Bonus Episode 26: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

There are so many ways in which we limit ourselves from achieving our goals. A self-imposed limit is defeating ourselves before we even begin. Once we convince ourselves that there are no limits to what we can do and achieve, we become unstoppable in the pursuit of our dreams. You have lots of potential…potential for greatness if you believe in yourself. Rid yourselves of these self-imposed limits and free yourself to act.

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Transcript

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Hi, this is Stephen McLain of the finance leader podcast. This is bonus episode number 26. We are just a few weeks away from the debut of season eight, which will be all about the role of Chief Financial Officer, I can't wait to share. If you've been enjoying the finance leader podcast for a while you know that my focus is on the development of your leadership ability. And I believe that by embracing your role as a leader in the finance and accounting profession, no matter if you work in corporate or in a private firm, you will improve your chance of advancing your career, you are already expected to be a technical expert. So I don't address technical issues in this podcast, like the newest way to account for inventory, or short term investments, or how to analyze and compare capital investments. But I will address how you can apply leadership to those topics to bring about positive outcomes. I did that in Episode 28, improving the monthly close process, which was how finance and accounting leaders can create a more positive outcome for the monthly closed process. And to create a better product for senior leaders to make decisions. I want to encourage you to grow your leadership skills because it'll help you to advance to the role of CFO. Additionally, for example, when you are assigned to a project team, I don't want you to only contribute the numbers or the financial analysis to the project. I want you to become a leader on that project team and work to deliver more value to the organization because you do know the numbers better than anyone else. And you can influence the project to better support its intended outcome, and that is to increase organizational value and execute the strategy. This week I wanted to talk about what is holding you back. So I'm sharing an encore episode from Season Five, which is Episode 38. Overcoming limiting beliefs to ensure your success. Is there something preventing you from becoming successful and achieving your long term goal. There are so many ways in which we limit ourselves from achieving our goals. A self imposed limit is defeating ourselves before we even begin. Once we convince ourselves there are no limits to what we can do and achieve. We become unstoppable in the pursuit of our dreams. You have lots of potential potential for greatness if you believe in yourself, rid yourself of these self imposed limits and free yourself to act. season eight will debut on October 12. I can't wait. Please enjoy this encore episode from Season Five. Episode 38. Overcoming limiting beliefs to ensure success in your career. Thank you and enjoy. There are so many ways in which we limit ourselves from achieving our goal. A self imposed limit is defeating ourselves before we even begin. Once we convinced ourselves that there are no limits to what we can do and achieve. We've become unstoppable in the pursuit of our dreams. You have lots of potential potential for greatness. If you believe in yourself. Read yourselves have the self imposed limits and free yourself to act. Please enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. This is episode number 38. And now we'll be discussing about what may be holding you back and I'll be covering the following items number one a fixed mindset number two imposter syndrome. Number three limiting belief number four procrastination. Number five, seeking approval. Number six needing to be perfect and seven a what you can do to change it. Mary Kay ash, founder of Mary Kay cosmetics said, Don't limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you what you believe. Remember, you can achieve the purpose of this episode today is to help you free yourself from self imposed limits. limits you placed on yourself to stop you from achieving your dreams. It could be fear for change or fear what others will think of you complacency is also a strong reason. He has become comfortable where you are and you don't want to be challenged or feel overwhelmed in your duties. It's also possible you may be suffering from cognitive bias. Something is holding you back and you're not quite sure what it is. It also could be judgment from others because you want to grow. People in your circle probably want you to remain the same because you will be allocating your time and effort differently. Does this sound familiar? Maybe it's a family member or significant other? Why would you want to be around someone who holds you back? No matter who it is? Again, I want to ask you, how was your goal planning and execution going for 2021? Do you have your written goals yet? Have you broken them down into smaller, achievable pieces? Also, do you have them integrated onto a calendar so you can measure your progress and make adjustments, we're going to keep talking about goal setting and goal execution, probably in a lot of episodes. Last week in Episode 37, I talked about becoming more coachable. To achieve our goals, we need coaching to help us see things in ourselves that we don't see. Now, great coaching helps us to self discover, through very introspective questions, we need to deep dive into our own beliefs in order to