Here’s the TRUTH About the Limiting Beliefs That Control You

You know, my entire life I had this limiting belief that I wasn't smart because a teacher told me that, and a doctor backed that up by giving me a medical diagnosis with ADHD. And so I, I felt like I wasn't smart, and so I never really tried. And then I go to college and I have this teacher tell me, Josh, you're great. You're a great writer. You're smart. You've got great potential.

And then all of a sudden it changed my trajectory, and I got mostly A's and B's in college, went on and earned a doctorate. And then I graduated from a top 10 university at Johns Hopkins University and started 5 multimillion-dollar businesses. And a lot of things happened.

But let me say this, if I would've kept having that limiting belief and I would've believed I'm not that smart, I don't think those things would've happened. And I think for a lot of you, you might have something in your life where you feel like, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, I'm not smart enough. I'm not talented enough. I'm not pretty enough.

I don't look— whatever it might be, you may have some limiting belief about yourself that is keeping you from being the greatest you. And that's so many of us. Welcome to the Growth Lab Podcast, where every week we uncover the science behind how to grow yourself, your health, your wealth, and help grow your career and your relationships.

And this week we're going to be talking about limiting beliefs. You know, limiting beliefs are beliefs that are sometimes subconscious that keep us from becoming our very best. So they might also keep you from becoming healthier. They may keep you from having great relationships. They may keep you from being successful in every area of your life.

And we tend to have limiting beliefs in 3 different categories: about ourself, about others, and about the world. So we're going to go through those today and go through how you can really break through those limiting beliefs. And experience greater success in your life.

We'll have some great stories about people like Jamie Kern Lima, who is the founder of IT Cosmetics, and how limiting beliefs almost halted her career. We'll talk about Chris Pratt, how they almost limited his career. And I'm going to share a story to start about how I had some limiting beliefs that almost kept me from being successful as well. And I think you're going to identify with these.

And by the way, one of the other things we're going to get into today is the science and research behind how you identify your limiting beliefs, and how you create new empowering beliefs that then allow you to think at a higher level, and which will help you experience breakthrough. When I was a freshman in high school, I had a teacher ask me to stay after class.

This was freshman English, and her name was Ms. Norvell. She said, Josh, I'd like you to stay after class. I stayed after class, and she said, Josh, what do you wanna be when you grow up? You know, she said, do you wanna go to college? Do you have aspirations to do anything with your life? And I said, well, I said, I really would like to become a doctor.

And she literally laughed out loud and she said, right now you're getting a, you know, you're getting a D in my class. And I wanted you to stay after because you got an F on this paper. I don't have a lot of confidence in you, but try harder. And I remember walking outta the classroom that day and just feeling like essentially the message was, I'm not smart.

And I had this feeling throughout high school that I wasn't smart. And then, and then the next year my mom brought me into a medical doctor and I was diagnosed with ADHD. And they said, hey, this is why you're having trouble in school. You know, you have an option to take medication. My mom didn't want to put me on medication.

And so I remember then leaving that doctor's appointment after the doctor said some things to me, or said them to my mom, but I was sitting right there and thinking, well, not only am I not smart, but I'm actually medically not smart. I have some sort of disease or problem to where I just, I can't get, I'm not going to get good grades.

And so throughout high school, I felt, and I had this constant belief in my head that I wasn't smart and that I could pass. I, you know, for me to get an A seemed nearly impossible. And I, by the way, I, I had a hard time graduating high school. I went to the principal's office a lot. I graduated with a 2.3 GPA.

And in order to get into college, I applied to a college and I was really hoping to get in. It was University of Kentucky. And they, I got, got a letter back that said, you are not accepted unless if you come and you take summer classes. And you get above a 3.0, you will be accepted into college.

And so, you know, my, my, I talked to my parents and they said, yeah, you know, we'll go ahead, we'll, you know, have you go to summer school. And if not, you'll come back here and either start work somewhere else or, or, uh, go to community college. And so, I, I decided, I, I went into college and I thought, you know what, I, I might not be smart, but I'm going to try really hard.

I'm, I'm, I'm going to try because I want to, like, I wanted to go to college. For me, it was something that I really felt like I was, I was meant, I was meant to do.

And I didn't wanna be, I, by the way, I didn't wanna be the guy who, and, and not to say that this isn't meant for some people because I think that, by the way, I took classes the next summer at a community college just to try and graduate early. But, but I said, you know, I, I wanna, I wanna go out and do something with my life. And so I felt like I needed to get away from him.

So I, I went and took this, this college course, these college courses. I took English 101 and History 101 and, and I, I tried really hard and I got done with the first paper and this was English in college. So I, I had freshman English in high school. School. And then this was like a repeat of freshman English in college after freshman English in high school.

And I had the teacher, it was like déjà vu, Mrs. Williams. And she said, Josh, hey, can you stay after class for a minute? And I said, yep. And I went up to her and she said, Josh, I wanna let you know that you got the highest grade in the class. She said, you know, for someone coming in like you're, like she said, somebody taking these summer classes, like I know you are.

She said, you got the highest grade in the class. Wow. And she said, have you thought about being an English major? She said, I think you really have a lot of talent. You could be a really great writer. And I said, no, I hadn't thought about being an English major. And she said, well, hey, you should really consider it.

And if you ever want to talk about it, then feel free to let me know and we can talk more about being a writer. And I said, okay. And I left class, ended up getting a very high grade, an A in the class and an A in the other class. And so, I think in the summer I had close to a 4.0. And all that being said, I had what I want to call a memory transplant in that moment.

You know, my entire life, I had this limiting belief that I wasn't smart because a teacher told me that and a doctor backed that up by giving me a medical diagnosis with ADHD. And so, I felt like I wasn't smart, and so I never really tried. And then I go to college and I have this teacher tell me, Josh, you're great. You're a great writer. You're smart. You've got great potential.

And then all of a sudden it changed my trajectory and I got mostly A's and B's in college. And I eventually went on and earned a doctorate. And then I graduated from a top 10 university at Johns Hopkins University and started 5 multimillion-dollar businesses. And a lot of things happened.

