core beliefs unstuck - action plan

Core Beliefs

Copyright 2013 – Robert Middleton – Action Plan Marketing

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How Core Beliefs are Messing Up Your Marketing Success In my 29 years of working with Independent Professionals on their marketing, there is one experience that is common to almost all of them: They get stuck. The dictionary defines being stuck as: “fixed in a particular position or unable to move or be moved.” The ways to get stuck are numerous, but these are some of the most common. They get stuck in:

Developing or using a marketing message Talking to people about their business Creating written marketing materials Implementing various marketing strategies Following up with prospective clients Engaging in the selling process Closing the sale; asking for money

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When independent professionals get stuck in these areas they experience various degrees of resistance, aversion and avoidance. When Independent Professionals are stuck, it means their marketing doesn’t get done. Or it gets done at the last moment and often doesn’t get done effectively. And since some kind of marketing activity is necessary to attract new clients, if professionals are stuck, resistant to or avoiding marketing, then it can have serious consequences to the success of their business. Over the years I’ve worked with hundreds of clients individually, and thousands through group programs. My main focus has always to teach the how-to and hands-on skills of marketing their professional services. However, several years ago I went on a search to learn how to help my clients get unstuck, and past their resistance and avoidance of marketing. After all, if they were stuck they weren’t implementing the marketing ideas I taught them (and very often they weren’t)! This article is a report of my findings.

Why Our Marketing Gets Stuck I observed that when a client was stuck they always had a reason for being stuck. I noticed that it was rare that

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people didn’t have a reason. I never heard, “I’m stuck and I don’t know why.” Instead, it was, “I’m stuck because I’m overwhelmed with everything I have to do.” Or “I’m stuck because I don’t know what to say,” or “I’m stuck because I’m not a good writer.” Of course, all of these are perfectly reasonable, but they don’t go very deep, do they? Mostly they are simply excuses or justifications for not doing their marketing. What they don’t notice, however, is that these reasons and justifications simply reinforce the stuckness. They really don’t say more than, “I’m stuck because I’m stuck.” This doesn’t help them in any way to get unstuck. If we are to get past stuckness, we need to go further and find the source of the stuckness. But after struggling for some time with their marketing and being stuck, they realize how hard it is to get past this resistance. Being stuck becomes the status quo, the comfort zone. That is, it ultimately becomes more comfortable not to do marketing that to do marketing. I’ve seen people avoid themselves right out of business! They know what to do and even how to do it, but they don’t take the action they know they need to take.

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To understand why this is so, we must look at the unique nature of marketing and selling. Why do so many people resist and avoid these activities? At their essence, marketing and selling are about getting attention, acceptance and buy-in from another. If your marketing is successful, people will want to know more, seek to understand how your service works and ultimately purchase that service. If every time we engaged in marketing and selling activities we got attention, acceptance and buy-in, then it follows that there wouldn’t be much resistance to these activities. Marketing would be easy and fun. But this isn’t the case, is it? No, when we engage in marketing and selling activities, not everyone is interested, even fewer accept our proposition, and a very small number buy-in and purchase our services. It’s pretty clear that most people feel good when they are accepted and feel bad when they are not accepted. When we are accepted and people respond to us favorably we feel we have worth and power. When we are rejected we tend to feel worthless and powerless.

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For a great number of people, marketing and selling is associated with painful experiences: lack of acceptance, self-worth and power. It’s no wonder people resist marketing! But you rarely hear someone say, “I didn’t do that follow-up call because I didn’t want to experience being rejected, being worthless and feeling powerless.” But that’s clearly what’s going on, isn’t it? If we become aware of this and realize that we need to attract clients to our business, we may try to find ways to do marketing without experiencing these bad feelings. Here are some common strategies: 1. Do the best work you possibly can for your clients and hope they send you referrals. This avoids any overt marketing activities, but often is not enough to attract the amount of business you need. And you still may feel insecure about marketing. 2. Study the disciplines of marketing and selling and become as effective as you possibly can at them. Clearly, if you become an effective marketer you will get better marketing results. Yet the fear of rejection, etc. may still remain, preventing effective action.