help us overcome obstacles that may prevent us from achievement and to place our focus and effort in the right direction. Now, goal planning, great introspective coaching, and knowing what may be holding us back all go together to help us move forward, to help us achieve excellence, to help us become more tomorrow than what we are today. And to give us hope that we can achieve anything you are robbing yourself of potential when you allow things to hold you back. Now I've had my own history of dealing with most of these limiting beliefs that I'll discuss here. And I had to overcome them. I had to overcome them to deliver you a weekly podcast, I asked myself constantly, who am I here to please them who may contribute to me holding myself back or my goals? Why be afraid to step out from my comfort zone, and then do something bigger and better. I continue to assess my own beliefs so that nothing holds me back. Only if I let it will something stopped me. And let's go through and discuss various ways that we hold ourselves back from achieving our goals and achieving excellence. limiting belief is a general situation that stops you from achieving your goals. You fixate on a false assumption in your life that prevents you from success. And it could be anything, your appearance, your education, or where you went to school, or your childhood. Maybe some voices in the past made comments that stopped you but don't let it stop you now, overcome it. by acknowledging your positive traits and your accomplishments. I've been told by people close to me that they don't have any accomplishments, which isn't true, I can list out their accomplishments easily. So don't fixate on these things that others judge you on. Focus on what you have already bring to the table, and what makes you unique and valuable to the organization. a fixed mindset means that you believe that you no longer can improve or have the ability to improve. That's where you are right now is where you will stay related to your skills and abilities. a growth mindset is the opposite that says you can continue to develop and grow with no limitation, adopt a growth mindset to get over the obstacles in your way. imposter syndrome is where you don't believe in your own skills, abilities and experience. Even though you're competent and have proved your competence over and over again, you don't believe that you deserve it. Or that you don't have the ability for greater responsibility. You don't believe in yourself despite the evidence of your performance. And despite your accomplishments. Now, the Dunning Kruger effect was found that people have low ability think too high of themselves further, those with higher ability had a low perception of their own abilities. So if you have some doubt about your own abilities, that may in fact mean you truly have great abilities, but you just don't believe it in yourself yet. So give yourself more credit for what you have accomplished and what you can do. Now number four is about procrastination. Procrastination is where we stall and we stall on working on tasks and our own goals. It's a debilitating condition. That may be more habit than a mental block. But it does limit us and limits our level of excellence. We wait and we make excuses or we do something more pleasure seeking not wanting to do our tasks, then we started the very last minute putting in 150 to 300% effort in also in much less time, then the product becomes less than when it could have been procrastination comes from not wanting to face a difficult task or setting out on our dream. We continue to put it off and delay it and then let's get started and not wait any longer. Once it's good going, put on our goals, decide what we want to do and get started. Don't procrastinate. Let's start today. Number five is seeking approval and it's about doing things so others can be happy instead of us. It's about fear of rejection and fitting in, but it limits what we should work on. It seeks to make others happy instead of what we should do to make us happy. seeking approval is rooted in belonging to a group to get validation but often this is harmful to our own growth and potential. Why do you seek approval instead of working on something for yourself, which may not be popular focused on you focus on your goals on your tasks. And don't worry about seeking validation from others, you work on your goals work on what you want to accomplish. And don't worry about a bunch of people who may reject you, just because you're going to focus on your own growth and development. They shouldn't be around you anyway, if they're going to bring you down. So focus on you. Number six, and the last one I'll discuss is about the need to be perfect. Now perfectionism prevents us from starting in the first place. It convinces you that you need perfect conditions to get a goal started, it's all or do nothing, you may think you will be judged for being less than perfect. I'm going to deep dive this topic in the next episode of the podcast. It's a very powerful limiting belief that needs to be stopped. And we need to address it in a greater context. So what do we do about our limiting beliefs? Now, here are a couple of things to think about regarding these limiting beliefs. Number one, is that a new circle of friends and associates is just what you might need, does your inner circle push you to excellence? Or does it hold you back? Do they demand time for their needs without supporting yours? Do they criticize you if you change for the better, or seek new ways to improve? Are you told that you're becoming too good for them? Now it's time to find a new group. If that happens, review what content you are consuming. The messages you allow in can affect us and how