But let me say this, if I would've kept having that limiting belief and I would've believed I'm not that smart, I don't think those things would've happened. And I think for a lot of you, you might have something in your life where you feel like, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, I'm not smart enough, I'm not talented enough, I'm not pretty enough.

I don't look— whatever it might be, you may have some limiting belief about yourself that is keeping you from being the greatest you. And that's so many of us. And we all have the opportunity to choose to embrace what's spoken about us or what we speak about ourselves.

I think if I would've had other people in my life maybe speaking more than my parents did, but I felt, you know, it wasn't, you know, it needed to be some, sometimes more with your parents, right? Sometimes it's like, well, of course my parents think I'm great, right? And so I think that's what I thought is, okay, my parents think I'm great. It helps a little bit.

But these teachers, this third party, this person doesn't think, doesn't think I'm that smart. We all have the choice to embrace whatever messaging we want every single day. But what I decided was when I heard Ms. Williams say, You're smart. You're a great writer. You're a good communicator. I thought, that's what I'm going to choose to believe.

I'm going to choose to not believe I have this memory from the past of this teacher telling me I'm not smart. I now have a new memory of a teacher telling me I'm smart, and I'm going to transplant one for this memory. I'm going to move this one memory out and I'm going to move this new memory in, or I'm going to move this one belief out. I'm going to move this new memory in.

Think about it like this. If somebody gets a diseased organ, Like a liver or a heart, right? They're— we today in modern medicine have organ transplants. You get a really diseased organ of somebody and then you move it out and you put a new healthy organ in, and that can extend someone's life, increase their health dramatically. Think about it the same way.

You may have a toxic diseased memory or belief about yourself that's living inside of you, and it's, it's, it's decreasing your function and your potential of what you're capable of. And one of the things you want to do is you want to identify what are those limiting beliefs that are keeping you from becoming all you can be, and you want to replace that with a new empowering belief.

And as I've studied thousands of people over the years and leaders in different industries, one of the things I've discovered is there's a lot of these people who have had limiting beliefs and they were able to identify what those were, and then it allowed them to experience a breakthrough in their career or relationships or some area of life.

There are 3 types of limiting beliefs that tend to hold you back. Number one are limiting beliefs about yourself. For instance, I'm not smart, or I don't deserve to fall in love, or I'm doing the best I can, but that's never good enough. Right? What I do is never good enough, or I'm not trustworthy, or I'm not disciplined, I'm not self-disciplined.

So those could all be limiting beliefs about yourself. And then there are beliefs about others. It could be, people are out to get me. People are inherently evil. People don't change. Every human being has a little value, but not a lot. Like human beings aren't valuable. So there are a lot of limiting beliefs. And by the way, These will change the way that you act.

That's one of the big things to take away here. Because by the way, I had a limiting belief for years that people don't change or it's very hard for people to change. And what it caused me to do then was look at a lot of people and say, you know what? It's really not worth saying this to this person because they're not going to change. What good does it do for me to go and try and, you know?

And so, I felt like, well, there's certain people that do change. And so, I'm going to go work with them. And there's some people that just won't ever change. And so, I wouldn't work with those people. But the thing I really did is I recognized This is many years ago, but I recognized that that's a false belief. And so, I then started retraining my brain to say, you know what? People do change.

Look, I changed. I changed radically in so many different ways. I changed in my character. I changed in my skills. I changed my intelligence. I was able to change and grow in all those areas. And then I started writing down, who are some people I know that just really changed and really grew in a positive way?

And so I wrote all those people down and then it reignited in my mind a positive belief that people change for the good. And think about this, if you don't believe that human lives are valuable, how are you gonna treat people? You're gonna treat 'em like trash. You're gonna treat 'em like they're not worthy.

Versus if you have this understanding that every human being is made, let's say, in the image of God or as a divine being, When you believe that about everybody, you're gonna treat them with honor and respect. Every time you come into contact with somebody, they're gonna walk away feeling like, I'm worthy, I'm respected, I matter.

These beliefs that you have, the limiting beliefs or the empowering beliefs, radically change not only your life, but the life of everyone you come in contact with. Think about how important this is for a— as a parent. For myself, really knowing and believing that my daughter has immense potential, you know, so I'm going to expect more of her. I'm going to challenge her to grow.

I'm going to believe that, you know, even if she does something bad, that she's capable of fixing that and doing something good, right? People are redeemable. And so these ideas and these belief systems are incredibly important for your success and the success of every single person around you.

You want to be around somebody, spend your time with people that have empowering belief systems and not these limiting belief systems. Another area or category we have limiting beliefs around is the world. For instance, you're always looking out for, well, it's not going to work out my way. You live with a victim mentality is essentially what happens. You're the victim of everything.

The world's against you. Or And by the way, even politically, different political parties tend to lean one way or the other. For instance, if somebody's a Republican, they really believe issues are related to other people. So somebody's acting good or bad, it's all about personal responsibility.

Somebody who is more progressive or liberal tends to be like, well, the world is the issue, it's the system.

So for instance, they'll try and really, like somebody who is more left-leaning will really try and build up the government in their favor and do everything to grow, sort of, you know, give the government as much power as possible because they believe that, you know, the problem is the system.

So if you can improve the system, well, you'll improve the world versus, you know, when you look at somebody who's Republican or right-leaning, they believe, no, the problem is people. If people become more morally good or better or, those things, then that'll fix the problem.

And so you can see there, and I'm not saying one is right or the other, I tend to lean more— listen, I, I think that, that systems are really important, but I think people are more important. And I'll give you an example of this. A system such as communism or capitalism, I personally believe that capitalism is a much, much better system.

I also believe that people, if you have really good, really moral people, You know, that's actually even more important than the system itself, even though I believe the system's important. Now, ideally, if, you know, you have a balanced view and you understand that, okay, the people are incredibly important, probably the most important, but systems are also very, very important.

And so, you can see how this even plays out in politics, in different areas of our lives. And so, you want to make sure that your belief systems are correct when you think about yourself, When you think about other people and what you think about the world, and we could even throw God in there.

What do you believe if there isn't a God, if there is a God, if he's a tyrant, if he just doesn't care, or if he's a benevolent father, right? So your belief systems about the world, about God, about other people, about yourself, they dictate your actions. In life. Now, one of the biggest things we see in terms of a limiting belief is self-doubt.

