Episode 119: Building Belief

Episode Summary

Today’s episode was created and inspired by the thoughts and beliefs in my mind - at the gym. I noticed how many similarities there are between what we try to accomplish in the gym and the work we do to cultivate new beliefs in our minds. There are a lot of powerful comparisons when you think about it.

Whatever beliefs you’re trying to use to create new results in your life, you have to build them like you have to build anything else. Like building muscles, building strength, building stamina. Because when we decide to build new beliefs, it’s supposed to be hard. It takes effort.

I want to share some of the lessons I have learned through strength-training my body to help you build belief and strength for yourself mentally. And even if you don’t like going to the gym or working out or exercising at all, this episode will still help you build your beliefs.

Episode Transcript

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price, you might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome!

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to episode 119 of the 100% Awesome Podcast, I'm April Price, and I want to welcome you to the podcast, and to Fall. Actually, I mean, I know it's like about a billion degrees where I live, so it's still sort of summer, but school officially started for us this weekend. So, I always feel like, okay must we fall. My son, my youngest son started his senior year this this week and I can hardly believe it. My mind just keeps going to the like moments when he used to toddle with me down to the bus stop, and we used to watch everybody else climb the bus, and all his brothers and sisters climb the bus. And he was standing there just watching them, crying because he wanted to go with them. And now here he is, the last year. It's kind of amazing to me, and it just made me think about just like how fast life really is, right? Like, it just seems to go so quickly. And yet at the same time, that really does seem like ages and ages ago. Like there is just so much life that has happened between then and now.

And I think often when we are trying to do things differently in our lives, change our lives, our brain will tell us, well, like we don't have enough time. But really, we have so much time, like so much time has passed in those years as he's grown up and there are so many years left in my future, right? There's so much life left to live, and so there's never not enough time to change, and create what you want in your life. And then at the same time, like this morning, like I said, I'm just reminded, like, how precious and quick life is. We're going to get one shot at this, and it's precious, and we don't have time to waste, right? Stop telling yourself like I will do it later, like right now is the time to make the changes you want. Because they add up. They add up over time. And those choices are what are going to create a life that you love. So, for whatever it's worth, just remember that like you have time to change, but also you don't have time to waste. I love that thought.

And as you think about making the most of your time here on Earth, I really want you to think about like it's so important the way that you think about yourself in your life. We spend a lot of time wishing that it was different, wishing that it could be different. We tell ourselves it should be different, right? And we say the same things about us, that we should be different, and we wish we were different. And we spent a lot of our lives like wishing for a different version to come along, right? And I want you to know that you can have that. You totally can create another version, but I also want you to know that you can love where you are along the way, and you don't have to hate where you are right now. You don't have to hate who you are, and and what your life looks like right now in order to get there, in order to make the changes you want, you get to love yourself in your life right now as you are. You do not have to wait for that. And when you do that, it's so much easier to create more of what you want.

4:00
So, I think a lot of times we think like, well, if I just if I love where I'm at, I'm never going to change. But it's just not true. And in fact, like hating where we are never really works. And I would offer you that if you've been trying it that way, like you can look around and you can notice, like it's not really working to hate yourself and your life, right? It's not changing things that never worked for me. Like, I promise you, nobody hated themselves more than I did. And it never changed anything. I never, like created anything different. I just kept wishing that I could be some other version of me. And so, I just want you to know that that isn't the way. That the way is through love, that the way is through acceptance, that the way is through embracing all of you, and your life, and from there creating whatever change you want.

So, I am teaching a class on this at the end of the month on August 26th. It's called How to Love Yourself, and Your Life. It's going to be amazing. And you can get registered for that at my website aprilpricecoaching.com. If you click on the link there, you can get registered for the class, and we will send you the link for it. If you can't make the class live, you will get the replay. But I really think it will change your perspective on how loving you, and loving your life is the key to creating anything else in your life, okay? So, join me for that class.

Okay, you guys onto today's episode. So, today's episode was totally inspired, and created in my mind the other day at the gym, so I do a lot of thinking at the gym, I do a lot of processing emotion at the gym. It's quite the experience. But as I was going through my workout the other day, I noticed, like, wow, there are so many similarities here between like what I'm trying to accomplish in the gym, and what I'm trying to accomplish, like with my goals at the gym, and also there's a lot of similarities between that work that I'm doing to cultivate new beliefs in my mind. Like I'm always trying to expand and grow my beliefs in my mind, much the same way I'm trying to expand and grow my muscles and my strength. And so, I had this moment where I just saw all these powerful comparisons. And there are a lot of really good instructive metaphors and examples that we can use as we are trying to build our belief.

