If Your Beliefs No Longer Serve You

If you are not achieving the results that you want in some area of your life, your beliefs in that area are not serving you.

You may say that it is important for you to acquire new clients and earn more money. But if that were really important to you, if you believed it, that would be visible in the actions that you take each day.

I Want More Money

This past week I met with a group of young people who work in a role where they’re required to help their company maintain the relationships with their clients. This group does exceptionally good work under very difficult circumstances. I asked them what they could do to operationalize the idea of creating new opportunities within those existing clients, and they responded that a new compensation structure would motivate them to take more action in this area.

I explained to these young people that money doesn’t motivate very many people. In my experience, around 5% of people are truly motivated by money. I told this group of young people that everyone would love to have more money. If you go to any group of people and ask them if they would like to have more money, universally the answer is “yes!”

But that’s the thing about money motivation. The people who are money motivated are already making more money because that’s what they are motivated to do. It doesn’t work the other way around where people are suddenly motivated by the opportunity to make more money. If the people who “want” more money were truly money motivated, their beliefs around money would have them already taking the actions that provide them with more money.

Your actions follow your beliefs, your needs, and your values.

How to Change Your Beliefs

If you are not achieving the results you want in some area of your life, you have to first change your beliefs.

Here is the recipe: Look at people who are already producing the results that you want in some area of your life and work to understand what they believe, what need that believe serves, and what action follows those beliefs. Then, adopt their beliefs as your own. Write down what they believe. Read their beliefs out loud. Start telling other people what you believe. As soon as their beliefs become your beliefs, the actions will follow. The results will come after that.

If you profess to believe something, but your actions don’t demonstrate that you believe it, then you don’t believe it. You have an intellectual understanding of the belief, but it isn’t your belief.

If your beliefs no longer serve you, change them.