And what self-doubt is, it's a lack of confidence or belief in your own abilities or actions, right? So, self-doubt is probably the most common limiting belief regarding yourself. And there was a study done by the American Psychological Association, and they discovered about 80% of American adults have experienced self-doubt in their life. And so, and this isn't like a little self-doubt.

This tends to be, I really am doubting myself, my potential, who I am. So, 80% of us deal with this in a really psychological, in a pretty deep way at some point in our life. And the way that self-doubt tends to manifest is through, one big way is negative self-talk, right? Oh, I just can't do it. I'm too tired. Oh, I— You know, it's going to be too hard, or I don't think I can do it, right?

So, this negative self-talk or, you know, another big way that this tends to happen, by the way, is through comparison self-doubt. It's you look at someone else and you think, wow, they have it all, or wow, that person's so beautiful, or that person's so strong, or that person's so articulate. And so, then you reflect back on yourself. That person is this, but that puts me here.

And so, it's a way you— we get this negative self-talk that's subconscious where maybe it's not even words, but it's this thing that's constantly replaying in our mind. By the way, as I've spent tens of thousands of hours studying the psychology behind this, this almost always starts in our childhood at some point in time.

Like I mentioned the story with me and Mrs. Norvell, she told me at one point I wasn't smart and then another doctor. So, you tend to have some time in your life, somebody said something to you on the playground or a parent or a teacher or a coach, and you're still living with these today. And that's why you got to sometimes dig deep and identify When did this start?

It tends to start as a memory of an event, something that happened that then turns into a belief. That tends to be the progression of what happens. So, it turns into this negative self-talk that's sort of like, it's like a record or it's like a song on replay. It just plays in your head over and over and over again.

So, self-doubt manifests as negative self-talk, self-limiting beliefs, Feelings of inadequacy, fear of failure or being judged by others. So it plays out in a lot of different ways, this self-doubt does, when we're talking about, you know, our self-doubt. Now, I want to talk about self-limiting beliefs as well for a minute.

These limiting beliefs, as I mentioned, these are deeply ingrained thoughts or perceptions that hinder our personal growth and success. You know, the way that I think about it is, is limiting beliefs are, imagine a table. And the top of the table is sort of a mindset you have about something. Okay?

So, imagine just a whole mind frame or the way you think about— let me give you an example, the word success. So, how do you determine if you're successful or not? Okay. So, imagine success as a tabletop, and then you have legs that sort of support success. You thinking psychologically, I'm a successful person. Well, let's say one of those legs is you drive a nice car.

And another one is you have a certain salary, let's call it $75,000 a year, right? And let's say you've got another leg that says, uh, success is, um, having a certain size home. And another one is having a certain job title, okay? Getting some sort of promotion. And those mean you're successful.

And so, you might have these limiting beliefs, you might have these bel— now, these are beliefs, right? But holding up success. But what can happen is you, you might then also, and we're getting more into beliefs here, but I'll go back to limiting beliefs. But imagine then you get fired at work. Whoa. All of a sudden you've lost one of your legs.

And because you got fired at work, you're not now making this $75K a year. Now you're not making money. And then imagine, well, now you've got to give up your home and your car.

All of a sudden you have no self-esteem whatsoever because you chose to build your self-esteem and your, you know, the opposite of self-doubt in a way on these sort of materialistic things versus imagine your idea of success is I'm a good parent. I'm a loving spouse. I've got— I'm a really good friend that's loyal and always there.

I'm continually growing and getting better every day in my skill and my ability. If those are things that you really have great control over and you can be really good at, you're building a much more solid foundation in your beliefs that dictate what true success is.

And, but, but what happens is, is we also create these sort of mental barriers that don't even allow us to have legs whatsoever or cause these legs to break. Again, with these self-limiting beliefs like, I'm not smart. Listen, if you're not smart, and so think about this, what you believe about yourself and your intelligence.

If you believe you're just not smart as one of those legs, well, you don't have any legs at that table, right? It's just, there's not much to build off. So, you're going to go through your entire life believing, I'm just not smart. And so, it's really important to identify What do I believe about wealth? What do I believe true success is? What do I believe marriage is?

What do I believe it means to be a parent? And your belief system about these different values or areas of life are really typically tied to, uh, your limiting beliefs or empowering beliefs about the world itself. So it's an important thing to consider. There's a news article that was published just recently. This is 2023.

And it was published in the American Psychiatric Association, and they found almost 40% of Americans rated their own mental health as poor. Anxiety was found to be the major cause of poor mental health, which, which is often linked to self-doubt. People reported they were most anxious and doubtful about their finances, their general, just general life, their health, their relationships.

And their job security. Those were the biggest things that people were anxious about, which again, they, they said were affecting their mental health. So think about this.

If you're a person who has poor mental health, one of the things that might be happening is you believe that in order for you to be financially successful, you need to make, let's call it $100K a year, a certain amount, and anything below that, you're not successful. So you're always anxious thinking about, well, I need to make more, I need to make more, I mean, I need to make more.

Or you believe you're not successful, so you're less than and you're unworthy if you're not making that amount of money, if you believe that about finances. Or it could be about health, right?

So, if you have a health issue, you know, by the way, I've taken care of tens of thousands of patients over the years with every health problem you can imagine, everything from heart disease to cancer to Lyme disease to psoriasis.

And, you know, one of the things I notice in people that have these limiting beliefs about their health is, is that they will label themselves as a condition, like a disease that sometimes can't be reversed versus having an imbalance in their body. You know, when you look at ancient forms of medicine, they actually didn't typically diagnose with people with a condition.

For instance, if you look at ancient Asian medicine, they would say, well, you've got too much heat and inflammation in your body. So think about that in modern medicine. Okay, you've got too much inflammation. In your arteries and around your heart. So what we need to do is we need to reduce inflammation. That's how they would communicate.

When you go to areas like Japan and Okinawa where they have the longest lifespan, that tends to be more commonly how if somebody is practicing more Eastern thought, they never wanted to label anybody with this sort of condition you can never get out of. And so it's, you've got inflammation, you've got heat, In this area, so we've got to reduce, we've got to remove the heat.