Building belief, whatever it is you want to believe about you, and your life, whatever beliefs you're trying to incorporate, and use to create results in your life. Those beliefs, we have to build them like we build anything else in our lives, right? It's like building muscle. It's like building stamina. It's like building strength. It's like building my house. Right now we're in a reconstruction process and it's like one step at a time, right? And there is work involved. There is work involved in building belief. And so I want to talk about some of these lessons that I've learned doing the work, you know, on my muscles to help you build belief, and strength, in your ability to believe new things in your mental capacity, okay? So, even if you don't like going to the gym, or working out, or exercising or even going on long walks, I think this episode will help you build your beliefs, okay? We're just using these things as metaphors.

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Okay so really, this is a question that I get asked a lot actually like, but April how do I believe new things? Like I know I need to I know my thoughts, create my results, but how do I do that, right? How do I build new beliefs? How do I strengthen the beliefs that I want to have so that I can create what I want in my life? So that is where we're going to be talking about today. So, the first thing that I want you to know is that it is supposed to be a struggle, okay? When we go to build new beliefs, it is supposed to be hard. I think a lot of times we think like belief somehow it feels like it should be easy, it feels like, okay I just swap a thought, how hard could that be, right? It just seems like it should be so easy. And then when it's hard, we're like, why isn't this working? Maybe the thought isn't true. Maybe this is all nonsense, right?

And so, I think it's really important to remember, first of all, that it is supposed to be a struggle, right? Like, I never pick up a weight expecting it to be like super light. I never pick up thinking like I hope these, you know, ten reps are really super easy because what would be the point of that, right? Like, I can find weights in the gym that are super easy. But what would be the point? The point of that is just like counting to ten, right? Like no growth happened. Like I actually am looking for, I'm looking to pick a weight in which there is struggle. When I get to the end of that range, I want there to be struggle, otherwise, I know the weight is too light. So, if the belief is easy, it's because you already have the capacity for that belief. And so, it's just like, yeah, you could believe that, and you can continue to believe it, but like you aren't growing in any way there.

So, that's first like you want it to be a struggle that indicates that, like that is your next level of growth. That is where you need to put in the work. And the fact that it is a struggle means that it's like worthy of your time, and attention, and effort, just like in the weight room. Like if you pick a way in which there is no struggle, that wasn't worth the time you spent to lift it, okay? It's the same with our thoughts. So, when your brain is like this is too hard, these thoughts shouldn't be this hard, like maybe this just isn't true for me. Like all of that is nonsense, it is supposed to be hard, okay? That's first.

9:51
Okay second, when it comes to building belief, we need to have a specific goal, something we are specifically trying to believe, okay? So, I have this friend at church, and like he knows that I go to the gym a lot and he sometimes he asks me, like, what goal are you working on right now? And I remember the first time he asked me this question and he was like, well, what's your goal right now? And I was like, what do you mean? It's like, oh, what are you working towards? And I was like, I just go to the gym. Like, I thought the whole point was just show up at the gym. Like, I never thought, like I should have a specific goal, I should have a specific objective that I'm like a reason that I'm showing up here, right? And I think the same thing can happen to us when we're thinking about belief work. We're just like trying to believe all the things, and try to incorporate all the thoughts instead of like being really specific. And like, right now I am working on believing this thing, and it is out of my range, but I am working on it, right?

So, I think it's we sometimes are like scared to say what we're trying to do, because it like feels like, oh, if I say it, and I don't get there, then there might be some sense of failure, right? Like, I'll give you an example. At the beginning of the year, I had this goal. I'm sure that I talked about it on the podcast, but my goal was that I want to be able to lift 300 pounds over three lifts between the back squat, the chest press, and the deadlift. I want to be like lift a combined total of 300 pounds. And so, all year I've been sort of like working towards this goal. But I remember when I first set it, like my coach asked me, okay what are your goals for the year? I was even embarrassed to tell her the goal because I was afraid that it was like, completely out of my capacity, right? Like completely out of my league, this weight, and so I was like, like really like shy about even telling her the goal, because I was like, this is really embarrassing, but this is what I think I want to be able to do. And you know, I was just afraid that she'd be like, you got to be kidding me, you're never going to get there, right? And I think sometimes the same thing is true of our beliefs.

