Ep #74: What Are You Willing to Believe is Possible?

You are listening to The Design You Podcast with Tobi Fairley, episode number 74.

Welcome to The Design You Podcast, a show where interior designers and creatives learn to say no to busy and say yes to more health, wealth, and joy. Here is your host, Tobi Fairley.

Hey friends. What’s happening today? I am all about this time of year. School is starting. At least in the South it’s starting, and I am so excited about getting back on a schedule and even up-leveling my schedule and up-leveling my goals and all the stuff. I mean, I get super pumped.

In fact, I call this my second New Year. And it’s really one of the two times in the year that I make a lot of space for planning and goal-setting and you know, meal prepping and all the stuff that’s going to make me more successful. I check back into my morning routine and where I’ve fallen off of that and I get back on a better bedtime and get my sleep in.

And so just hitting that reset button for one thing, but then it’s also for me about seeing what’s working or has been working in the last few months and what’s not working. So for me, I typically start strong in January and then things taper off because we sort of fall off of our habits a little bit usually, and then summer is a little more relaxed and laidback. And then the “second New Year,” as I call it in August is the time to really dig back in and say what do I want to keep doing and what do I not.

So I really call that what to start, what to stop, and what to continue. So if you haven’t really heard that concept before, this really is a good time for you to do that in your own life right now. Assess those three words. Start, stop, and continue.

So as part of this planning and goal-setting and all the stuff that I do at this time of year, I want to dig in a little bit to what we believe is possible in our lives because your beliefs about what’s possible when you’re goal setting, when you’re getting back on track, when you’re trying to fit it all in and create work-life balance, your belief system or as I love to call it, your BS is going to play a big role in this.

Because your beliefs could be a huge obstacle to what your results really look like, to what your future looks like. Now, I already know this about myself. I know that my beliefs can be a problem. I learned that long before I even became a life coach but I especially learned it and studied it in my life coach training.

But I recently heard a podcast episode from one of my mentors who is a life coach about this concept of belief ceilings, and it was such a good reminder for me as I was going back to my second New Year and getting into my goals again and pulling out my journal and just doing some kind of stream of consciousness writing and some brainstorming and feeling what I want to feel like the rest of the year, what I want my results to look like.

So it was really good to be reminded about belief systems and belief ceilings. And so I love challenging myself on this. It’s essentially a limiting belief and we’ve heard that term before, limiting belief, but I like this idea of the belief ceiling because in a sense, belief ceilings are sort of glass ceilings. They’re invisible. And they’re there but you’re not aware of them.

And I work on this about finances, in fact, in my Design You coaching program in August we talk all about money mindset, so I’ve been digging back into that content a little bit. So I know that I have some belief ceilings when it comes to money and money mindset, and most of us really have them there. But it’s not just money that we can have belief issues, belief ceilings, limiting beliefs that are really holding us back.

So whether it is money or whether it’s about building a big brand or whether it’s a belief you have about marrying your dream guy or a belief you have about buying a dream home, or maybe it’s a limiting belief, belief ceiling you have about being able to quit your current job and start a new business. I mean, it could literally be anything. But whatever your wildest dream is right now, it is just critical that you dig into what you really believe is possible about that particular goal, about that particular dream, that concept, that idea.

And so this is a perfect time to do that. If you’re ready to get back on track, if you’ve kind of fallen off like I do in the summer a little bit or intentionally pulled back a little bit and you’re ready to finish strong this year, or even plan, which is what I like to do right now, plan the next 18 months instead of waiting until January to get started, I like to have kind of a head start on what my goals for next year are going to look like. This is the perfect time to dig in and see what you’re believing about what is possible.

Because if you find out that you don’t really believe what you’re going after is possible, then you’re absolutely not going to achieve it. And yeah, when we stretch ourselves, it’s most common that we don’t really believe something is possible unless we do some work to make ourselves believe that, to choose that belief because we’ve never done it before.

And it’s going to seem big and scary and uncomfortable and just kind of out of the realm of what is possible for us, and so if we just let that be okay, if we let that kind of belief system hang out, even if it’s unknowingly, we’re going to be really frustrated at why we don’t ever get to where we want to go.