So, hey, here's some turmeric or ginger or rosemary or galangal or some omega-3 fats, and we're going to do that. Okay, so now we're getting that heat out of your heart and your arteries. What happens today is people go to their doctor and they're diagnosed with a condition like you have heart disease or atherosclerosis. Well, I have this. This is a condition I have.

And most of the time people feel like when they're diagnosed with a condition like diabetes or cancer, whatever it is, it becomes part of their identity versus, oh, I've got some inflammation in my system. Oh, I need to get that. I need to reduce that. Do you see what I mean?

I've had so many patients, especially with things like Lyme disease and fibromyalgia, who start to believe I am this condition and they replay this over and over in their head. And it's really bad for their health because when your body neurologically believes something, there's something called the placebo effect. Placebo effect, but the opposite of that is the nocebo effect.

The placebo means I took a sugar pill and I believe it's going to help me, and it does. Here's the opposite. The nocebo effect is I believe I have something and it's really negative, and so my body is breaking down because of it. There is a story I read about a man who was diagnosed with liver cancer, and his doctor told him, you have about 3 to 4 months to live. And the man died 3 months later.

They went in and did a biopsy and realized they misdiagnosed him. There was a small benign tumor on the edge of his liver, which wasn't really a threat at all, but the man still died 3 months later. By the way, this is a, this is a, this is a real story. We see these case studies published, uh, sometimes.

But all that being said, think about the power of your beliefs, that if you believe that you have a condition that you don't even have, you could die in 3 months without having that issue. Our beliefs are incredibly powerful. And so you want to make sure that you are believing the right things about these areas in life.

You want to make sure you believe in the right things about yourself, about others, about your career, about wealth, about God, about the world. It's critical. You know, there's a philosopher, her name is Susie Kasem, and she said, doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will. And so it's not that you failed, right? Oftentimes you learn from failure.

If you doubt, oftentimes you won't start or you won't put in the full effort. You know, the reason people don't enjoy— I believe this to be true— the reason why a lot of people don't enjoy meaningful relationships or apply for their dream job or try something again after they failed or execute their 5-year plan is not because they don't have the skills or potential.

It's because of limiting beliefs that totally kill their momentum. And people won't even try. They'll see the roadblock and say, you know what? It's not worth it. It's going to be too much effort. And just go around it. The reality is, is that most people are capable of far more than they think. If you're listening to this, you are capable of far more than you could ever think.

One of the ways to overcome that is to read about people who have overcome the odds. You know, I think about a guy like David Goggins, you know, Navy SEAL who was incredibly overweight, lost over 100 pounds, and now what he's accomplishing physically is absolutely incredible. You know, there are so many people who have disabilities or were told they would never walk again, and they were able to.

You know, I've shared my story about having a spinal infection where I didn't walk for nearly a year. And I had a doctor tell me, you know what, you might be permanently disabled from this. But I didn't believe that. And now, you know, I don't right now hardly feel any effects from that.

And all that being said, it's, you know, what I did is I started reading up on people who who were, who got poor diagnoses and then went on to do more physically or mentally than they'd ever done before, right? So those are the sort of things you want to meditate on to feed these empowering belief systems. You know, there's a, there's a study from the National Science Foundation.

They found that 80% of our thoughts on a daily basis are negative. Think about that. 80% Of our thoughts are negative. And so it could be, Oh, I'm not good enough. This is hard. This probably isn't going to work out. I got this big bill coming in. This person's going to let me down. They're not going to show up. Oh, I missed my workout today. I feel bad about myself. I shouldn't have eaten that.

You got, see, this constant repetitive negative self-talk going on. And then 95% of our thoughts are repetitive. So we think them again and then again and then again. And this is why most people have a high level of self-doubt, of you not believing in yourself.

And so, because so many of our thoughts are negative on a replay, we have to be conscious about turning on the recorder or the play button on something that's positive and repeating that over and over and over again. This is why what you are listening, the music you're listening to, the stories you're hearing about, podcasts you're listening to, are critically important.

If you are listening to You know, whatever podcast, like for instance, the news, and you're hearing about the negative news about the Republicans did this, the Democrats did this, and this person murdered this person, crime is up here. If you watch the news day after day after day, it's going to ingrain that negative thought pattern.

But if you're— and same thing if you're listening to music about this person shot this person, this person had sex with this person, none of those are empowering. Those are all negative.

You're listening to the average thing that you're listening to on the radio and the news channel, the things that people watch the most or that you're reading about online, the news articles, you're going to have that 80% negative thoughts, 95% repeated day after day after day. But if you say to yourself, you know what? I'm going to be different. I want to reach my full potential. I want to grow.

I want to do things that matter in this life. You need to retrain your brain. And so, you're going to say, okay, Here are 5 podcasts that I'm going to listen to on a regular basis to feed my mind. I'm going to pick some, you know, I'm going to listen to the Growth Podcast. I'm going to listen to Ed Mylett. I'm going to listen to Tony Robbins. I'm going to listen to, you know, Jamie Kern Lima.

I'm going to listen to Andrew Huberman on how, like, I'm going to listen to these people on a regular basis and grow my mind. There's a study done, and this is at Penn University, at the Ivy League school, University of Penn. And, and they did a study at their, their Center of Positive Psychology.

And they said that for the, for, for most people, most people have 3 primary primal beliefs about the world. Okay? They believe that either the world is safe or dangerous, that the world is exciting or dull, and that the world is alive or mechanistic.

You know, I would even say people might also believe that the world is material or spiritual, but, but what you believe about these things matters immensely. So think about this. If your belief about the world is all, all there is to life is the here and now. Okay.

And you're, you're, you're more mechanistic and materialistic that, you know, what we have here in life, this is all we have and there's no afterlife and there is no God, or there might be, but what, you know, but, but you don't really fully believe that. Okay?

If you believe that, then you're gonna probably do everything you can to just live happily and just have your best life here on earth right now, in terms of your own self-fulfillment. But if you believe what many world changers believe, like Mother Teresa, of course, you know, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., they believe there is an afterlife.

