The Core Belief Holding Businesspeople Back
A few months back I had a heaven and hell experience. I felt amazing and connected to myself. And ALSO, I was emotionally spinning. A category 5 trigger storm.
I’m versed enough in emo health to recognize big emotional breakthroughs often feel like that. Ironically, storms come when we are doing phenomenal. The increased pressure from doing better brings our gunk to the surface.
With my clients, I use the metaphor of a smelting barrel. When gold is being heated, all of the gunk rises to the surface. If you were going to look at the top of the barrel, you’d think the entire thing was made from sludge. But for those that know better, the sludge is only superficial. It can easily be skimmed off the surface thereby revealing the more purified gold underneath.
Emotional breakthroughs are similar. We might believe we are in an emotional tailspin, when in fact, it is an opportunity for breakthrough.
Enough grandstanding, now back to my story. After soul-wrestling for a bit, I started getting understanding of my triggered feelings.
I realized, like a thunderbolt, I felt like a burden. In my household growing up, there was a lot of tension. There was a brewing divorce (culminating when I was seven). And I, being the emotional temperature gauge I was, read the room. And basically concluded there wasn’t any room for me…and I was a burden to my already struggling family.
This “core belief” defined me. Unbeknownst to my conscious self, it drove my work, relationships, and sense of self for years.
As might be imagined, it came with a number of painful revelations.
I was working to try to add enough value to not be a burden
I wasn’t dating because I didn’t want someone I loved to be “burdened” by me
I was protecting others, and myself, from my real self (so I just faked it)
I couldn’t be successful, because then I would influence MORE people with my burden-nature
In other words, everywhere I looked my negative core-belief was impacting my life.
After a good cry and confronting that core belief, the potency of the idea burned away. It was relegated to a young boy’s interpretation of painful events. It was no longer “the truth,” just an undeveloped understanding of a difficult situation.
I found love for myself. I realized I was always a good kid. I was always kind and generous. But even if I wasn’t, I was still worth loving. I was still valuable.
Since that time, I’ve worked with a number of clients on their core belief.
On one occasion, I was a little mean. I knew that my client had a physically absent dad. His dad had left him and his mom when he was a wee kid.
I asked him, “what does it communicate to your kids (about themselves) when you spend time with them?” The obvious answer, “that they are loved and valuable.”
“Exactly,” I said, “then what did it communicate to you when your dad was absent.”
After a long pause, he said, “shit.”
He, without provoking him further, came to the same conclusion I had: “I am a burden.” He, like me, was trying to make up for his being a burden to his family, wife, work, and even his kids.
Although these revelations are devastatingly painful. They’re also liberating. They put words to our subconscious beliefs about ourselves. And when we confront them, we often realize that they had never been true (despite our subconscious’ believing they “were gospel”).
As humans growing into greater levels of health, we must become aware of the impact of our parents.
It isn’t blaming our parents for all our problems. It’s helping us understand where some of our dysfunctions originated. After recognizing their origin, and getting clarity, we often find ourselves more valuing of our parents.
Perhaps you got tweaked a little reading about my (and my client’s) experience. We all have these lessons in some form. Some are more dramatic than others, of course.
If you were tweaked, you might want to investigate what you believe about yourself…which in retrospect, isn’t true at all.