Hello worklifers,
One of my favorite authors is the American psychologist and author Adam Grant. I love all his work and his latest book called Think Again excited me at so many levels. It deeply aligned with an important component of how to get unstuck within the “worklifeunstuck” program. It emphasizes the meta point around the research of how, we as humans, remain stuck across our work and life due to our thoughts and even more when they become limited beliefs or ceilings.
Beliefs form the foundation of our identity. A belief is a thought but unlike all the other thoughts it is something part of your identity and who you are. It gives us a feeling of certainty about what things mean and who we are. If you want to know what your beliefs are you look at your life. Anything you want to change in your life must be changed at the belief level if you want it to be permanent. You can’t treat the symptom. You must dig deep and find the thought that has become a belief that may no longer be serving you. Most of us hang onto beliefs we developed when we were too young to know better. There is no one to remind us that we can rethink our thoughts around our past circumstances. That include ourselves, other people’s behaviors, and those of the world we live in.
Adam describes how we as humans tend to operate in four modes. A prosecutor mode, preacher mode, a politician mode and a scientist mode. The scientist mode is the one where I believe we as product managers tend to live for our most part during our work life. Our job demands we approach our work as scientists, coming up with product hypothesis, running experiments, gathering data and evidence, failing and learning and offering products that enable people to do their best work. I find that as a product manager it is an intentional skill we cultivate to get good at our jobs. However, when it comes to developing the same approach for ourselves we tend to not go as deep with to uncover the thoughts and beliefs where we are hitting a ceiling.
The scientist mode as Adam describes has a great advantage. It keeps one curious which is one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself. When we start to bring curiosity over judgement for our limited beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world it can transform our lives.
The magical thing about this process is that we don’t need to attach any of our limiting beliefs. If the thoughts cause us pain and they no longer serve us then we can let go of them or think again. They are completely optional. It is also up to us to create brand new empowering beliefs that serve us to where we are headed in our life and those that honor our dreams.
Let us see how these limited beliefs show up for most of us. The first step in getting to identify them is to really get to know yourself and uncover the “should” statements. How should the world be? How should people around me be? How should my life be? How should I be? We all have a inner narrative going on inside ourselves. I sure did and still do. Uncovering this narrative is really important phase of getting to know yourself and identifying any limited beliefs that are keeping you stuck. These are unintentional many a times. We are not choosing them intentionally but understanding that they are hard wired and keep producing the same actions and as an affect the same results can keep us severely limited towards accelerating our goals.
These simple statements look like the following often falling in three buckets. Some examples;
Thoughts about ourselves
“I should work less number of hours”
“I should drink less wine”
“I should workout more”
“I should be a better manager”
“I should give more time to the kids”
“I should work hard during the week and compensate for my wellbeing over the weekend or holidays”.
Thoughts about others
“My partner should pitch in more at home”
“My kids should play more sports and watch less screen”
“My colleagues should respect me”
“My manager should promote me because of my impact”
Thoughts about the world
“We should have a better president”
“We should take better care of the earth we live in”.
“Everyone should put a fight against the pandemic”
Now next thing to do is to ask yourself a simple question “How do I feel when I think a specific thought? If a lot of what shows up are feelings such as anxiety, worry, stress, self-doubt, and overwhelm then get curious about it. The reason being our feelings drive our actions and our results reinforce the thoughts and beliefs we choose to think.
One such thought that was my belief ceiling – “I should work hard during the week and compensate for my wellbeing over the weekend or holidays”.
I let myself just believe this was who I was and carried out working hard and burning out. I got exactly the results that resulted from my feeling which was overwhelm and a scarcity mindset when it came to how I thought about my time and ability to create value and impact with it. I took actions from that feeling and depleted myself. I was being so unkind to myself by subjecting myself to believe this for so long. I also uncovered how confirmation bias from others and their thinking became my thinking along the way and reinforced that belief even more.
When I had this deep desire to change who I was it started with the courage to question these simple illogical “should statements” and especially the ones which had become the hard wired limiting ones. Slowing I started to punch holes within my belief ceilings. Just like inclusion at work which requires awareness, the first step to punch holes in your belief ceilings is to become acutely aware of what those are. Deep thought work, a scientist approach, choosing curiosity over judgement will help you become aware of the belief ceilings. Don’t suppress them. You will be so inclined to do it, or simply delay this significant work just like I did. The best advice, I have while you are in the process of uncovering your belief ceilings is to try and get comfortable hanging out with them. Once you detach yourself from them you are no longer afraid because they don’t say anything about who you are. You realize it is only up to you to make them mean anything. They can hang out with you, detached from your identity, until you are ready to rewire think again, or create brand new beliefs that serve you. This awareness alone is the point when you have become intentional about your ceilings.
I know it all sounds simplistic, but the most important part of this process was just realizing and someone reminding me about it. These ceilings are often hiding just below your awareness like a dry wall below your ceiling. It is easy to put a ceiling back and cover up it up. However, once you knock off that dry wall you don’t need to put the ceiling back on. You can raise the ceiling and even create a skylight.
I never even knew I could question them, because I wasn’t even aware they were there and were limiting. Once I became aware, it was enlightening and actually much easier to change once I detached them from my identity. It led to massive action and intentional mindset to become a person who could accelerate towards their goals while sustaining their wellbeing every single day. I could become an example for myself and create evidence for it and produce massive results from my new belief. The beauty of doing this once is that you now develop that scientist mindset to stay curious about what those ceilings could be, when you aren’t getting the results you want.
There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t change how you see yourself, others or the world. Bring out that scientist in you, get curious and start writing these should statements. Start to make observations about your ceilings and see where it leads you.
I’ll see you next week.
Maithili Vijay Dandige