And so if you believe, your, your belief is, No, I've got, I'm gonna go on and live for eternity. What you do in this world right now is radically different, right? And so you can see here where there is a limiting belief. Again, a limiting belief is anything that limits you growing in character and skill and doing the greatest good in the world.

You turning the world into a heavenly place, you loving people, you leaving a legacy to where when you're gone, people said, this person had such a positive impact. On people in this world, right? So you can see where if you believe, well, this world right now is about my own happiness, making myself happy, and it's temporary.

If you believe that versus, no, the, my life is all about, you know, honoring God and loving people and leaving a legacy and doing stuff, you know, doing things that will echo throughout eternity. These are very, very different belief systems. And so what you want to do is you want to look at your beliefs and say, What's the most empowering belief system?

What's the belief system that's going to cause me to have the greatest sense of identity and purpose and meaning in my life? That's how you want to think about it. So think about this too. The world is safe or dangerous. You know, I read a study, by the way, this guy is an incredible professor. He's from NYU. His name's Jonathan Hand, and he wrote a book called The Coddling of the American Mind.

And he goes through and he talks about mental health with this. And he said, in success.

And he said, the people that have the best mental health and the greatest level of success, one of the qualities of them growing up was their parents let them run around the neighborhood and gave them a level of sort of freedom and autonomy versus kind of keeping them safe in a cage and watching their every move, right?

So, when I was growing up, which was in the, you know, '80s and '90s, I graduated high school in 2000, but I grew up mostly, I'm, I'm a '90s music guy. I love the '90s. And like in my neighborhood, my parents would— I would get home from school and I would show up at maybe dinnertime, you know, when it was dark out, I'd finally get home.

But we would run around, we'd play games, we'd play football and basketball, just all— I mean, I'll run our entire neighborhood. The neighborhood I was in was in Troy, Ohio, this little neighborhood called Marymount. And I had such an incredible childhood.

And I remember, thinking, you know, it just, it gave me a level of sort of, so when I would go to different places, I just, I felt a level of empowerment and freedom and capability. Well, what's happened, a lot of parents today get overprotective and listen, there are real threats out there.

I mean, if, if you, if you watch the movie like The Sound of Freedom and you realize that there are some evil people in this world, there are people that are responsible for, for sex trafficking and a number of things, right?

So, so, so, so there, that there are dangers in this world, but if you believe that your neighborhood is dangerous or safe— now listen, I'm not condoning that, hey, if you live in a really dangerous neighborhood, you tell your kids, hey, when you get home from school, just show up, you know, sometime a little bit after dark. I'm not saying that.

But the point of the study was like my parents believe, hey, our neighborhood's pretty safe. And we may check in on Josh here or there, but, you know, we're making sure he's around a lot of other good kids and families. And he's running around, he has freedom.

And we, you know, but according to the studies, it creates better mental health and success later on in life if you're able to give your kids a sense of autonomy and run around the neighborhood in that way. My point is, is that your beliefs about things matter. Now, I do want to say this. You don't want to live in a fantasy world, right? So let me give you an example of this.

Like, I believe that I am smart and intelligent and, you know, so I believe that. However, I don't believe that I'm innovative, as innovative as Elon Musk. I don't necessarily believe that.

So you do want to have a level of reality of not thinking, you know, you don't want to be narcissistic and you don't want to be unrealistic in thinking you're the greatest person of all time and you're capable of anything. You could be a professional soccer player, and basketball player and, you know, start the next electric car company. That's what— like, you also want to be realistic.

So, I want to be clear about that. But you want to be able to stretch yourself and think beyond what you even think you're capable of. And then you want to go for that and you want to try and achieve that. That's the way you should be thinking about it. The other thing here, you think about this, I want to hit on these other primal beliefs.

And I got a couple stories that are amazing I want to share with you. Think about the world as enticing or dull. One of my favorite philosophers is a man named Abraham Joshua Heschel. And he has some quotes that are just amazing that basically say, you know, if you want to live the most meaningful life possible, you have to live in a state of awe and wonder.

If you just believe the world is dull and boring, and I'd rather be here on my phone, and, you know, I'd rather spend time doing that, or you believe that people are dull or boring, or if that's your belief system on something, you're not going to have meaningful relationships. Like you're not going to live, you know, if basically dull means meaningless, meaningless.

It's a form of, or lead, can lead to nihilism to where, you know what, nothing really matters. Everything is kind of dull or boring. If that's your belief system about things, you're gonna be miserable and you're not gonna do things that are meaningful. And so, all of us should live in this state of constant wonder.

You know, I have a 3-year-old right now, and if, if you have little kids or you've had them, or you've had nieces or nephews, or, you know, it is such a joy to be around them. Like my daughter, like she, you know, she'll pick a leaf off of a tree and stare at it.

And like we ran down the beach this morning, we spent time between Nashville and Puerto Rico and, and we were, we were down there and, uh, you know, she picked up this little shell and she's like, look, dad, you know, look, daddy. And like, she's just, I mean, she's just in total awe and wonder and living in this state of just joy. We should all live in that state.

You know, when I, when I look at the greatest creators of all time, Many of them live in that state. You know, when you read up on someone like Michelangelo who painted the Sistine Chapel, you'll read about them that he lived in a state of just awe and wonder of the world and God's creation. That's how you want to go through this world.

I want to give you another example of this, these limiting versus empowering beliefs. Because, and by the way, you can see this, right? If somebody believes the world, people are dull and the world is dull, you're going to treat them like they're dull. But if you have a, if you're in a conversation with somebody and you believe, wow, people are exciting, they're interesting.

Wow, I'm just blown away by, you know, human beings. And you get in a conversation with somebody and you, you're like that and you believe that about each other. What sparks start flying? Ideas, meaning, things that matter. But if you don't believe that, it's gonna lead to a dull life. And the last one here is the world is alive or mechanistic.

Here's another one for you that can feed off of this one. The world is materialistic or spiritual, or everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle. Let me share a story with you. My wife, Chelsea, yesterday, we're in a position right now, kind of a challenging season with one of my businesses, and we have some really big decisions coming up.

