we’re working with, we move onto the Belief Laddering, (which you’ll learn in the next episode), where you’ll learn how to rescript the believe up the ladder to a new, more empowering belief.

Also, let’s take a minute here to get clear on what a belief really is.

Because I notice sometimes clients get confused between beliefs and affirmations
When we are mapping your beliefs, you can think about these 3 levels
– beliefs about YOU. 

– beliefs about others
And beliefs about how the world is

A belief is something that feels factual, such as “Money is the root of all evil”.
other common examples:
– I can’t make money doing what I love

– I’m not good at managing my own finances
– It’s impossible to date after a divorce
Those are all beliefs
Whereas “Money flows freely to me” is more of an affirmation
Yes, it is technically a belief, but it is more aspirational about what you want to have happen to you Vs a fact about how the world works today.

When you say, “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop”

that is a strong belief, it feels factual, it’s an expectation about what life is going to deliver you, about how the world works

The statement “Life loves Me”
this is more of an affirmation. It’s a famous one actually, from Louise Hay, she used to use all the time, “Life loves me”. And it is powerful as an affirmation, and I highly suggest you use it, but I wouldn’t use this as part of your belief mapping process.

OK you just learned What the belief mapping process is, it’s where we extract your core beliefs from your subconscious mind. Beliefs about yourself, others and the world.

SEGMENT 4:

Now I’ll teach you the process of Belief Mapping
You start by coming up with Categories

Now because I know my clients very well, I will usually offer the categories up for them, bc I know what areas they need to be working with.

Question: 

Which beliefs do we focus on, the really positive ones or the really negative beliefs?

The answer is both.

You should pick a good cross section of all areas of your life, and it’s helpful for us to be able to see the contrast of areas where we have really empowering beliefs in your life, and compare them to areas of our life where we have really unempowering belief. It’s a great time to see if there’s a positive correlation between positive beliefs and fulfillment in our life, right?

And what I observe with most people is that they’re living with 80/20 split in their life fulfillment. They’re happy in 80% of the things in their life, and it’s only 20% of their life where they feel stuck. Often I work with people who have reached a point in their life where they have the family, house, car, vacation home, all the things, and they even have a great job, but they don’t feel fulfilled in their job, so that is an area where we need to start digging. What beliefs do they have about work, or having a career they love?  Or what agreements have they made in life about what their career would look like

So, here are the steps to do Belief Mapping. You can go ahead and listen through this whole episode now, and then if you want to go back and write down these instructions, you can go ahead and do that later on.

Step 1 – you pick your categories.

And write each of these categories out across the top of a paper.

I’m going to suggest categories for you, then it’s up to you to either add or subtract categories. I’m going to suggest you start with these 3 categories
1 – Money

2 – Relationships 

3 – Career/Work – this can include your job, or your business if you’re an 

With relationships, I suggest you use the lens of romantic relationships, bc that’s often where we have the most loaded beliefs. Either you’re in a relationship and it’s not where you want it to be. Or, you’re seeking to find a partner and be in a relationship.
But if this doesn’t resonate with you, you can do this thorught the a general lens of all relationships in your life.

Step 2 – Go through each category and list what beliefs you have about this area of your life.

Now when I do this with clients, I actually have a worksheet that I walk them through with and they get to work through a very long list of beliefs, as prompts that helps them uncover their beliefs.

Since we can do this in the podcast, I’m going to give you a suggestion of a few different beliefs for that category, and this will help prompt you to discover your core beliefs that are running your OS.

1. Let’s start with Money

What are your beliefs about money?

Here’s a couple sentence stems that you can start writing with
“I believe that money is….”
“People who have money always…..”
“Making a large sum of money means…”
Here’s a few sample beliefs:
Money is the root of all evil
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer
I have unlimited earning potential
So take a few minutes with this section and write down as many money beliefs that you can access.

2. Let’s go to your 2^nd category – Relationships
Start by writing out your beliefs around relationships
Start with these sentence stems:
“I believe that all relationships are….”
“The key to having a great relationship is…”
“To me, being in a relationship means that ….”
Here’s a few sample beliefs:
Relationships take a lot of hard work
All relationships end in divorce

All the good people are taken
3. Now let’s look at your third category Career and work
What do you believe about your career and work?
Here’s a couple sentence stems:
“Making good money is…”
“Having a career that I love is….”
“To make a big impact with work I…”

Here are a few sample beliefs about career
The most common that I hear all the time,
“I can’t make good money doing what I really love”
“I have to work hard to get ahead”
“I want to make lots of money and then give back to others through charity”

Comb through beliefs that are there, either yes or NO

Pick the belief you hold in each area
So in step 2 you’re basically doing a brain dump of all the beliefs you have about each of these categories

In Step 3; we review all the beliefs and rank them.
Read each belief out loud, and ask yourself How strongly to I believe that as the truth.

If you believe it really strongly, give it a 10, that is the highest ranking
If you don’t believe it that strongly, it might be a one or a 2, 1 being the lowest ranking

Then 5 would be the middle of the scale.
then Step 4, after you’ve ranked all the beliefs, go through and circle the 3 that you believe the strongest.

They’re likely the ones that ranked the highest numerically.

We’re looking for the strongest beliefs

Don’t worry about judging them as positive or negative beliefs just now, simply pick out your strongest beliefs, or the most emotionally charged ones for you.
And I would suggest you pick 2 – 3 beliefs for each category.

And that is it, that is the process of belief mapping.
To recap:
1-You pick your categories

2 – brainstorm your beliefs
3 – review the beliefs and rank them 

4 – select 2-3 beliefs that you hold the strongest.

WRAP UP

OK it’s time to start wrapping up this episode on Belief Mapping
I’m really excited for you to go through this process and reveal what your top beliefs are. This is such a powerful process, I wish I could be there to guide you through it, but promise me you will do it, and ideally get someone else involved too.

Reach out to a friend or colleague at work who is a personal development junkie, just like we are and go through the exercise together. You’ll be so glad that you did.
Then in our next episode, (part 2 of this series) I will teach you the process of Belief Laddering, and walk you through how to rescript those limiting beliefs, and turn them into more powerful beliefs, so you can upgrade your OS, or Operating System
Thanks for tuning in today.

Don’t forget to share this episode with someone who needs to hear it, I would be so grateful if you did.

And If you want to talk to me about shifting your beliefs, or any other big hairy audacious goals in your life, Then head over to my website and book a free consult with me, you can find me at thecorporateyogi.com

That’s all for now.

I’m excited for you to hear the 2^nd part of this series. today you took a very powerful step forward in discovering who you are what makes you tick, and you’re just getting started.

And remember that knowing and growing who you are, is the BEST business investment you can ever make. Thanks for joining me today, and I hope you have an amazing day and extraordinary week!