Newsletter issue
How To Expand Your Opportunities In Life And Career
Sent on 24th June 2023
Do you prefer to listen? here's the audio version:
Hey!
It's Bruna here; happy weekend!
In this week's issue, I will share a handy tool that can help you re-align your life to who you are today, so that you can benefit of the growth that resulted from the tough challenges you've faced in the past few years (pandemic included!).
It will take you about 4 minutes and 19 seconds to read it, and you'll walk away with:
- An understanding of what your self-image is and how it impacts your decisions
- A tool to replace your limiting beliefs
- Questions you need to ask yourself to stay aligned
Enjoy!
So this is today's point: when life makes you grow, ensure you raise the bar accordingly.
Let's talk about the pandemic and how it made us grow, for example. I'm sure it was an incredibly tough time for you too, for many reasons. But we came out of that and as sure as hell, it made us grow.
In what way? What do you know now about yourself that you didn't know before?
What has the lockdown taught you about your life and what you're capable of?
At the beginning, the idea of being forced to stay home and far from our loved ones seemed unbearable. Then we adapted to it.
The idea of having to suddenly work 5 days a week from home alone with our thoughts or families seemed scary, yet we adapted. You get the point...
Most of our fears and beliefs about us and what we're capable of proved insubstantial.
The fact that we've been capable of more than what we thought possible proves that our horizons are wider than we expected, therefore we lived our life limited by beliefs that were not realistic.
If we don't update our self-image (that is our perception of ourselves) we'll keep living below our potential.
How To Re-align Our Self-Image
By comparing our beliefs, fears and doubts with facts, evidence and results of what we're actually capable of, we can update our perception of ourselves.
"Evidence" here is your best friend: you can trust it will always tell you the truth about what's possible for you so you don't have to second guess yourself.
Let’s say, for example, that at the beginning of 2021, you dreaded the lockdown, felt frightened to work from home without the usual structure or felt uncomfortable to be by yourself. What impact have these thoughts had on your mood/behaviour/performance?
Observing yourself now from an external, objective perspective, how many of these fears/doubts/limiting beliefs proved substantial? What does the evidence say about them?
Dr Susan Jeffers, the author of the outstanding “Feel the fear and do it anyway” evergreen, says there’s only 10% of probabilities that our worst-case scenario actually happens…
I was delighted to see how some of my clients felt intimidated by the scale of their challenges during the first lockdown, and then, to their surprise, overcome them brilliantly throughout the year. Their fears truly evaporated.
So What's Next?
If we’ve grown, it means new opportunities are available for us that were not perceived as accessible before. Unless we reflect on that, we depreciate our efforts and leave better options unexplored. The confidence we’ve acquired must be recognised, utilised and maximised by asking ourselves questions such as: what opportunities are available for me now, that I couldn’t see before? If the pandemic — or any tough circumstance I’ve been through - has reshaped who I am, what will I do differently from now on?
Here's a tool that can help you ask yourself the right questions in the right sequence:
The image above shows you the tool which you can use to go through this process: 1 — observe your beliefs, 2 — replace them with empowering ones, 3 — explore a wider set of options.
TIP: You can follow the same process to align your self-image with your new skills too.
Bottom line: in the past year or more, you've learnt new things, read new books, and developed new habits. What can you do now in your life and career that you couldn’t do before? What opportunities have opened up for you?
To continue growing, and aligning yourself to your evolving self-image, keep asking yourself these questions:
- What did I learn during the last year / months? What’s different compared to what I knew about myself 6 months ago / 12 months ago? How has my behaviour changed? Why?
- What fear/doubt did I have at the beginning of the year that has no longer reason to exist? How does this realisation make me feel?
- Now that I’ve let go of fears, doubts and limiting beliefs, what opportunities are available for me that were not available before? What will I do about them?
- What will I do differently in the other pivotal areas of my life now that I’ve raised my self-image?
- How will I express my-new-self? What do I commit to and by when?
You see, if you get into the habit of asking yourself these questions, you'll organically align your life to whom you are today and expand your opportunities accordingly.
So, are you ready to embrace your self-image and live up to your potential?
When are you going to get started?
See you next month, same place, same time.
Have a fab weekend,