And my business partner, about a year and a half ago, we were together and we had a meeting We, we have a regular board of directors for our board, and we actually have another board of people that we have that are more, I'll call them, uh, sort of, um, very high in character and wisdom and even, even, even spirituality. And so Jordan and I, my business partner, we get wisdom from some of these.

It's a group of, um, pastors and theologians and, and people that just have a lot of life wisdom. And so Jordan and I said, you know what, we want to be able to be influenced by this group of people. And so, after we met with them, Jordan goes home and he starts cracking. He's never done this before, but he starts cracking double egg yolks. So, he's cracking eggs and he keeps getting double yolks.

He gets over 100 over the next few days. I wanna say it was like 144 or something like that, but it was, it was an incredible amount over the next few months. And then they just, and then they stopped and we didn't, and then he didn't have really many for, for, for a long time.

Well, my wife and I, the past week, all of a sudden my wife has cracked about 12 double yolk, like, like started cracking yolks. And we're in the midst right now that, that was like a big business decision. And this one was here, here's, here's my point with that. What do you think that is? Let me ask you that. Would you look at that and say that is just sheer coincidence, these double egg yolks?

Or are you the type of person that says there's some sort of divine sign here? You, you need to think about this or pray or meditate upon it or look into it. Now, some of you might think I'm crazy for saying that, but what is the more empowering belief? That nothing is a miracle or that everything is a miracle?

That everything is just flesh and bones and material, or that there is a spiritual and divine nature to things? What's more empowering? What's going to lead you to live a greater life? There's a quote by the great C.S. Lewis who said, the people that thought most about the next life, Did the most in this present life. So think about that.

The people that thought most about the afterlife and eternity and those things did the most, accomplished the most in this life. You know, when you read on again, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, these people, even in recent, you know, past 100 years, you'll see that to be true.

So ask yourself this: What are the limiting beliefs you have about yourself, about others, and about the world? There's a study published not too long ago in the Journal of Positive Psychology, and they found that many parents. Purposely aim to instill in their children primal worldviews that the world is dangerous and not a good place, right?

And basically what they found is, and here's the quote, they said, those who set up the world as dangerous and believe inherently it's just dangerous, that's the world, the nature of it, they tend to have worse health, be lower in financial success, and experience higher rates of Depression. So if you're a parent, you're like, listen, the world is inherently evil. There's bad people everywhere.

Versus here, here's another take. People are inherently good. They've just been corrupted, but they're redeemable, right? Think about the movie Star Wars, one of my all-time favorite movies, when Luke is confronting his father, who's Darth Vader, and he's like, there's still good in you. I sense it. I feel it. Right?

How would the movie have turned out if he was like, my dad's bad, he's lost, he's gone. The world is corrupt. The whole world, everybody's corrupt. No, he's like, no, there's still good in you. That belief you have about people, it matters.

There's a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist named Daniel Kahneman, and he says this, whether you believe you are great or terrible, you'll find evidence to support it. And so that's the thing is what you seek out, you will find. And so you've got to realize that if you, if you want to believe that someone's bad, you'll find evidence to find they're bad.

If you want to believe they're good, you'll find evidence that they're good. You want to find as much truth as possible should be your— an understanding most people are good or bad. I want to, I want to see, I want to give an example of how I've seen the narrative play out about our founding fathers of America and how this works.

If you're a person that believes most people are inherently evil, And you think about our founding fathers, let's say, let's just use George Washington, the most famous, as an example. You know, and you believe he's evil, you're gonna be able to read eventually and find out that he had slaves. We see this on the left politically right now that, you know what, he's the most evil.

He is an incredibly evil being. We should tear down every statue of him that was ever created. And then you might have somebody on the right who idolizes him and says, he's a perfect being. He's right next to Jesus, right? He's this perfect being. He's never made a mistake. I think when you look, and by the way, I have read books on George Washington and read a lot up on him.

My mindset going in is, what's the truth about George Washington? And here's my belief as well, even before I think about George Washington, my belief is that people were made inherently good in the image of God, this good thing. But everyone has a sense of and a level of corruption that they're trying to break free of, but all people are redeemable. So that's my mindset.

So going with George Washington, I believe, you know what, when I, when I read up on all of his great deeds, let's, let's say they're like a 99 out of 100. And then we have this thing, slavery. And by the way, with slavery in general, you then also read about how it was, it was, it was worldwide and how also how he treated his slaves.

And by the way, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm wading into uh, controversial waters here, but I'm just going through how somebody might think about this. And, and you know that, you know what, that wasn't right. That, that was a, that was a transgression, a sin, an iniquity on his part.

You know, I, I think we need to think about people in a real manner of thinking about, okay, looking at the good in people and the bad and, and weighing those out. My point here about a belief system is if you believe that everyone is absolutely perfect, you're naive and you're going to be taken advantage of.

If you believe everyone is evil, you're going to treat them as evil and you're even going to believe yourself as evil. And that's going to lead to the worst place of all.

And so ultimately, I think when we think about what belief is going to yield the best outcome for all of humanity, well, I think if all humanity believes that they're made in the image of God, they're divine, they're eternal, they have the ability to be redeemed, to do great things, even if they've made mistakes, and that we should live with a level of grace For people, that's an empowering belief system right there.

That's the greatest belief system in terms of how we should view people, right? Like, like we live in this world today of cancel culture. Let's cancel everyone that makes a single mistake. You know the story of like, when you look at the story of like the Judeo-Christian belief system, it's all about, you probably hear the word grace all the time.

If any of you ever went to any sort of thing spiritual or church or any of that, But it's anti-cancel culture. It's no matter what you've done, you're redeemable and you're forgiven. Not that there's not consequences. There are consequences for your actions that hurt someone else, but you're redeemable no matter what, versus you're canceled forever. You're never forgiven. You're gone.

We're looking to destroy your reputation and your life. What's a more empowering belief system? One single mistake, you should be canceled forever. Or there's grace. People make mistakes. There's consequences for your actions, but you're forgiven. Think about what is your mindset and your belief system about canceling people or forgiving people.

I think you know which one is gonna lead to a better place in life for all of humanity and for yourself. There's a study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science that found that about 70% of individuals experience imposter syndrome. At some point in their life, imposter syndrome is a persistent feeling of self-doubt and inadequacy despite evidence of competence.

