78: 3 Steps to Believing Something New

Welcome to The Wealthy Mom MD Podcast, a podcast for women physicians who want to learn how to live a wealthy life. In this podcast you will learn how to make money work for you, how you can have more of it, and learn the tools to empower you to live a life on purpose. Get ready to up-level your money and your life. I’m your host, Dr. Bonnie Koo.

Welcome to episode 78. So I promised you all that I would talk about my biggest takeaways from Cabo, Mexico where I met with my business coach, who I meet with four times a year. And at first, I was thinking, “Okay, I’m going to plan or think about the top three things I learned,” but it really came down to one thing.

And this is something I see a lot of my clients and I see you all struggling with. And so I think I sort of figured it out. Now, I don’t mean I figured it out like this is the only way. But I figured it out in a way that makes sense to my brain and I’m going to offer it to you.

And so first this assumes that you know what to believe first, meaning you know what the new thought, the new belief that you want to believe. And so if you’re not there yet, that’s okay, but that’s not what this episode is about. But I want to give you real quick how I come up with what I want to think on purpose.

So I think of it as three ways. Number one is I first become aware of what I’m currently believing about money. I’m always creating new money goals for myself personally and for my business. And so the best way to know what do you actually believe about money is you actually look at what you currently have.

Like where you live, what kind of place you live in, what your current annual income is. Because that is what you currently believe about your ability to make money. And that’s so good to know, we call this awareness.

And then from there if you want something more, if you have a new goal, then you have to think something differently. I’m kind of simplifying it, but that’s basically how you get to the new thing that you want to believe.

The second way to do this is to work backwards. So one of the things I teach my clients is the self-coaching model where thoughts create feelings, create actions, create results. And so we start backwards, we start at the R line, which is the result line.

And it goes like this basically, the R line is basically you goal, the thing that you want that you don’t have yet. And so you can put anything you want in the R line. In other words you can want anything that you want.

And when I first heard this, I thought that was crazy and like, “What? Is that really true? I’m allowed to want whatever I want? I’m allowed to dream and go for whatever I dream?” And maybe this is obvious to you but it wasn’t obvious to me.

The third way to find new things to think is to honestly, borrow from someone else. When I say borrow, nobody owns thoughts anyway, so there’s no thought police per se. But sometimes you’ll hear something, maybe you heard something I said or one of your friends said, or something you read on Facebook or whatever and you’re like, “Wow, that is an amazing belief that I want to believe.”

So those are usually the three ways that I come up with new beliefs. Okay, so let’s just assume you have the new thing you want to believe about yourself, about money, whatever. So that’s step one, you have to choose the belief you want to think on purpose.

Step two is you then have to find evidence that this new belief is already true. Now stay with me because I know some of you are saying, “Well if I already believed I wouldn’t have to do this.” But I like to think that whatever goal that we want, whenever we hear something that resonates with us and then we’re like, “Oh, that’s so true to me,” or “I really want that,” there’s a part of you that already believes that it’s possible.

And so what I’m asking in this step two is for you to look for any little seedling of evidence that it is true for you. Now, this might be really hard at first because at first your brain might be like, “We have no evidence that this is true.” So let me give you an example of a thought for me.

So one of the thoughts that I’m leaning into is that I am seven figure business owner, a seven figure coach. Basically I’ve made $1 million. And so I guess what I’m really saying is I am a seven figure coach, meaning I make that in a year.

And so here’s the thing with new beliefs, when you introduce them into your awareness your brain will probably immediately look for all the reasons why it’s not true, all the ways that you don’t actually believe in it. And this is normal because if you already believed it, you wouldn’t be doing this, right?

So some questions that might help you with how to find evidence that it’s already true are questions like how is this already true? What do I already know? Has anyone else done this before? These questions are all kind of the same question just from different angles.

And they’re not exactly easy to answer if you have a similar brain to mine, or a normal human brain I should say, where our brain just automatically wants to go to how it doesn’t work, how it’s not going to work, how it’s wrong, how we’re wrong. Basically it’s always kind of going to the immediate negative and looking for ways it’s not going to work. So this is normal, this is what I’m brain does immediately as well.

And so I think step two is actually the hardest part in some ways, especially if you haven’t done this before. And so it’s kind of like going to the gym and having a plan to do your reps, like, “I’m going to do 10 reps of this weight, I’m going to take a 10 second break, I’m going to do another set and then another set.” At least I’ve been taught you do three sets, I could be wrong.

And sometimes it’s really hard to do it the first time you do it or the second time you do it. It’s always easier, I think, when you have someone there with you. And the reason why this is hard is because you’re asking your brain to do something that’s going to require it to do some work.

And remember, our brains are inherently lazy, they don’t want to do anything new. And this is new. You’re asking kind of your brain to think a little harder. And at first your brain might say, “I don’t know. We don’t know. This isn’t true, there’s no way it’s true.” And then I want you to ask the same question again.