Like we're scared to say, like, I want to believe this thing about myself. We're scared to say it out loud because we're like, I don't know if I have the capacity for that. I don't know if that's who I am. I don't even know if I dare say it out loud, okay? But we need to have a specific goal, and it's okay if it's way outside our range, we're just working towards it, okay? What I'm saying is like when we talk about building belief, it needs to be more than just like positive thinking, like generally positive thinking in our life, right? Like, it's more than that. We need to know exactly what we are trying to believe so that we can do the things we need to do to get there, okay?

So, I think it's really important that you decide like this month I'm working on this, for this six- months or this year, this is the belief I'm working on. And sometimes there are going to be moments where it feels really out of reach, like with my 300 pound goal, like there have been moments where I'm like I have made no progress in two months. I'm never going to get to 300 pounds. I can't see any progress here. And it's going to maybe feel like that, but it's okay. You just get to hold on to that goal. You need to know where you are going in order to, like, make the progress towards that other way. We're just like moving, right? But not actually moving towards the belief that we want. And just to go along with that, like when we have a specific thing that we're trying to believe that we can track our progress on that belief, right? Like when I got my goal at the beginning of the year, then I started paying attention to, like, how how much I was lifting, how many reps, and like, was that weight increasing? Was I moving towards something? So, if we have a specific thing we're trying to believe, then we can track our progress on that belief, okay? All right.

14:05
And then once, you know, okay this is supposed to be hard, and I have a very specific thing that I'm working on believing right now. The second thing that I want to offer you is that we're going to build our belief a little bit at a time. And so, in strength training, there's a concept called progressive overload. And progressive overload means that like your skeletal muscle gets bigger, and stronger as as you train it, right? Like as you put it under stress, and we have to, like, force those muscles to do more than they have done, more than they're accustomed to, okay? So, that they can adapt, and grow our muscle structure. Our body is not going to change unless it is forced to. And so, you have to kind of like push the boundaries of that adaptation. You're like progressively overloading the amount of weight that muscle has to move, and constantly increasing the demands on your muscle in order to increase the muscle size, and strength, and stamina, right?

So, the idea is that like over time, if you continue to like, ask that muscle to give more than, the muscle will adapt and it will get stronger and, like, it's the same principle when it comes to building our belief, right? Instead of thinking that we go from like zero belief to like a 100% like, it just doesn't happen that way. We have to progressively overload, and progress our beliefs by degrees, okay? So, I know that, like, it can feel really slow this way, right? And it feels like I'm not getting anywhere, and it's been the same way for me, and my 300 pound goal.

So, the reason why I was thinking about this is because last week I hit two PR's one on the back squat, and one on the chest press, which means like I lifted a weight that I had never lifted before. It was like bigger than I had ever lifted. And like for so long, I felt like I had been making no progress, right? But I'd continually been trying to overload those muscles, like increasing the reps, increasing the strength. And I want you to know that progressive overload isn't necessarily linear. Like it's not like you're like 70 this week, and then 75 next week, and then 80 next week. Like, it's not like that. Like sometimes you go forward, and back and forth and back, but you're progressively getting stronger. Like some weeks you're going to be at 75, and then you're going to have to tap back down to 70, and increase your reps. And then, you go back up a little bit, and now maybe you're going to be at 80 and then you kind of go up over time. But it's not necessarily like exactly linear and it's the same with our beliefs.

Sometimes our beliefs are going to, like we're going to feel like kind of solid where we are, and then we're going to backtrack a little bit, and you just increase your belief again. And you continually ask yourself to push the boundaries of what you believe about yourself, okay? So, I like to ask the question like, what is the next thing that I can believe? Like, what is the next step? What's just pushing this belief just a little bit farther so that I can eventually get to into full belief what I want to be, okay? Sometimes in coaching we call this ladder thoughts, where we're kind of laddering our way one step at a time to the belief that we want to have. So, like, I'll give you a little example.