By the way, I was watching an interview recently between Chris Williamson and Jordan Peterson, and Chris Williamson said, hey, how, you know, how do people deal with that imposter syndrome? And one of the things Jordan Peterson, who's a behavioral psychologist from Harvard and University of Toronto, who this is his expertise, his main area.

And he said, everyone experiences imposter syndrome at some point. That, I think that's one of the things. And I was doing a call with somebody recently. This was a doctor who is very successful. And he said, and he said to me, he said, you know, sometimes I, I have a sense of imposter syndrome. And I said, well, that's okay. So do I. So does everyone.

And I, I, I could tell it was like a, a relief to him to hear that Oh, I'm not the only person that feels this way. A lot of people feel this way. And he realized this is just a normal feeling when you're, when you're starting something new. Listen, anytime you're new to something or you haven't navigated something, you may have some experience, some self-doubt.

I wanna give you an example of this. So, you know, when I ran a full-time, before I was a doctor and ran a full-time clinic, I had some self-doubt. Like, okay, I wasn't a doctor. Now all of a sudden I'm a doctor and treating people. Anytime someone's a new doctor, every doctor of all time, probably at the very first year of practice. Felt a level of imposter syndrome. It was so new.

When I then went from then to running an online business and supplement company, draxe.com, I felt a little of like, who am I to be the CEO of a company?

Like, I don't— and then later on when I started a company, Ancient Nutrition, that was now in the retail space, and I was going to meetings with Target and Whole Foods Market and Sprouts, and, you know, I'm like, I had a little bit of, this is my first time going into a meeting and presenting our products and getting in here. So listen, everybody experiences imposter syndrome.

That's the first thing to know is that if you have some of these beliefs or thoughts, it can be normal. But then you need to go and focus on not all of your deficiencies, but what are your strengths? Why should someone listen to you? What, what are the things that you have that you're, that you're able to bring some of those positives?

And so that's the way that you should think about some of this. There's a study published in Frontiers, uh, it's a psychology journal, And they found that brooding and self-doubt lead to low self-esteem and lower psychological wellbeing.

And so if you're constantly brooding on, on yourself and your inadequacies constantly, it's gonna hurt your self-esteem versus focusing on what are your unique gifts and skills. Now, by the way, if you have a weakness, you should consider it and think about how do I get that better or manage around it?

But you should spend more time focusing on your strengths, your gifts, your talents, and how to grow those and excel in those areas. So I'm gonna go through right now, How to overcome limiting beliefs and how to identify them. There was a psychologist, his name was Albert Ellis, and he's a Yale psychologist. And I love how he learned and came up with this acronym for overcoming limiting beliefs.

It's ABCDE. Okay? So, this is how you overcome limiting beliefs. But when he was a psychology student, he was incredibly afraid of women. And so, he said, okay, because at one point, he went up to a woman and had them— and had a woman just turn him down. And so, he just became so afraid of approaching women, but he was a psychology major and he said, I want to overcome being afraid of women.

I want to be able to approach women and have a good relationship with women and get married one day. And so, he decided, he said, okay, well, I have this memory of getting turned down. He said, okay, so, so, so he said, the first thing I need to do is I need to activate an event or memory.

So he went back this belief and he said, okay, I realize that I'm being, I was denied here in this relationship. And then he said, okay, what is my limiting belief here? And for him it was that I'm not desirable. Okay. That was, that was the exact word. He was like, I'm not, I'm not desirable. And then he said, okay, what are the consequences of me believing I'm not desirable?

Well, then I'm not even gonna try to initiate a relationship with a woman if I don't feel like I'm desirable to any woman at all. So then he, so, so, so it's activating that memory. It's belief. What is that limiting belief you have? That's B. C is what are the consequences? D is disputation, which is you need to dispute the limiting belief and come up with a more rational approach.

And so for him it was, you know what, I did have a relationship with a woman in high school. Um, you know, I, I have had someone tell me I'm attractive once before. I, I generally have had somebody tell me they like the color of my eyes. And so he, he went through and said, you know what, I, I am desirable. And specifically in these areas, he wrote out the areas.

He also wrote down, I'm, I'm, I'm at Yale. I'm gonna be financially successful. I'm a psycho— I'm about to be a psychologist. I mean, he wrote down all these things that, that, that then disputed the belief that he wasn't desirable. And he said, No, I am desirable. So then E is effect. So the limiting belief has turned into a rational belief and has a healthier and more positive outcome.

So you want to do this with yourself. By the way, I did this with Mrs. Norvell. Okay? So I went back and replayed this limiting belief when she told me I wasn't smart or that I wasn't going to get into college or be a doctor or get a good grade. So I activated that belief and then I said, Okay, what is the limiting belief formed from? And what is that belief exactly? Okay, it's I'm not smart.

That was the belief. The consequence is, well, I'm not even going to try in class. I'll fail in class. I can't succeed. And so that's the consequence. And then I said, disputation. Here are all the reasons it's not true. Mrs. Williams told me I'm smart. I did get a good grade on this one project. I, you know, I list out all the things. And then I start I replay it.

And you could even turn this into an affirmation of writing down, you know, all of your positive qualities and look at it and meditate on that every day. Post it, you know, print it out and post it on your bathroom mirror. But overcoming limiting beliefs is as easy as A, B, C, D, E. Remember, activate the event or memory when it happened. B for belief.

What is the exact thing that you believe that's limiting you? C, what are the consequences of this belief? D, disputation. So dispute the belief and write down what is the truth. And E, the effect. Write down what's the positive thing that's going to happen by you, by creating this new empowering belief and meditate on it daily. If you can do that, you're going to overcome limiting beliefs.

I want you to think about something right now. Think about your biggest limiting beliefs or where you're stuck at most in life. Okay? So, you have something, maybe it's a really bad relationship, maybe it's something going on in your career, maybe it's a relationship with your kids or your parents or you, whatever it might be, finances, career, whatever.

Write down, what are your top 2 to 3, what are your top 2 limiting beliefs? Number 1 and number 2. If you keep believing those things, what's the worst thing that can happen? I want to do this for myself. If I think back and I believed for my whole life that I wasn't smart, if I would've believed what Mrs. Norvell said, I may not even have gone to college.