Now, I’m a big thinker. A really big thinker. And I’m an optimist, and I really live in a world of possibilities most of all the time. I typically believe that anything can happen but it may require some problem solving. It may require some money. It may require an expert of some sort to help me. But I believe that somewhere out in the world is the information, the ideas, the whatever it is, the people that I need to make anything happen.

But I still struggle with accidentally putting a cap on my dreams sometimes. And digging into my beliefs and really becoming aware of this is where all the power lies, and I have to do this quite a bit. So I don’t want you to think that I only have to do this every four years. I mean, you got to dig in quite a bit because I can do this work right now for the second New Year to get those pesky belief ceilings out of the way, those pesky limiting beliefs wiped out, I’m aware of them, I’m noticing them, but maybe six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks from now when life kind of gets busy again, they can creep right back in.

So it’s really important, but let me give you some examples of where these show up in my life. So I have giant money goals. Like, revenue goals. I have some belief system issues, belief issues, belief ceilings about money that I run up against all the time. Now, I don’t have a belief ceiling that I can’t make as much money as I want to. I do believe that. I believe I can make a million dollars, five million dollars, 10 million dollars.

But I’ve got some disconnect often around if I can make that much money without sacrificing my family, or without sacrificing my health, or if I can do it in a short period of time, or if it’s somewhere out in the future that’s actually going to happen because that’s a problem too and we’re going to talk about that again in just a little bit about someday.

And so I have to consistently dig back in when it comes to my money goals and see what caps I’m putting on that and again, it might not be a money cap. It might be a time cap. I may think well yeah, I can make five million dollars within a year from now, but I’d have to sacrifice my family or I’d have to sacrifice my health, or I’d have to do something else that maybe I don’t believe is possible.

And I have to consistently remind myself that those thoughts, those beliefs are absolutely not the truth. They’re just thoughts. And why do I believe them? Well, because for years I tried to make a certain amount of money and I was choosing things that were making it impossible at the path, the rate, the way I was going about it to get to that amount of money without sacrificing my family or my health. So I had those results come up. I maybe made a lot of money but I had these other issues.

So I connected that those things are mutually exclusive, but what I can do with working on my thoughts and my beliefs is to really untether those things. I can start to show myself that I can choose to believe that I absolutely can make whatever amount of money it is I want to make, two million dollars, five million dollars, 10 million dollars in a year, whatever I want to decide, and I can choose to believe and then figure out the path to make it happen that that is an absolute possibility without sacrificing those things I don’t want to.

So hang with me here because I want you to start to see the truth is there are many, many ways for me to hit my financial goals without it taking a toll on my time or my family, my relationships. It can absolutely happen if I believe it can, if I’m open to innovative, creative ways of making it happen.

So how does that work? Well, if I’m going to do exactly that, if I’m going to make a lot more money than I’m making right now, if I’m going to double my revenues, if I’m going to triple them and not take a toll on my health and my family, it requires me to be innovative. It requires my team and me to simplify and streamline some of our processes or all of them.

It may require me to spend more money, paying other people to do things that maybe I – previously and the last time that I went after a goal like this, that maybe I was doing myself and maybe that’s why I was sacrificing my family or my health or my time because I was trying to do it where I needed to hire someone else to do it.

But again, if my mind is open, if I’m willing to do what it takes, if I’m willing to believe it’s possible, then it absolutely can be possible. And it absolutely does not require me to sacrifice my family and my health to many any amount of money that I dream of unless I believe that it requires me to sacrifice my health and my family.

So this is huge, friends, and I want you to see it’s sometimes a little bit hard to get our heads around this because this is technically thinking about our thinking. Believing about our beliefs. So it’s a little interesting to get yourself in that frame of mind, that mindset where you can be the watcher of your thoughts or the watcher of your beliefs and notice how they’re showing up in your life.

So what I know is that what I think is possible 100% determines what is possible in my life. And that’s because what I believe is 100% responsible for the actions that I’m willing to take. And if I’m willing to take enough action and the right action, then I can pretty much make anything happen in my life. Anything.

