“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right.” - Thomas Edison
I have been my own worst enemy. The good news is I’m aware of that now.
Through my continued morning routine of reading and journaling, I’ve found many limiting beliefs I’ve been holding on to that I didn’t know I had. I didn’t know they were holding me back because I felt they were true. It’s hard to change something true like the sky being blue.
These beliefs have continued to give me the same unwanted results.
I’ll share one of the biggest ones that I discovered.
Since I’ve started writing more on Substack, growth has been flat. Subscribers are up (thank you to new subscribers) but views and engagement are about the same. I know I shouldn’t pay attention, but I do. Then I give meaning to those stats.
I enjoyed writing my last two stories but they didn’t perform as well as I hoped and that was disappointing.
It’s been the same with posting notes here. I keep posting them but get little to no engagement. I see the people that always do (thank you) but outside of that, it’s been quiet. I don’t know how many people see it. I don’t know if the algorithm isn’t showing it or if it is but not getting likes and comments.
Over the years I’ve tried a few times to build a following on Twitter like many gurus tell people to do. I don’t know if what I was tweeting was boring, if it was the algorithm not showing my tweets, or because I haven’t been active and the couple thousand followers I do have are inactive.
A couple of years ago I started a podcast and a newsletter at different times that year. The podcast lasted about five episodes, while the newsletter lasted months but it didn’t grow much beyond those initial subscribers.
In each of the scenarios above, I felt disappointed and I always said to myself, “No one cares what I have to say.”
It felt true to me. I could point to every single example above and say that.
That was my belief. That was the story I told myself over and over. That’s the meaning I gave to it and it’s been going on for years now.
That’s why I stopped writing here in February after being so excited at the beginning of the year. That’s why the last few weeks I haven’t published anything.
That inner voice keeps whispering to me, “Why keep writing if no one cares what you have to say?”
I also realized I say this to myself in other situations.
Back when I had a job and had Zoom meetings, I would stay quiet most of the time. I believed that people didn’t care what I had to say. Even though sometimes I did want to say something, I wouldn’t.
Then when I did speak up, I’d be so nervous because I’m already thinking no one cares what I have to say.
When I look back at my journal entries for the last few years, I wrote a lot about wanting to create content.
Why couldn’t I do it? Why couldn’t I take massive action to get over it?
It makes a lot of sense now why I’ve been getting the same results over and over again.
I can’t remember the first time I thought no one cared what I had to say.
It must have started from one disappointing experience, and then the next time it happened, it reinforced that belief. Then continued to spread like weeds taking over a garden.
I used to have a nice and beautiful garden. I had a blog and podcast I created content for between 2011-2019 and I didn’t have that belief back then.
Now my limiting belief has been a roadblock. I have been my own worst enemy. I have wanted to write more in public, but I am always afraid. When I stopped writing earlier this year after only a month, I can see why.
Beliefs create outcomes.
What we hold to be true will manifest in our reality. Our beliefs dictate the type of action we take. We are always looking to reinforce our beliefs.
If we believe we fail at everything we do, we may start something new with a little effort. Then when we quit early or don’t do as well as we imagine, we’ll say to ourselves “I was right. I fail at everything.”
If I believed that no one cares what I have to say, how am I going to show up when it’s time to write?
Of course that’ll make me not even want to try. If I do try, it’s easy to give up and not keep going.
We remind ourselves so much of our beliefs, that we see it as the truth. It can’t be changed. It’s how it is and that’s how it’ll be forever.
Through my low-level thinking all these years, I was unable to change my perspective to help me.
Since I’ve begun reading, journaling, exercising, and cutting back on social media, it’s helped me see the errors in my thinking and how to change them.
If beliefs determine the outcome I get, and I don’t like the outcome I’m getting, then I have to change my beliefs first.
The outcome I want is the opposite of what I’m getting. Therefore my new beliefs should be the opposite of my current one.
Instead of “no one cares what I have to say”, my new belief became “so many people care what I have to say.”
When I began saying that to myself, I felt good. It didn’t feel weird to me. That’s how I knew it was the correct belief.
Then I thought about what other beliefs I wanted to say to myself if I created great content.
People find value in what I have to say.
People love what I have to say.
People thank me for what I shared.
Then I look at my past experiences for confirmation that this is truly who I am.
When I had my blog and podcast between 2011-2019, I got so many emails sent from readers who told me how much I’ve changed their lives because of what I wrote. I have emails telling me how my words helped them through dark times. They told me they loved my podcast and learned so much from me.
I wrote an ebook that I used as a free lead magnet and I remember getting an email from a teacher saying that ebook was being taught in her classroom.
I’ve had articles before get shared by people on Reddit and some ranked high in Google searches. I had one mentioned by a NY Times columnist.
So people do enjoy my writing. I do deliver a lot of value. That’s evidence right there.
As I was doing a final read-through, I saw this note from Krishna Kanth Yellapragada . The timing of this note was perfect. Thank you for the shoutout.
There is a version of me that can make an impact. I have a lot of evidence proving that. That part of me is still in me, but it got buried with this limiting belief.
Besides reminding myself that, I’m going to change the meaning I give to the results I’m seeing.
If this story doesn’t perform as well as I hope, then I’ll tell myself hopefully it helped one person.
I’ll focus more on the fact that I wrote and published, instead of going back to my default response which was to give up.
I can also tell myself that I’m making progress in changing my beliefs on the inside and soon the results I get on the outside will match up.
The old beliefs spent years making a home in my mindset, and clearing them out doesn’t happen overnight.
That’s what I have to remind myself. I can’t give up. I have to be patient. I have to continue to reinforce these new beliefs.
Just like I created these limiting beliefs, I can create better and new beliefs.
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