Stuck in a rut because of poor self-belief?

 
Have you ever felt, or do you feel stuck in a rut in life, yet at the same time have a fire in your belling telling you that something is missing? That there is more to life than what you are currently living? Yet at the same time, do you feel paralysed from moving forward and making changes?
 
I am asking you this question because this is a common theme that I hear in my coaching practice. And, because it is such a common topic, I want to address it here.
 
We can find ourselves falling into a rut for a myriad of reasons which include:
 

• Not having a clear vision for our lives; no defined purpose.
• Staying in our comfort zone; playing it safe by succumbing to fear.
• Comparing our wants and desires to others; favouring other’s opinions instead of our own.
• Settling for a mediocre life because of limiting beliefs & disempowering thoughts about our capacity to change.
• Getting used to what we have and wanting more; trapped by current success levels and/or affluence.
• The expectation that someone else will make us happy
• Re-living the past rather than the present moment or the future.
• Striving for perfection
• Being closed-minded to new ideas and perspectives
• Making excuses/procrastination/distractions
• Not feeling good enough; assuming that other people are better or smarter than us.
• Feeling guilty for not being happy.

 
 
The reasons highlighted in bold were my predilections. And this week, I am going to focus specifically on addressing these issues:
 
Not feeling good enough & feeling guilty
 
When I was less than a year old, my parents went through an acrimonious divorce. I was an only child, and like many children of divorce, I felt insecure and torn between both of my parents. I had a deep fear of abandonment as well as fear of not being good enough. The strain of my parents’ divorce was further compounded by the fact that I attended a strict Catholic school, which severely frowned on divorce. Given that I was the only child in the entire school that was a product of divorce, the whole school body took distinct umbrage with my own parent’s divorce. It was the 1970’s, divorce was not common nor accepted within the Catholic faith, and this resulted in my being singled out as being wrong and sinful. The tyrannical school principal had a proclivity for screaming and yelling, and in school assemblies would relentlessly bellow and proclaim that anyone who got a divorce would be sent to hell. I was petrified of the school principal, and I became convinced that alongside my parents, I too would be sent to hell. 
 
The worry of my parent’s divorce as well as attending Catholic school resulted in me living in a continuous state of fear and anxiety which was not helped by the fact that I was a poor performing student. I was a C student pretty much throughout Elementary and Secondary school with the only subject that I excelled at being English. In particular, I was terrible at mathematics, and I considered myself lucky if I obtained a C in the subject; usually, it was a D. I just could not get my head around the topic and really did not care how many marbles Johnny had left when Amy had twenty-three and took nine from Mark while travelling on a train at 160 miles an hour balancing on one leg while wearing blue socks on a Tuesday. 
 
For me, mathematics was like trying to read a foreign language and try as I might, I just could not make sense of it. And because I drew poor grades in school, this perpetuated my anxiety both at home and at school. The schoolteachers required parents to sign all test scores, and with trepidation and fear, I would muster up the courage to show my test scores to my father. He, in turn, would become infuriated and refuse to sign them, to which I would then have to return to school terrified and report that my tests weren’t signed. I would later be reprimanded in front of the class and assigned detention.
 
And this cycle repeated for years.
 
As a consequence, I grew up believing that I wasn’t smart or good enough. Furthermore, my parents’ divorce, as well as the distorted messaging I received in school about God, meant that I grew up to become a fearful, people-pleasing kid and then an adult with abandonment issues.

“Everybody is a genius.
But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree,
it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
Albert Einstein

Feeling not good enough or smart enough was a narrative that I clung to for years, even when I graduated with honours from college and had huge successes in my previous careers. And this coupled with the guilt that I was raised with (that other people are less fortunate, and therefore I had no right to complain), paralysed me from changing my life, which resulted in me falling into a deep rut.
 
So how did I begin to crawl out of the rut I found myself in? 
 
I did this by working on gaining awareness and insights into the narrative, negative beliefs and negative self-talk that I used to describe who I was and what I was capable of. And from there I was able to create a new, empowering narrative for myself.
 
Often we are not entirely aware of what limiting beliefs and negative thoughts we have because we have become so accustomed to saying and believing them. Yet it is imperative to gain an understanding of them because limiting beliefs and negative self-talk hold us back from taking action and making changes in our lives; which can lead us to feeling stuck and in a rut.
 
We can gain an awareness of these beliefs by honestly asking ourselves and answering the following questions:

• Where do I have unrealistic expectations of myself?
• Where am I too hard on myself?
• How do I stand in my own way?
• What do I avoid feeling? How does this “avoidance” impact my life?
• What rules do I have about how I should “be” or “feel” that prevent me from changing my life?
• Do the beliefs I have about myself serve me?
• When I look in the mirror, what do I tell myself?
• What do I say to myself about who I am and what I look like?
• How would my life be different if I were to let go of my limiting beliefs and negative self-talk?

Once we gain awareness of our limiting beliefs and how we hold ourselves back, we can begin to build a plan towards moving out of the rut and into a new empowering future.

Looking to further your getting unstuck journey?
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