So I want you to start to check in and see where your beliefs about what is possible in your life are holding you back because it’s really eye-opening. And ultimately, what I want you to do is I want you to start to ask yourself what it would look like to get the results you want the way you want them.

So for me, that’s asking myself what would it look like to make two and a half million or five million dollars a year and not sacrifice my health and my family. What would that look like? And when you ask the right question, it’s crazy but our brains are really, really, really good at coming up with a wonderful answer.

So besides noticing right now that you’re maybe not really believing what you say you want is possible, also start to notice the questions that you’re asking yourself about those goals or those dreams, and are the questions you’re asking good questions or are they crappy questions. And let me show you what that means.

A crappy question would be why can’t I ever make a lot of money without sacrificing my family and my health? Terrible question because if I ask myself and my brain why can I never make a lot of money without sacrificing my family and my health, guess what, it’s going to give me an answer. And because it answers, I’m going to believe that that’s the truth, but it’s not. It’s just a bad question.

And so if you ask a bad question and you get a bad answer, guess what, you’re going to quit. You’re going to be stalled. You’re not going to be able to move to the place that you want to go with your goals, with the results you’re looking for.

Now, for me, another place that limiting beliefs show up are when I think about putting myself out in the world in an even bigger way than I already do. So that’s one of the things that I want to do, and not just big to be big, but helping people at a different level and going into some more content and topics that I want to cover, and getting on a bigger platform or stage or reaching some other people with my message.

So when I think about that, how do I get out there in a bigger way than I already do, guess what? My brain wants to tell me that I can’t do this without sacrificing my family’s time, without sacrificing my family relationships.

And probably also it tells me I can’t do it without sacrificing myself, my health and wellness. So recurring theme, Tobi – this comes up a lot, and guess what, we all do this. We have these habitual beliefs that keep showing up.

So I’m like, yeah, I want to make a lot more money, and my brain is like, whoops, you can’t do that without sacrificing health and family. And then I’m like, I want to go make a bigger difference, I want to get out in front of more people and bring my message in a bigger way and my brain says, you can’t do that without sacrificing your health and your family. That is a belief, y’all because a belief is nothing more than a thought that we have thought so many times that it seems like the truth. And we take it as the truth, okay.

So my brain wants to tell me that I can’t do this stuff without sacrificing time and family. But I know that that’s not the truth. When I think about putting myself out in a bigger way, my brain wants to say, well you’ve got to travel a lot and you’ve got to go to in-person events or in-person speaking engagements.

And again, none of that is true. In fact, when doing the work on this limiting belief, it’s really even easier than the one about money for me to see that all of that is false because I can see how I can totally achieve that goal right from where I am, that bigger brand, that bigger reach, right from my computer, right from my house, and even between the hours of 10am and 3pm when my daughter’s out of high school, if I want to.

And if I’m doing it between 10 and three, do I have to sacrifice my health and wellness? No, because I have time to work out and do self-care and all kinds of things, okay. So I can see it, and the reason I can see it so much more easily that I used to is because I work on this a lot. I work on this at least twice a year, January and August, but I work on it in between times too because I’ve trained myself to notice if I’m putting a cap on what I believe is possible in my life and if I’m putting a cap or restriction or a barrier in front of getting a goal the way I want to get the goal.

So a lot of us think, you know, well I can have the goal but I’m not in control of how I get it and I have to do all this other stuff. And I want you to see that if you think the right way, if you ask the right questions, if you’re open to the possibilities, that’s not the truth. And then also about this idea of putting myself out in a bigger way, I have a third limiting belief.

So we’ve already seen one about money, we’ve already seen one about time and family and putting myself out there in a big way, but I also have a belief on the putting myself out in the world that is going to be real uncomfortable, which cracks me up when I think that because I’ve gone through this process multiple times to go to the first tier of getting known in my industry in my own state, and then getting known in my industry on a national level, and then going back and getting some other training and dipping into another industry, life coaching, and starting to build my name in that one.