And I do this with my clients a lot because I’ll ask them a similar question like, “Give me your reason.” And they’ll give me one, and I’ll say, “Give me another one.” And then I’ll say, “Give me another one.” And it’s not natural for any of us, but if you do the work of asking your brain questions, even when it keeps saying, “I don’t know,” it’s going to answer eventually. It’s going to spit out a little tiny seedling of belief.

Another analogy I heard was you’re just finding that little ember, like if you’re starting a fire, a campfire. Actually, this is a side note, I went to a resort not too long ago with Matt and this was a resort where they had lots of included activities like yoga and stuff. But they also had some activities like how to start a fire actually.

And so I don’t camp so this is not something I would know how to do. So this is how to start a fire without a lighter, it sounds obvious. So they showed us different ways to do it. And they say once you get that little ember, you’re creating a spark and then you see this little, small, orange thing glow, that’s what the second step is about.

It’s like creating that little glow even if it’s barely perceptible. But that’s all you need. And then it’s your job to fan it. And that’s what step three is, fanning it. Which I’ll go into in a second. But I’m just sort of hitting this point because I think step two can be the hardest.

And so let me give you some examples from the belief for me of I am a seven figure coach or I am a million dollar business. And at first, I was like, “Well, it’s not true so I’m not allowed to believe it.” And so I had to keep asking my brain, “Okay, how is this true?” And not in a force myself to believe something that isn’t true but showing my brain that it’s true in some way and then I just have to do some more work to believe it even more.

And so what I actually discovered was when I added up all of my business income since I started my business it actually added up to one million dollars. And so basically, I actually proved that it was true, I just haven’t made one million dollars in a 12 month period. But I have made a million dollars in my business.

And even if I didn’t actually make a million dollars in my business the other ways that I’d show my brain that it is true is that money is coming in, I am making money in my business, meaning I’ve made more than a dollar. And the way that you make a million dollars in your business is a dollar at a time, right. And so that’s what I mean by finding the little glow of how that belief is true.

And then step three is then you got to fan and cultivate that new baby belief. And this really translates to something really mundane and boring. It’s basically you’ve got to lift the weights. If you want a six pack you’ve got to do sit ups everyday five times a week, whatever it is, day after day, week after week. You can’t just work out once and have the six pack. And the same thing is with new beliefs.

And I think we think that it should be easy to believe new things or that it should be quick, and the truth is sometimes it is really easy and quick to believe something new. Sometimes just even the awareness that you weren’t believing it is enough.

But for money I have found that this is not the case, that it usually takes time. And you’re probably wondering well, how much time? Honestly it really depends on if you’re doing the work. And this is what I mean by if you’re doing the work. Are you reading that belief? Are you writing it down every day? If not, how often are you actually practicing that thought?

And then you might think, okay, how do I actually practice this thought? And there’s so many ways, there is no right way. But writing it out, saying it out loud, cycling through step two again. I think step two and three go hand in hand together. Although it’s really all three steps because I know that many of you have created some new fancy sounding beliefs, what I mean by that is beliefs that you really love and you’re super excited about. And then in like three days you forgot about it because you didn’t practice it.

And so I think of this at an iterative process, it’s not just one, two, three you’re done and then you believe the new thing. It’s basically a cycle, maybe you put it as your iPhone wallpaper so that you always see it. But that’s what doing the reps of believing new things looks like. It’s not sexy, it’s just you practicing the thoughts literally on a regular basis.

And sometimes these take a long time, meaning it could take weeks, it could even take months. And if you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s a really long time.” Is it? Because what’s the flip side? You never believe it. It’s not like it’s going to come down from heaven and jolt your brain and then lock itself in the brain. I think sometimes we think that’s how it works, but it really doesn’t. We have to do the work to believe the new thing.

So let me go through those three steps once again. So step one is first you have to know what you’re going to believe. Step two is to find evidence for the belief, that it’s already true, that it’s possible. Finding evidence that it’s true versus finding evidence that it’s not true because that’s what our brains will normally do. And then step three is to grow that belief by practicing it.

And so this really comes down to think more, not think harder. Just think more. Do the reps. Decide what kind of reps you’re going to do and how often you’re going to do it. I know many of you are super busy, you work full time, you might have a family and lots of other obligations, and so it doesn’t have to be every day. You can pick 10 minutes three times a week, at least to start.

And then as you notice that it’s working you going to probably want to spend more time on this. And so if you’ve listened to the whole episode and you don’t yet have a new belief you want to choose to think and practice, I really want to encourage tot do that and maybe listen to this episode again really thinking about those three steps I just went over. And figuring out how you’re going to practice the thought.

What is it going to look like? Put it in your calendar. Maybe attach it to some habit that you already do. Maybe you already have a regular schedule where you work out, or go to the gym, or do yoga, or whatever and so maybe you could just spend an extra five or ten minutes before or after that thing to practice these new thoughts.

And let me know how it works out for you. Feel free to email us at [email protected] and I’ll talk to you guys next week.

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