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3. Work on your attitude to become more resourceful and not so sensitive about rejection, etc. This can certainly work to a degree, but it does nothing to change the underlying fears and insecurities about not being accepted. This approach also can feel forced and inauthentic and can take a huge amount of emotional energy that can lead to burnout. 4. Learn how to dissolve the underlying fears and insecurities so that the need for acceptance, worth and power are no longer issues. This would free us up to learn the skills of marketing while remaining authentic. Stuckness, resistance and avoidance would disappear and marketing would become a game, not an ordeal. Most would choose #4 as the most favorable option, but there remains the question of how to do this or whether it’s even possible. What does it take to dissolve the underlying fears and insecurities about marketing and selling? How Beliefs Control Our Actions What is a belief? And how do beliefs impact our thinking, feeling and actions? And ultimately, how do beliefs impact our marketing? The better we understand how beliefs work, the greater the chance we have of freeing ourselves from these beliefs.

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The dictionary definition of belief is: “an acceptance that a statement is true” or, “trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.” Essentially we behave as if the beliefs we hold are true. Another way of saying this is that our beliefs become our reality. If we say, “Marketing is easy” then that is the truth. And if we say the opposite, “Marketing is hard,” well, then that’s the truth for us. If we look more closely at what we believe, we may in fact discover that our beliefs often bear little relationship to the actual truth. We don’t look at the actual evidence, but through the screen of our beliefs. I’ve known people who were terrible at selling who believed they were great salespeople. I’ve known people who thought they were terrible writers, but from all the evidence, they were very good writers. What I’m saying is that having a belief about something doesn’t necessarily make that belief true. A better definition for beliefs might be: “A mental filter that tricks us into seeing something as true, even when it’s not.” How do beliefs, especially false beliefs impact our lives?

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This is where things get interesting. I’ve found the easiest way to observe the impact of beliefs is to work backwards. You start with the most observable thing: your actions (including what you avoid). We started this article with stuckness, resistance or avoidance of marketing activities. That’s the observable action. We have a marketing activity, such as making a follow-up call that we intend to do and we procrastinate about it and ultimately it doesn’t get done. Observably, what happens just before that avoidance? We feel bad about doing that particular thing. This could include feelings of fear or guilt, rejection, insecurity, doubt, worthlessness, powerlessness, etc. What happens before we feel that feeling? We think negative or limiting thoughts about taking that action. We think about how it wouldn’t work, how we might be rejected or how others might think of us if we implemented that marketing activity, such as making a follow-up call. What happens right before we think those thoughts? We believe something. We might believe that following up with someone is being an interruption and not

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welcomed. And believing that automatically shapes the thoughts that follow, the feelings that follow the thoughts and the actions or avoidance that follow the feelings. That’s how beliefs result in avoidance behavior. Since we believe our beliefs, any thoughts generated in the wake of our beliefs are also seen as true and the feelings that follow also feel true. Then our actions or avoidance are consistent with the beliefs, thoughts and feelings. Can you imagine believing that marketing is an interruption and then doing marketing activities with enthusiasm? No, your actions will be consistent with your belief and you’ll avoid marketing at all costs. You see, what we believe becomes our identity, our sense of self. And we always want to be consistent with who we truly believe we are. So acting contrary to that identity is virtually impossible for us. What’s Under Our Beliefs? If we trace our actions back to their originating belief or beliefs we may have an insight: “Oh, that’s why I’m avoiding that marketing activity. It’s because I believe that someone will reject me if I make a follow-up call.”

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We will have an even deeper insight if we see that our belief about follow-up calls wasn’t true in the first place. We may realize that this belief is not necessarily true. We may in fact not be rejected; the person may actually accept or even welcome our follow-up call. And then the insight might even go deeper when we see how this false belief has impacted our marketing success. We start to see the cost of attaching to this belief and how it has undermined our success and our intention to make a contribution. Finally, we can take the insight even deeper if we consider who we would be or how things might be if it was impossible to attach to that belief anymore. Just think, your intention was to follow-up and explore with someone about working with them. But if that intention was no longer clouded by a limiting belief that you’d be rejected or ridiculed, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to make that call? Wouldn’t stuckness, resistance and avoidance dissolve? Yes, it certainly would. And by the way, these insights won’t necessarily make you technically competent to make these follow-up calls. But without that limiting belief controlling things, don’t you think it would be