And so I’ve done this multiple times, but my brain still wants to say it’s going to be so uncomfortable and it wants to say things, really, that are on that level of imposter syndrome, like but you’re not as cool as this person that’s really made it in that industry or that person. And you could never be as good as those people and it would be uncomfortable to get there if you were going to get there and it would feel really awkward if you started hanging out with those people or trying to interview those people on your podcast or to be on theirs or to speak at an event where they are.

It’s fascinating to me that I can sit back as a watcher of my thoughts and go, isn’t that interesting? My brain, my thoughts, my beliefs are trying to hold me back. We want to think that we have our own best interests at heart. We don’t y’all. We want to stay nice and cozy tucked into that comfort zone. And so when you stretch yourself in any way, if you’re not noticing what you believe is possible, it’s not going to be possible.

So what I have to decide to think about this one, about how uncomfortable it’s going to be to put myself out there is what if it weren’t uncomfortable? In fact, what if it were fun? What would it feel like to put myself out in a big gigantic way and it be fun and it be exhilarating? What if it were kick-ass? I mean, just the most exciting, exhilarating fun thing I’ve ever done? What would it look like if it were that?

And what happens when I ask myself that question, when I choose to believe that that’s even possible, is that I’m way more likely to reach the goal than if I’m sitting around thinking, well you can do that if you want to, if you want to go to a whole other level, Tobi, go ahead and try, but it’s going to be painful, it’s going to be awkward, it’s going to be uncomfortable and you’re not going to like it. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to sacrifice your health and your family in the process.

Now, who’s going to try that goal? Nobody, including me. But if I change what I’m willing to believe is possible, can I get to my goal? Heck yes. And will I? Heck yeah. I mean, there’s a really good chance that I will. So seriously, friends, I want you to see this. I want you to ask the right questions. I want you to ask yourself a good question that’s going to help you get to your goal. And I want you to notice what you are believing is possible. Because when you ask that question that’s the right one, or several of them that are the right ones, the clarity that comes to you is mind-boggling, okay.

So the question for me, again, with this last example is how can I go big with my brand in a whole other way and reach a whole lot more people and help a whole lot more people by only spending time between 10 and 3 and make it exhilarating, fun, and full blown kickass in the process, how can I do that? That’s the question.

And you might ask the question at first and get a blank. You might not have an answer. But guess what, you really do have one, you’re just afraid to write it down. It’s in there. And your brain’s going to say nope, nope, nope, nope, let’s go back to the safe thinking. Let’s go back to thinking this is possible. Let’s go back to all of the worst-case scenario thinking. Let’s go back to focusing on all of the negative stuff that’s going to happen as a result and let’s hang on and believe those, because when we do, we don’t take any risks.

We don’t have risk of rejection; we don’t have any risk at all whatsoever. But guess what, if you’re not willing to have some risk, you’re never going to get the reward. So notice the questions you’re asking, notice what your brain does, and notice, even when you say I don’t know, when you ask yourself that question, how could I do this between 10 and three and it be amazing and your brain says I don’t know, guess what, ask your brain this; if you did know, what would the answer be?

Because if you ask it enough, I promise you, your hand will start moving with that pen. There will be some ideas. There will be some brainstorming. And this whole process is all about training you to think differently. And notice again, in that question, I said, how can I do it between 10 and three? Well, guess what, 10 and three my time, but does that mean all the other people on my team are only working on it between 10 and three?

Well, not necessarily. Maybe, but that’s what I mean, you have to open your mind to the possibilities. So can I do what can only be done by me to get us to that level in these hours and could other people be hired to do all the other stuff to get me there? Yes, absolutely. So again, believing that anything is possible and specifically the things that you’re dreaming about, believing those things are possible, that doesn’t mean that it’s all done by you. That doesn’t mean you can do it all without spending any time or any money or stretching yourself out of your comfort zone. But you’ve got to be okay with that.

Anything is truly possible depending on what you’re willing to believe and what you’re willing to do to get there. So, am I willing sacrifice health and family anymore? No. Am I willing to spend money to pay other people to help me get there? Yes. And you just have to ask the questions to see what are your nos and what are your yeses, okay.

And if you hit all nos, then you’re going to see that you are not willing to believe it’s possible for you. And that’s an important thing to notice because then, at least you have clarity. It’s not, well this can’t happen for me. It’s, I’m choosing to believe it can’t happen to me so it won’t.

