Unlocking Your Potential: What’s The Single Most Powerful Belief For Personal Growth? [Episode 030]

Note: this is an AI-generated transcript, so please forgive typos.

Hello and welcome to Episode 30 of the Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast. And today we are looking at unlocking your potential, the single most powerful belief you need for personal growth. Today's episode is for you if you've been trying to make changes in your life and it hasn't been working. If you're fed up with gritted teeth determination and willpower and trying, trying, trying and not making progress, and you'd like to maybe spot some insider secrets on what's been going wrong so you can make change easier, faster and even more fun.

The Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast with love from Clare Josa is full of bite sized practical inspiration for becoming the real you. Want to feel bold, confident, courageous, and excited about your goals and mission? Maybe you're feeling scared, perhaps secretly self-sabotaging, feeding your fears more than your dreams? Clare Yosef's Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast shares proven strategies, inspirational how to, for clearing out the hidden blocks that keep us stuck dreaming big, but playing small. So if you want to make the 2020's the decade where you finally get to have the impact you've been dreaming of, then let Clare's upbeat, practical approach empower and inspire you to create breakthroughs in ways that are fast, fun, and forever. Show notes and resources are at ditchingimpostersyndrome.com.

So if this is a hot topic for you, make sure you check out the show notes because there's an episode I did recently on New Year's Resolutions that might help lay some background for you on this. But even if you haven't listened to that yet, I'm hoping today's episode is going to be really helpful for you. I want to talk about how to set yourself free from going to bed each night feeling bad about not having made progress on something you want to achieve in your life. So what we're going to cover here today, why we're focusing on the wrong thing when we want to make change in our lives, the single most important belief you need to make those changes, the surprisingly simple shift that makes changing your life so much easier and throws away the need for willpower, pretty much, and the one thing that you need to do before you take action each day on that change to supercharge your chances of success. So I've been working with people in this field for over 20 years now. And so often I see exactly the same problem sabotaging and derailing their efforts to make change.

And it reminds me of when I was much younger, I lived in the States. I grew up for a while in El Paso in Texas. And back in those days, in the 1970s, I'm showing my age, my mum was a chain smoker, and she went to hypnotherapy in the States to quit smoking. And back in those days, that was a really unusual thing to do. After her first session, she never smoked again. And after a few sessions, she went back and she asked the therapist, the hypnotherapist, 'How on earth did you do it? How did you get me from decades of smoking more cigarettes than I'd like to admit every day to never touching another one again?' And the guy said he didn't, she did, because he knew the moment she walked in that she had made that decision. She had decided she was going to quit smoking. And all he then needed to do was to help her create the habit. And I've often thought about this over the years is how did my mum do that? And I realised that she'd done two things. One is she had used the power of my favourite Italian word to help her make the decision to change.

That word is Basta, B, A, S, T, A. There's a link in the show notes to a recent podcast episode I did on exactly this is how you can use that word to fast track your change. But she'd also done something else. She had done exactly what it is that I want to cover in today's episode. Without even realising it, she had unlocked the one belief that she needed to hold for her desire to change, in her case quitting smoking, to happen. And that belief is actually the same for all of us. And it comes from the fact that the unconscious mind won't let you make a change that it believes is impossible or dangerous. It's there to protect us. It's hard wired to keep us alive. No matter how hard we fight to do things that it might think are slightly crazy and dangerous. So the number one belief you need to make a change in your life is the belief that that change is possible. And here's the key. Your unconscious mind has to believe that that change is possible for you. My kids have been listening to Sherlock Holmes in the car on Audible with me when we're on long journeys.

And one of the quotes I love that comes up over and over again in the stories is when you have eliminated all of which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. And when I think about it that way, it's like, okay, everything that's physically impossible is gone. Whatever is left is possible. The key, though here, is however improbable most of us know when we want to make change in our lives that it's possible, but it can often feel improbable, unlikely, something that might happen to others, but difficult for us to achieve. And then the harder we push for that change, the more we use willpower and gritted teeth determination, the more improbable that change feels. With your unconscious mind, it needs to believe it is possible and that it's for you. Yes, Sherlock Holmes and his however improbable is not your friend here. So here's where my three P's come in. This formula takes the effort out of changing. The first P is you have to believe the change is possible rather than impossible because the unconscious mind, as I said, won't let you make a change it believes is impossible or dangerous.

The second P is it needs to feel plausible. And the feel is the key here. When you think about the change you want to make, do you believe it's possible? Does your body believe that it's plausible? That means it's possible and it's also potentially likely. Okay? And if your body tenses up, that means it's probably a no. What you want to do in that situation is chunk down that change into smaller steps. What would feel plausible? So you might be talking about losing weight. I want to lose X number of kilos. Is that possible? Well, yes, physically it is. Is it plausible? And if your body is saying, Oh, that's too big a number, then make your first goal a smaller number until your body just can feel it's maybe a bit of a stretch rather than utterly tangible terrifying. Possible, plausible. The third P is personal. What I mean by this is it needs to be something that's within your control. So it's possible in the physical grand scheme of things of the reality in which we live on this planet. It's plausible. Your body says, okay, I can actually imagine doing that. It's personal.

It's something that's within your control. When you base any change you want to make in your life around those three P's, it is so much easier to create those shifts. I invite you to do this right now is press pause on this episode, think about a change you've been wanting to make that maybe you've been resisting or finding quite hard work and run it through those three P's in that formula, do you feel it's possible? Is it plausible? If not, chunk it down into smaller steps? And is it personal within your control? And notice what you notice. Then come back to me. And I just want to take a brief pause here to tell you about the Imposter Syndrome Bootcamp. We've managed to open up a few more places and it is an eight-week accelerated coaching program that's hybrid. It combines science-backed, inspirational, accelerated learning online training modules with a private podcast and mentor in your pocket and one to one mentoring sessions plus tutorial calls with me. It is a fantastic way to make incredible progress in clearing out imposter syndrome in just the next eight weeks. And it's designed for you to be able to resit it as my gift.