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much easier to learn the skills to be better at making those calls? Of course it would. Beyond Beliefs, into Core Beliefs Above we explored how beliefs shape our thoughts, feelings and feelings. We showed that if you follow your actions and avoidance backwards you’d ultimately discover a belief or beliefs that are driving things. And from that we saw that if the belief was completely undermined, that the thoughts, feelings and actions would effortlessly change. Whole new possibilities for creative action would emerge, and new results that would be impossible previously would manifest. Now we want to look even more deeply into what we’ll call “Core Beliefs.” Core beliefs lie beneath all our other beliefs. Core beliefs are like the constitution, whereas beliefs are like the laws that are based on the constitution. But what are these core beliefs, where did they come from and how do they control our lives? Most importantly, can we also dissolve these core beliefs? We’ll explore all of that in this section.

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In my research, I’ve discovered three “Prime Core Beliefs.” I’m not saying there aren’t others, but these certainly seem to underlie most of our other limiting beliefs and certainly have an impact on our effectiveness as marketers. These Prime Core Beliefs are: I’m helpless, I’m unlovable, and I’m worthless. For many, it may not be easy to relate to these. But later we’ll demonstrate that one or more of these beliefs drive most of our other limiting beliefs. We’ll also explore how these came into being and why these beliefs control us even if we are successful, happy and fulfilled. In the chart below, the 3 columns list the 3 Prime Core Beliefs and the various limiting beliefs below them. Helpless Core Beliefs

Lack of power

Unlovable Core Beliefs

Lack of acceptance

Worthless Core Beliefs Lack of intrinsic worth

I’m helpless

I’m incompetent

I’m defective/damaged

I don’t measure up

I’m a failure

I’m powerless

I’ll be taken advantage of

I’m frail

I can’t do it

I’m overwhelmed

I’m unlovable

I’m different

I’m bound to be

abandoned/rejected

I’m defective

I’m unattractive

I’m hated/despised

I’ll be abandoned

I’m a burden

I’m unwanted

I’m not worthy

I’m worthless

I’m bad

I’m evil

I’m stupid/ignorant

I’m not important/valuable

I’m hopeless

I’m not good enough

I don’t know enough

I’m a waste of space

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I can’t handle it all

I’m not skilled enough

I’m boring

I’m difficult

I can’t make a difference

My opinion doesn’t count

The first thing you want to do with this chart is not believe it! It’s not a belief system, but a model. This chart creates certain distinctions about Prime Core Beliefs, but ultimately you need to experience these for yourself. Also, you don’t want to use this as a typology system: “Oh, my Prime Core Belief is Helplessness.” But if you actually see and experience that it is Helplessness, you then have the power to dissolve it. Finally, all those beliefs under each of the core beliefs are not a definitive list. You could possibly list hundreds of limiting beliefs that fit under the 3 categories. Again, this is not about labeling yourself as someone with a certain belief, but to experience that belief for yourself. Let’s start where we left off when we were exploring our actions and avoidance, feelings, thoughts and beliefs. We got to the place where we realized that the belief, “I’ll be rejected if I follow-up” to be a false and limiting belief. Now we simply want to go deeper to discover other beliefs and the core belief that is underneath all of them. And to do this we ask one very simple question:

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“What would I have to believe if I believed that belief?” We’ll assume for now that beneath every belief is another belief that supports it. So let’s just follow the beliefs until we arrive at the core belief.

“I’ll be rejected if I follow-up.” What would I have to believe if I believed that belief?

“I’d have to believe that being rejected is bad.” What would I have to believe if I believed that belief?

“I’d have to believe that I should be accepted instead or rejected.”

What would I have to believe if I believed that belief?

“I’d have to believe that if I should be accepted, that ultimately I am not accepted.”

What would I have to believe if I believed that belief?

“I’d have to believe that I’m not loved.” And there, my friends, is your Core Belief: “I am not loved.”