And I want you to see the difference, instead of being at the effect of versus I’m making this choice, okay. Because if you’re doing anything in your life that’s not getting you the results that you want, it’s because you’re making that choice.

So if I want to make both the money that I dream of and hit my branding goal and I want it to happen between 10 and three, then I will have to say no to a whole bunch of other stuff, including stuff I have been doing during my day, okay. So of course, I might have to do that. I might have to say no to some things.

Or if I don’t want to say no to them, if that stuff can’t completely go away or it could but I don’t want it to, then I have to make another choice. I have to be willing to do something else with that. I have to be willing to delegate it or figure out ways to automate it. Maybe there’s some kind of software or program or other opportunity for automating this thing. Or maybe it’s outsourced to some other person or company.

But again, if I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get there and the only thing I’m not willing to do is those few nonnegotiables, then I can figure out a way to get there and you can too. So, what are you willing to believe and to do to get to your goals?

Now, I often find that, for me and for most other people as well, it either takes time, as in your time, or money to get stuff to happen. And sometimes it takes both. But it almost always takes one or the other. And that’s totally okay. That’s not a bad thing. It’s not like, oh crud, well it’s going to take my time or it’s going to take my money so I’m not willing to do it.

Again, that’s what you’re willing to believe is possible. But if you’re willing to be okay with it taking some or a lot of your time and or some or a lot of your money, then it can happen. And I want you to see that a lot of times, when you think it’s going to take time and money, another limiting belief, another belief ceiling could easily crop up. It does for a lot of people. That’s that whole money mindset thing.

And so you may be thinking, well, Tobi, I’m with you, I’m all in on believing. But guess what, I don’t have time or money, I’m completely strapped when it comes to both. And I want you to see that being strapped for time and money in and of itself is not a problem. The only time it becomes a problem is if you believe that you are not capable of generating more of one or the other or both. Because the truth is, there are almost always a whole lot of ways that we can add both time and money to our days, okay.

So again, what are you willing to do? Are you willing to stop binge-watching Netflix three hours a day? Are you willing to get up an hour earlier? What are you willing to do to get what you believe is possible in your life? So it’s all a series of choices and it’s all about awareness of what we’re thinking, what we’re believing, what we’re willing to do.

And I promise you that you can easily add more time to your day, we all can, by saying no to the things that don’t really matter, that don’t move us towards our goal. And we can also get more money in our lives.

Now, for some of us, that’s a little harder stretch, but I promise you can by adding more value, okay. And that could be a whole podcast in and of itself, but just checking in and saying, do I believe? Do I believe that I can add both time and money to my life? Because if you can, then you can get to whatever it is that you want to make happen in your life.

So ask yourself right now, what do I think is possible? And also know that great question to ask in this situation is how can I add more time and more money into my life right now with ease? That’s a different question than just saying how can I add more time and more money in my life, but how can I add more time and more money in my life right now with ease?

Because a lot of us are not asking that question. When we ran up against the scarcity mindset around money or time, we’re asking a terrible question. We’re asking questions like, there isn’t any way to get more time or money right now, is there? And if you ask that question, the answer is a big fat no. Your brain is going to go, nope, no way at all, not possible, not happening, there’s not time, there’s no money, just shut this crap down, it ain’t happening.

But if you ask instead how can I get more time and more money in my life right now with ease, you can get a completely different answer, okay, so totally different depending on the question you ask, totally different depending on what you’re willing to believe is possible.

So, while you’re at these questions, I also want you to ask yourself one more question, okay. I want you to ask yourself, am I willing to change my beliefs if they’re not in line with what I want? Am I willing to change my beliefs to get what I dream about? In other words, am I willing to change what I believe is possible?

Changing our beliefs in and of itself, the theory, like the steps to changing is not hard. It requires deciding on the new thought that you need to believe instead of the one you’re believing right now, deciding on some new questions to ask yourself. That part, not hard. The hard part, practicing it over and over and over and over until it becomes your new belief, until you use it to create the feelings and the actions that you need to get your results.