I wouldn't have started these businesses I'm in. I wouldn't have married my wife that I have now because she's a doctor and I met her because she came to visit my clinic. I mean, there are so many things that wouldn't have happened. Now, if I still have the limiting belief that people just don't change, people are set in the way they are.

You know, and if I think about, okay, I believe everyone's the same and I kind of go down that path of believing that, or I believe that the world is inherently evil, you wanna think about what is the worst that can happen if I continue with this negative belief system that money is evil?

Okay, well, I'm gonna be poor and the people around me and my kids and future generations are probably gonna be in poverty and maybe homeless one day and a number of things. So, so that you wanna play that out or think about what's at stake here. If you do change or you don't change that belief you have. And so, you want to take— this is the exercise.

You take what are your top 2 limiting beliefs, and now you go through the ABCD exercise and you recognize what's the negative belief. And simply, if we're just doing 2 steps, what's the new empowering belief you're going to meditate on and believe? You know, Chris Pratt, one of my favorite actors, almost wasn't the star of Guardians of the Galaxy.

So Chris Pratt was, he had major limiting beliefs about himself. He was part of a TV series called Parks and Rec. During that time, he weighed almost 300 pounds. And his agent came to him and said, hey, there's a really great opportunity for you to play this role as Star-Lord for a Marvel movie, Guardians of the Galaxy. And it'd be your biggest payday ever. It'd be an incredible role.

And Pratt refused to go. He just wouldn't even go and show up. The reason is, is he had gone to a try out before for the G.I. Joe movie. And when he was in there acting it out, he could tell halfway through the director just rolled his eyes and basically said something to the person next to him like, this guy's way too— like, this guy is not a superhero.

So, Chris Pratt went through and he said his limiting belief was, I don't have a superhero body. I'm not the superhero type. Well, finally, his agent said, you're going and you can be the superhero type. So he said, okay. So then he went, he met with James Gunn, the director. They really hit it off. And then Gunn said, listen, you're going to have to get in shape. So Pratt then went for 6 months.

Over the 6-month period, he lost 60 pounds, got absolutely ripped. And not only now, and he thought himself, I'm just going to always play the fat character in comedies. And that's That's who I am. Well, since then, he's now become, you know, one of the leading stars in these Marvel movies playing a superhero. He's played a dinosaur trainer. He's played a Navy SEAL.

He's played the hero in so many roles. Think about Chris Pratt if he kept holding onto that limiting belief that I'm just the fat comedy guy versus, no, I'm the hero. And so, there are roles for you in life right now that you are not getting Because you believe something negative about yourself that you're not capable of. And the reality is most likely you are.

We have great potential to grow and change. And I'm doing an episode soon on the growth mindset, which is the mindset you have to have, like Chris Pratt's employed. I mentioned David Goggins and others, that if you embrace this mindset, it's the mindset that allows you to break through. It's the ability to know that I can grow. Tremendously, I can change and so can other people.

That's the mindset you want to have. Tony Robbins says, self-doubt is fear in disguise. Once you identify those fears, now you can fight back. And so you want to be able to first recognize what are those limiting beliefs? What are those self-doubts holding you back? And then take action to replace those. You know, there's a woman I greatly admire. Her name's Jamie Kern Lima.

In her book, she talks about she had 2 major self-doubts. About starting a cosmetic company. There were several. One was she believed that men could hold her back, like having a husband. She got in this world where all these women were saying, you know, you need to be a boss and you just don't need men in your life.

And you're worse off if you're, you know, you want to, you want to be single your whole life and become a big-time CEO. And so she had this limiting belief about men. And then she also had a limiting belief about just self-doubt in herself. You know, she saw her own signs of unworthiness and weakness and inadequacy. In fact, I think she has a new book coming out called Worthy.

And, and also she had these major skin issues. And, and so, you know, she had these feelings of like, of, of her, of her, of her skin, these self-doubts around herself. But she decided, you know what, like, I'm gonna start this IT cosmetic company. And also she started, she started, she met a man and she started believing, you know what, having a man in my life could actually make things better.

And so she ended up getting married and she, she has an incredible relationship now with her husband who's actually helped her grow the business. So it's actually been more synergistic to her growth. She started this cosmetic company. You guys are, some of you are familiar, IT Cosmetics, which sold for over $1 billion. And so she built a billion-dollar unicorn company.

And think about if she didn't overcome her self-doubt, if she wasn't willing to confront the limiting belief that men are worthless or confront the limiting belief about her own complexions and capabilities and her own worthiness.

You have limiting beliefs as well that are holding you back and you want to confront and become aware of what are those limiting beliefs and what are the things, what are the beliefs that are the most empowering for you? So remember this, you tend to have limiting beliefs about yourself, about others, and about the world.

Go and write down the things that you believe most about yourself, about others in the world. Write down those limiting beliefs in all those, those 3 categories. And you might even add another category of God down there. So that could be another person, but it's, you know, there, there is cat— another category there.

What are those limiting beliefs you have or negative beliefs you have about yourself and those other categories? Then write down the new empowering beliefs, type those out, print 'em out, put 'em on your bathroom mirror and look at those every day. Your life will change because of it. I know that my life changed radically because I created new empowering beliefs.

By the way, hey, I want to just thank you to everybody. I know a lot of people have subscribed to the podcast already. I've seen a lot of people, and when I say I am so grateful for all of you who are sharing this podcast, think about someone you know who could really benefit from overcoming their limiting beliefs.

You know, just send them a text message of, hey, you need to listen to the episode of this podcast. I think it'll improve your life. You know, just text it to 1, 5, 10 people, maybe a group chat, and let people know about the podcast here. You know, it's relatively new.

We're trying to get the word out here and empower people, helping people understand more about their worthiness, helping them build a more powerful mindset. I want to again just say thanks to everybody here for tuning in to the Growth Lab podcast.

Remember, every week I'm dedicated to helping you grow yourself, your health, your wealth, and also grow in your career, your relationships, and living the best life possible. Again, thank you for subscribing and sharing, and I'll see you next week on the show.