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Now this could be expressed in any number of ways. That’s not important. What is important is that you come to this core belief by looking closely, not by guessing. It needs to come as a real insight. I’ve found however, that if you follow this process and keep asking the questions to discover what’s underneath each belief, you’ll ultimately come to a final Core Belief and that you can’t go any further. Also, notice that there is no story in any of these beliefs. It’s not, “I don’t want to be rejected, because years ago I was rejected, and that was very painful, so whenever I try to market myself that feeling of rejection comes up.” That kind of “story telling” just takes you away from your immediate experience. It’s all very reasonable, but it’s not important. Each of these beliefs is experiential. That is, they are each associated experientially through distinct feelings, sensations and thoughts. So whenever you get to a belief and ultimately the core belief, really pause to experience it. Go past your thinking mind into your feelings and bodily sensations. Feel what it feels like to have that belief and what it’s like to be at the effect of that belief. What do you do once you arrive at your core belief?

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You do exactly what you did with your interim limiting belief about being rejected when you made follow-up calls. You inquire into this belief and see if it’s true or not and what the consequences are of holding this belief. So let’s go through that process now.

“I’m not loveable.” Is that true? Can you absolutely belief that’s true?

“Well, no I can’t say it’s true.”

How do you react and behave when you believe you’re not loveable?

“I avoid any possibility of being rejected and proving that I’m not loveable. If I don’t do anything to try to get acceptance with my marketing, then I can’t be rejected. And if I do something, I do it half-heartedly so if I get rejected I can say that I really wasn’t trying to get acceptance. So I play this game with my marketing where I can’t experience this possible rejection.”

What does this cost you?

“It certainly costs me success. I don’t even learn the marketing skills necessary to communicate

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effectively. After all, if I knew what to do I wouldn’t have any more excuses to avoid activities like this. It costs me my self-esteem, it costs me my confidence.”

Who would you be if you could no longer attach to this belief that “I’m not loveable”? How would things change and what possibilities might open up for you?

“Well since I now know this is a false belief, I’m starting to see that I am loveable. And I don’t need to do anything to be loveable. Certainly I don’t need to be validated by everyone that I’m loveable. “To get attention and acceptance for my service has nothing to do with me being lovable or not. Either they are interested in what I have to offer or they’re not. That has nothing to do with my lovability. “I’m starting to feel excited about marketing because I can appreciate it for what it is, not tie it to me being lovable or not. That’s very convoluted. I just feel like I did when I started my business. I feel excited to share what I can do for my clients!”

When you do this exercise or process, exploring your beliefs and then inquiring into them, and do it as honestly as possible, you might notice the following:

You feel much lighter, freer.

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You feel possibilities open up. You feel ideas and inspiration flowing in. You feel fearless and bold. You feel like taking action.

The Roots of Your Core Beliefs Now let’s explore two more things. Where did these core beliefs come from in the first place and do you have these core beliefs if don’t resist marketing? Knowing where your core beliefs came from won’t make a big difference, but it’s valuable in that you can now set aside this area of curiosity and just move on. Bottom line, you created these core beliefs. It happened a long time ago, when you were very young. Something happened that was painful and was experienced as a loss or a failure. Perhaps you were rejected by some friends (in one of a thousand ways), or you wanted something and you couldn’t get it or you were ridiculed. And you made a decision. You decided that you would never let that happen again. You felt helpless or unloved or unworthy and you never wanted to feel that away again. So you compensated by withdrawing, not taking risks, being a victim, or doing anything that would protect you from feeling that way.

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But everyone is dynamically different. So you might have compensated another way. You might have decided that, “I’ll show them that I’m not loveable, I’ll prove that I am loveable (or powerful, worthy, etc.).” So someone who believed deep down that he wasn’t powerful would do everything possible to demonstrate power. Someone who felt worthless would construct her life around proving her worth. Get the picture? Perhaps you built this compensation into a strategy for success. At a certain level you really feel successful. But your main purpose for feeling successful is to avoid feeling like a failure, which is closer to your core belief. If you wonder why your successes feel hollow, this is why. You’re more interested in proving how successful you are instead of celebrating your successes. Look at a few (not all, certainly) multi-millionaires and you’ll see how being successful dominates their lives. Here’s my observation of self-employed professionals. They like to do things their own way. They highly value independence. So leaving a company and doing their own thing is exciting and liberating. Where did that come from? Possibly from feeling powerless and wanting to demonstrate their power.