Whenever you want you to go a layer deeper. If you want to find out about that and apply for a place or get your boss to fund a place, go to clarejosa.com/impostersyndromeboot camp

So what did you notice? What shifted for you? What ideas or inspiration might you have had when you looked at those three P's of it being possible, plausible and personal. I'd love to hear from you. And there's a link in the show notes to where we're discussing this whole topic over on LinkedIn and Instagram. And then I want to come to the fact that we're often focusing on the wrong thing when we want to make change in our lives. We want to change an action, a habit, an outcome. But actually to create that change, we need to focus on changing who we see ourselves as being. Making change in your life is really hard if deep down, you still see yourself as being the person that hasn't made that change. We're focusing on our actions rather than our sense of self and allowing ourselves to become the version of us that has achieved that change. This is a surprisingly simple shift that makes changing your life so much easier and pretty much throws away the need for willpower. You make the change at the identity level first. Can you see yourself becoming the version of you who's achieved this?

If you were to spend five minutes a day physically imagining, experiencing, visualising, being that version of you before you get out of bed, asking yourself, what actions does that version of me take? How do they behave or think or feel in the context of this change I want to make? You'll be amazed at how easy it is in comparison to take those actions. So this is one of the things I teach in depth on my stepping up to lead programme, and I watch the magic happen with clients. When they add this step into the process of making change, their self doubt disappears and taking those actions becomes full of fun instead of full of fear. So the real change needs to happen at the identity level. Can you see yourself becoming the version of you who's achieved this change? And then the one thing that you need to do before you take action each day on that change to supercharge your success, is to line up and just for 60 seconds experience being that version of you and then take the action. In the last episode, I talked about how the whole feel the fear thing is over race it and what you can do instead.

This is part of a how to for that. If you've not listened to that episode, make sure you pop over to the show notes. There will be a link to it there. I really invite you to play with the ideas that I've been sharing today in this episode. When we do change from that doing space, the action space, and we're overlaying it on a sense of identity or self or who am I that doesn't line up with the change that we want to create, we're going to create subconscious inner conflict. We're telling our unconscious mind we want to do something that is out of kilter with who it thinks we currently are. And this is why things like mindset can be great but so often doesn't actually work. And then people beat themselves up because they've tried it or they've had coaching and it hasn't created the change. And it's because sometimes we actually need to do that deeper identity level work, shift who we see ourselves as being, release what the hidden blocks were that were keeping us stuck in that old version of us. And then that habit change becomes super easy because it's lined up with who we now see ourselves as being.

I often talk about how changing the world isn't so much about what you do. It's about who you allow yourself to become. And when we approach making change in our lives with that lens of who will I allow myself to become through the process of changing this habit, then change becomes easier. It becomes the easy bit. It becomes the obvious outcome because we've done that deep identity work to shift who we see ourselves as being, which version of us we're allowing to show up for the game. And one of the most important bits of identity level work we can do is actually to clear out Imposter Syndrome. I talked in my New Year's Resolutions episode, the link to that is in the show notes, about how the most important New Year's Resolution we can make if we want to step up and stretch comfort zones, fulfill our potential, have more impact, is actually to clear out imposter syndrome. That's the identity level work I'm talking about here. So if you think Imposter Syndrome is getting in your way, make sure you take my free scorecard right now at the end of this episode. The link is in the show notes and it gives you your Imposter Syndrome risk score.

It ranks you against three really important categories, drivers for Imposter Syndrome, and it gives you a personalised action plan so you can start creating change in your life with that today. Resource wise, if you've got my book, Ditching Imposter Syndrome Audiobook, out soon. Keep an eye on your inbox if you're subscribed to my newsletter for that. Page 246, who will I allow myself to become today? Who will I allow myself to become today? Who will I allow myself to become today? Go and have a read of that little section and it gives you a bit more on what we've covered. I talk about this a lot in my other book, well, one of my other books, Dare to Dream Bigger Too. If you want to fast track this deeper work, make sure that you're working with one of my certified coaches creating life changing breakthroughs in just a few weeks, either on the imposter syndrome boot camp or if you're in a leadership role on stepping up to lead. And check out those other three podcast episodes that I've mentioned today. Those are some really useful next step actions you can take right now to help yourself on this life changing journey.

So in summary, what we've covered today, the single most powerful belief for personal growth and changing your life is to believe it's possible. Then it's those three P's, it's possible, it's plausible, and it's personal. And then making sure that you've done the work to shift who you see yourself as being, to allow yourself to become the version of you that's created that change. And the actions pretty much take care of themselves. So I really hope you found that useful today. I'll be back next week where we'll be looking at the difference between courage and confidence and why I actually think. And my research shows that confidence can be overrated, but that doesn't mean that you should be pushing on through the fear. I hope you'll find that one useful too. Come and join in the discussion with us about today's episode over on LinkedIn or Instagram. I hope you have an amazing week.

Thank you so much for listening to the Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast. I cannot wait to hear what you go and do with this stuff. Make sure you subscribe to whatever you love to get your podcast. It's absolutely free. My gift to you and your future every Friday. And if you found it useful, please leave us a review. It helps other people to find the podcast too. And remember, one of my other gifts to you is my Imposter Syndrome scorecard. So if you haven't found out your Imposter Syndrome score yet and you haven't got your personalised action plan from me for that yet, go to clarejosa.com/quiz and take the scorecard now.