Empowing beliefs vs. Limiting beliefs

After reading an article by Kevin Seaman about empowering and limiting beliefs I began thinking about my life long struggle with this.  As some of you may know I spent many of my adolescent years wrestling.  I had some marginal successes, but never really achieved the level of success I yearned for.  I watched in frustration as many of my teammates surpassed me to reach great levels of success.  This frustration was a result of KNOWING I was as good if not better at the physical aspect of the sport.  The problem is that the physical aspect makes up maybe 20% of the overall skill set required to compete.

I did not understand about the mental aspect and the severe implications the brain can put on success.  We all use “inner talk” where we talk to ourselves.  I do it quite a bit.  As a matter of fact you are probably doing it right now.  Asking such questions as, “Do people really talk to themselves?”, or “I never talk to myself.”  A rough figure is that people talk to themselves in upwards of 50,000 words a day.  Can you imagine that?  Its no wonder we have conflicting internal beliefs.

After reflecting on my own conflicts I have come up with a couple empowering and limiting beliefs on why I struggled with success in wrestling as an adolescent.

Empowering Beliefs:

1. I know how to work hard and push myself and others in practice.  I believe I work as hard if not harder than my opponents in practice.
2. I pick up on good physical technique rather quickly.  I overcome the learning curve of various physical techniques rather quickly.  I have a knack for being able to “feel” that I am moving in the correct manner.  Opposite of that, I can feel if my practice partner is executing proper technique as well.
3. I am an extremely good teacher at physical techniques as well.  I think it is a result of the “feel” skill I possess.
4. I demand perfection in doing the technique correctly.  I believe “practice makes perfect” only if the “practice” part is executed correctly.

Limiting beliefs:

1. I am a people pleaser.  I put others feelings and beliefs ahead of mine.  I hate to let others down.  This one in of its self is not too bad, but when you couple it with the next one, it becomes poisonous.
2. I fear the expenditure of large quantities of energy into something to only fail at it.  So entering a contest, or venture that requires large sums of work, and their is no certain success creates anxiety within me.
3. I created a comfort zone as a child to deal with the less than stellar parenting skills of my mother.  I learned from her that failure is failure and not a learning experience.  Any type of failure in wrestling was followed by extreme ridicule and sometimes violence.  My comfort zone consisted of complete shut down from the rest of the world.  I would just sit there and take the abuse.  To fight it was futile, and a fight would only prolong the experience.  I learned very quickly to shut up, and not “poke the bear”.  The major problem I think that came from this was that I was unaware of it, and it started to spill into the rest of my life.
4. The “comfort zone” spawned into a win-loss mentality that took over my life.  It was easier to take the loss and give up than to push forward and win.  Simple “disagreements” with people about trivial stuff would result in my just “going along” with them so I wouldn’t have to be in a confrontation.  This was truly selling myself out and it indeed created pain, but I had a way of coping.

The internal conflict can be spelled out as follows.  I know how to practice and work like a champion, but my fear of failure and my loss-win mentality hand-cuffs me from ever being a champion.  Essentially my mind is sabotaging my body.  The bright spot here is that I am aware of all this.  The knowledge is on the table.  Couple this knowledge with the fact that my old comfort zone is more painful than the journey to change this habit, I am well on my way to setting new and better habits.

Thanks,

Gerry