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On the other hand, a large percentage of self-employed professionals never considered the whole area of marketing and how it was linked to acceptance and being loved. So as much as they love being independent, they hate asking for anything. After all, that can lead to rejection, right? So it’s not unusual that the dreams of independent professionals are shattered when they have such a hard time with their marketing. I’ve seen many very intelligent, capable people reduced to desperation because they struggled so much to market themselves. To them, marketing was painful and distasteful. Some of the above is somewhat speculative. Knowing this is interesting and answers some questions perhaps, but it won’t transform your experience of marketing. In fact, it may just give you another excuse to not market yourself. “Hey, it’s not my fault, I’ve had this belief since I was 5 years old!” But what will transform your experience of marketing is observing your actions and avoidance, and then exploring what’s underneath those actions, feelings, beliefs, and ultimately the core beliefs that hold everything firmly in place. A Review of the Process

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When should you do this process or exercise? The best time is when you notice yourself avoiding marketing activities, noticing that you are feeling bad about the avoidance or if your mind is endlessly running “justification scenarios.” This is the equivalent of the “dark night of the soul.” You feel desperate, you know you need to take action but the fear of taking action is your dominant experience. All your core beliefs are driving things, but you probably won’t notice that, just the symptoms of those beliefs. This is the time to grab a piece of paper and start writing. I have a form for this, but you can just as easily do it in a notebook. Part I – Trace your avoidance back to the core belief.

1. Write down your avoidance behaviors. 2. Write down how you are feeling. 3. Write down the reason you are avoiding. 4. Now ask the question, “What would I have to believe to believe that?”

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5. Don’t move on until you get a very clear insight into that belief. 6. Continue this (from 2 to 5 times) until you get to the core belief. Don’t stop until you can’t go any further. You’ll usually get to a version of one of the Prime Core Beliefs.

Part II – Inquire into your Core Belief

1. Ask if this belief is true. Do you absolutely know it’s true? 2. List all the ways you react or behave when you attach to this core belief. Write down everything you notice. 3. Ask what believing this core belief is costing you in your life, business, and marketing. 4. Ask who you would be or how things would be different if it was impossible to continue to attach to this core belief. Write down your insights about this.

With practice you will get better at this process. I recommend doing it frequently – at least a few times a week or whenever you notice your resistance to or avoidance of marketing. And, of course, you can do this

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for any other area of your life or work. It’s especially powerful with relationships. Also, you may need to do this exercise more that once on the same behaviors. If they keep popping up, it usually means you haven’t explored them deeply enough yet. You may find deeper levels. And as you uncover them, you’ll experience more freedom. The potential from this exercise is practically limitless. What happens when you get beyond the attachment to your core beliefs, if only for a moment or two, is that you have a real experience of being. Your being is who you are without beliefs. Being is who you really are. And being is unlimited. You don’t have to believe this, but if you do this exercise, you are very likely to experience it. Over time, as you get to the bottom of your core beliefs and start undoing them, what is left is very clear, very pure. In fact, what you may experience are the exact opposite of your core beliefs. Instead of powerlessness you’ll feel powerful; instead of feeling unlovable, you’ll feel lovable; instead of feeling worthless, you’ll feel totally worthy. And this won’t be a function of any plan, manipulation, strategy or anything from the mind to help you survive or succeed. It will come naturally, without force.

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Again, don’t believe me! Find your nastiest, most resistant, stuck behavior patterns and dive in and explore. Thanks for taking the time to read this. Cheers, Robert Middleton P.S. I welcome emails to let me know how you’ve done with this process. [email protected] P.P.S. Thank you to Peter Ralston for his clarity about Core Beliefs and Part I of this process. I highly recommend his book, “The Book of Not knowing.” This article only hints at the powerful ideas in that book. Thanks also to Byron Katie for her process, The Work, which is essentially Part II or this exercise. Read her book, “Loving What Is” for a deeper exploration of this powerful process, especially as it relates to relationships.

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core beliefs unstuck - action plan

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