we view ourselves. I tend to watch and have content on that is inspiring, which includes business development, or a good story about overcoming great challenges. Those affect me in a positive growth mindset way. Now, number three, develop an attitude of self reliance, not needing approval, but belief in what you have already accomplished. And know that it wasn't easy, but you did it. You overcame challenges and obstacles to achieve what you have already. So believe in yourself that you can do the hard work. Number four is establishing boundaries that limit access to you that may be required. For those who may criticize you keep these people away from you set those boundaries. And finally, we're going to focus on progress over perfection. You don't need everything perfect to get started. Just start and make changes or improvements as you go. Just start, assess, improve, and make changes. And you don't owe explanations to anyone but yourself. Again, I'm going to cover this topic deeper next week. progress over perfection is getting started. But you can always fix it or improve it later. Wanting to be perfect is crippling to our success. We are afraid of judgment from others when we make a mistake. Do you feel judgment in your mind about your work product, even though no one has seen it except you. Let's say you are working on an information paper for the comptroller on a critical accounting decision that was made by the fast be that in fact affects valuation of assets your company has on the books, you write the words, but in your mind, you can feel the critique that you haven't really communicated the right message. But no one has seen what you have written yet. Why are you so worried? No one has seen it yet. Keep writing, get down all the key points, and then edit and rewrite it just keep writing, keep working. progress over perfection. keep improving that person in your head judging you is only you. And I'll give you the key to clearing this issue from your mind. Most of the time. The people who you think are judging you are not even giving you a second thought they are mired in their own problems and their own challenges that they are not even thinking about you at all. And further. If you have people in your life who want to point out your mistakes, then they don't deserve you in your life. And I'm talking about the closest people around you who don't want to see you improve or change for the better. So get those boundaries up and you go accomplish those goals. Focus on you. There'll be more about this next week. So please come back. Now for an easy win today. Ask yourself what is holding you back journalize it if you have to get out all the reasons excuses, the limiting beliefs, everything that you have. Write down or even look at your current resume to review your accomplishments. I want you to focus on accomplishments and your skills and your abilities. Believe that you're not be where you are today without the skills and abilities that you already have. And then also if you can find a good coach, maybe you have to pay someone to do so or find someone that can help you to overcome your limiting beliefs. Just Think about what obstacles that you may be facing the obstacles that are going to stop you from accomplishing your goals and your dreams. I have a free guide for you. It's called the leadership growth blueprint for finance and accounting managers. In the guide, I talked about three leadership areas communication, team growth, and empowerment. Plus a few recommendations around challenges with the systems you are probably using to complete your work. The link to the guide is in the episode description. Or you can go to Stephen McLain Comm. Please use it to help you with a few leadership wins today. Thank you. This episode is sponsored by my new online course offering through finance leader Academy is called Advanced your finance and accounting career, developing a promotion strategy that will set you apart. Are you having difficulty getting recognition from your leadership, despite all the hard work you pour into your job and your organization. This course helps you analyze what you bring to the organization, how you can set yourself apart from your peers through high visibility work, and developing your leadership skills. Plus how you can devise a strategy to move ahead. You can go to Stephen McLain calm for more details. Today, I talked about limiting beliefs and how you can overcome them. I talked about the following a fixed mindset. imposter syndrome, limiting belief, procrastination, seeking approval, the need to be perfect, and a few ways that you can change it. And you have a lot of potential potential for greatness. I don't want it to never be realized by you because of something you are believing in yourself that isn't true. So please make the changes you need to maybe get a new group of people around you who believe in you so you can maximize your potential and achieve your goals. Next week I will be discussing about overcoming perfection. This is a huge issue for many people. And that's why we need to dedicate some additional time to overcoming the need to be perfect always because it really stops you from accomplishing our goals that stops you from getting getting started. It stops you from setting out on something that you really want to accomplish. So that's why it's important to discuss it even further. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader podcast dedicated to helping you grow your leadership. I hope you enjoyed the show. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen McLain calm and sign up my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now the lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you