What are the bullsh*t stories you are telling yourself?

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​What are the bullshit stories you are telling yourself?

What are the bullshit stories that you are telling yourself? Are you telling yourself that you can't change x, y or z despite the fact that it would improve both your life and the success of your business? Are you saying that you can't organize your time well enough to fit in an activity that you would like to do? Are you saying that you don't have the right information to move forwards, or that making that big decision is too risky? Are you basically finding a whole load of excuses that are holding you back from achieving what you want to achieve in life or business?

Mental blocks and self-limiting beliefs are, generally speaking, ideas or problems that we have got into our heads as the result of an event in the past. It might be that there was a child in the playground who was particularly horrible to you about something, and you decided there and then that you couldn't do X, or you couldn't do Y.  It may be that you had something ingrained into you by your parents saying that if you did X, you couldn't achieve Y.

Some of these mental blocks or self-limiting beliefs you may be aware of, but others will be sitting in your subconscious dictating your decisions and actions without you even realising it.  Everybody has different upbringings, we were all brought up with different values.

Let me tell you a story about me. When I was in my early 20s, I sat around the kitchen table with my parents. My parents are quite conservative. They'd done very well for themselves, they hadn't been to university. I had had the privilege of going to university but just after my graduation I sat in front of them and I said, "I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I have this dilemma."

On one hand, I had a list of dreams, and wanting to travel the world. I wanted to get out there. I wanted to go and see different places, and I saw my potential vehicle to achieve this in teaching.

On the other hand, my parents thought I should follow my friends and travel later. My friends were all going to work in London. They were going to fantastic graduate jobs with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Accenture, PA Consulting, I could go on listing huge blue-chip companies, but you get the idea! As far as I was concerned, they were selling their souls to the devil for money. That was not what I wanted to be getting out of life. I did not want to be stuck in an office. I did not want to be commuting. I did not want to be living in London.

At some point during that conversation with my parents, I made the decision that I could either follow my dreams, but that meant having little money or I could have a lot more money, but that meant I couldn't follow my dreams.

For the next 20 years of my life, I followed my dreams. I've had a phenomenal life. I’ve lived in Australia, I've lived in Thailand, I've taught English as a foreign language, I’ve worked as a primary school teacher, I've worked in a five-star hotel with a three Michelin star restaurant, I've run my own business, I've lived in France, I've been able to ski every weekend because I chose to live my dream life in the French Alps.

Eventually, I also chose to move back to the UK, which is something I said I'd never do, in pursuit of progression in my career. Then I ended up making the decision that actually not having a lot of money wasn't massively fun anymore. I was approaching my 40s, and that maybe a job with a bit more money would be useful. I went and found a job with a bit more money, and I discovered that whilst the money was nice, I was then limiting myself in pursuing things because I felt that in order to earn the money I had to work hard, which impacted on my social life and everything else.

Then in June 2016, in desperate search for fulfilment and self-belief, I stumbled on personal development and in the November attended a three-day NLP and Time Line Therapy™ course called The Success Breakthrough.  Wow! Those three days changed my life and my view on life forever. I had a sort of epiphany moment. I realised that you could follow your dreams and have money, in fact you could have it all. It wasn't a choice of one or the other. I had no idea how that conversation with my parents and a decision I made subconsciously during that conversation 20 years ago had impacted my way of thinking for my whole adult life.

​So here I am, I'm now pursing my dreams again. I quit my job, retrained as an NLP and Time Line Therapy™ Coach so that I could help others have the same breakthroughs that I had had. Everything that I want, I'm going to go out there to get.  In order to do that, I had to get rid of my self-limiting beliefs and my mental blocks and stop believing that you couldn't do or have X, because of Y. I got rid of all this baggage in a very quick and simple process. It has allowed me to increase my emotional intelligence, which increases my ability to perform, and have success in my life, and it means that I'm achieving my goals much faster.

It meant that I achieved my goal of leaving my job in 2017 on the fourth of March, rather than in September or October, which is what I'd originally envisioned. It's allowed me to do a lot of other things too as well as re-find self-belief and fulfillment.

What I'm asking you today is what are the bullshit stories that you're telling yourself?
What are your self-limiting beliefs?
What are your mental blocks?

If you think that they are genuinely holding you back from where you want to be in life, the success you want to achieve, whatever that may be; personal or business, it may be time to consider a coach. After all every great sportsperson or internationally renowned business person has one.

​My coach frequently quotes T. Harv Eker “Every master was once a disaster!”

Is it time to ‘turn your cant’s into cans, and your dreams into plans?’
​(Adapted quote - Kobi Yamada)