So in theory, the changing is not hard. But the reality is there are going to be a lot of obstacles, at least a few, possibly a lot, that will come up when you start to change your beliefs. So you’re going to not want to practice it. you’re going to want to indulge in those old thoughts and emotions because they’re so familiar. And you’re also not going to like being wrong because to change any belief, you have to be willing to be wrong about yourself.

You have to be willing to be wrong about what you are believing. And the really weird thing is, we as humans hate to be wrong. We will be right even if it holds us back, meaning that we’ll even hold ourselves small. We’ll make less money. We’ll have less quality of life just to be right. For example, we want to be right in thinking, I knew it wasn’t possible for me to make a million dollars in my business, or I knew it wasn’t possible for me to make a six-figure salary in my industry or my town or while being a mom or while being a wife or without a college degree or whatever belief you’re holding onto.

We will fight tooth and nail to be right and to use it as an excuse or a reason or a belief ceiling to not reach our giant goal. And isn’t that crazy? When we’re being logical, we’re like, well of course I’d be wrong to make six figures or six million or whatever our goal is. But in reality, we’re so often not because hanging onto being right is cozy.

Hanging onto being right – yep, I knew I was right, I knew I was going to be a loser forever, which I’m just kidding, I know you’re not losers, but I knew I was never going to make the money I dreamed of – being right about that keeps us so cozy in that comfort zone. So, start to notice, where are you trying to be right about your beliefs, yourself, that’s keeping you in a place you don’t want to be.

What are you believing that’s stopping you from the life that you want? And a lot of you right this minute, I hope, have chills or even tears because you’re moving out of those old entrenched limiting beliefs, belief ceilings, and you’re moving in the direction of where you really want to go. You’re realizing that your beliefs and only your beliefs are what’s standing in your way. Nothing else is really truly keeping you from the life, the money, the business or whatever it is that you want.

And I want you to notice and be okay with it, be okay with being wrong without judging yourself or beating yourself up, but noticing, I’ve not been willing to believe the things that I say that I want are really possible. But I can stop that right this minute. I can choose to believe they are. I can do the work. I can find the thoughts. I can ask the right questions to learn to believe that these things are possible and I can be okay with being wrong, okay.

And if you do that, wow, you’re going to get there. It’s going to be a huge breakthrough for you, okay. And again, notice, I mentioned this earlier too, notice if you’re believing it’s possible but that it’s in your future, that it’s someday. Yeah, I totally believe that I can make six figures, or a million dollars, or five million dollars or have that man of my dreams or whatever it is that you want. But that’s someday. That’s tomorrow. That’s in the future, but not today.

Because if you’re believing in someday, that’s also a giant problem, okay. So are you willing to believe it’s possible right now today to get the big giant goals and dreams that you want, well take some time right now and figure it out. It’s August, it’s the second New Year for me. I hope you love that concept. Like, get out that journal, start writing, and uncover the beliefs that are holding you back from what you want right now.

And when you get those beliefs out of the way, stay with that journal, even stay with it, make some time this weekend, next week, clear some space to do some goal-setting when you’re in that possibility mindset so that, six months from now or 12 months from now or 18 months from now, you can be in a completely different place than you are right now financially or with your health or your relationships or whatever it is that you’re wanting to change, that you’re wanting to believe in a new possibility. Because anything is possible if you believe it is.

Okay, friends, so that’s what I have for you today. I hope you’re as excited about this as me. I hope you can feel the passion in my voice because this is something I’m working on in my own life right this second. So I’m off to go journal some more because I’m still kicking my own belief systems, my own BS to the curb so that I can finish this year stronger than ever and have a record year in every way in 2020.

Okay, so let’s do this work together. I can’t wait to hear from you on social media or over in our Design You Podcast community on Facebook. So if you’re not in that yet, go request to join. Just search Design You Podcast] community. It’s one of the free groups on Facebook. And there’s just a couple of questions you have to answer and we’ll let you in and we’ll keep this amazing conversation going, okay. So bye for now, friends.

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of The Design You Podcast. And if you’d like even more support for designing a business and a life that you love, then check out my exclusive monthly coaching program Design You at tobifairley.com.