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When I decided to change my beliefs about money, like my starting belief was I'm bad with money, right? Like, I am not an adult. I do not know what to do with money, and I am bad with money, right? Now, I can't go from there to like I have the most responsible, amazing person with money ever, like, I'm not going to be able to get there, right? I can't lift fifteen pounds, and go to 300 like that's just not going to work. So, what I do is ladder those thoughts, right? So, if I'm going to push that just a little bit farther instead of I'm bad with money, I can push that, and I can say to myself, I have never run out of money, right? Like it's possible I'm sort of good with money because I've never run out, right? Like, of course, there are moments when I didn't have any, but more always came, like I have never run out of money. So, I just like, step it up just a tiny bit like, okay I can believe that. And I work on that one, right? And then we can move into like we always have what we need, right? And then from there we live a life of so much abundance, like not only do we have what we need, but we live a life of so much abundance, right? And I stayed at that thought. We live a life of so much abundance for a long time, right? Because I would still get credit card bills, and I would look at those bills, and they would be huge, and I would be thinking, okay this is the time where I got to practice this belief. We live a life of so much abundance.

What I realized is like, we do. Like we have so much credit, right? That like we have an abundance of credit is pretty friggin amazing, okay? And so, just slowly over time, I could expand my beliefs about money. Eventually I got to like, I love money, I take care of my money, I'm good at creating money until I, you know, tell you can believe I'm good with money. And you just like your progressively overloading your beliefs. You can do this in any area of your life, right? And your relationships. You can move from hate to love one thought at a time, right? And it doesn't mean that the next thought, right? It doesn't mean that next thought is going to be easy or believable. It's not supposed to be, right? Again, we want it to be hard. We are progressively overloading our brain. It's going to be hard to lift it first. But that doesn't mean it's not true. It just means we have to practice at that new weight, until that thought feels easy, and then we can add some more. Okay so, I really want you to ask yourself, once you have your belief that you're working on you're working towards your specific goal, ask yourself, what can I believe this week, or this month, that I didn't believe last month? And we're just constantly, progressively overloading our beliefs, okay?

The next thing that I want to talk about is that comparison is ridiculous. Oh, yes. Like, when I first started lifting, like I would look around at all these other people, and like what they looked like, and the amount of weight that they could carry, and they could lift, and I would just be like, I am definitely doing something wrong, right? And I would tell my husband this every time we left the gym, like I was like, I am definitely doing something wrong because I don't look like those other people. But the thing is, like, they've been at it longer, and it literally doesn't matter like what somebody else's capacity to lift is, right? It only matters what mine is, and what I'm building, right? And in fact, when we compare what other people can believe, or what other people think, to where we are, it only diminishes us and our progress.

So, I still remember about six months into lifting weights like I had this moment, I still remember standing there at the gym, and I was shocked to realize, like everybody's muscles that I could see, like they were visible. Like my muscles, at that point, we're not even visible, they were still hidden under layers of fat. But I was like, whoa, wait a minute,every person's muscles that I can see, like they worked for those. Like up until that point, I sort of thought like it was just like a really cool, lucky genetic inheritance or something like or that like I got like the bad end of the deal, or I wasn't as capable, or I was like permanently deficient. My body just wasn't going to do what their bodies do. And I just realized, like, I had this moment where I was like, oh, like they have worked for that, and I haven't worked as much as they have, and so that's the only reason that I don't have the muscle they do, right? Like and what I want to offer you is that whatever anyone else has created in their life, they have created it, by the way, they think they have created it with their minds. And they have created it because of what they have worked to believe about themselves, what they have worked to believe about what they can create, and their capacity, right?

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And it is work, but I don't think that should ever be discouraging, right? Because wherever anyone else is in their belief, what they've created, they have created that with their minds, and that means that you are capable of it, too, right? They aren't special, they are not genetically endowed with special belief powers, like they have worked for them, which means like you can have the same thing if you're willing to put in the work. Like, it's really good news. If they have worked, and they have gotten there, I can too. Like it's proof all around you all the time that it is possible. And instead of comparing yourself, I, I really want you to encourage you to simply like decide like the only comparison is like my own progress here, I want to be continually strengthening my own beliefs.

So, I was just talking to a client this morning and she was saying, like, I just think it's easier for some people. But we all have moments like this, right? But I promise you that it isn't. It isn't any easier for other people to believe. If they have more capacity, and ability to believe it is because they have worked for it. And the really good news is that means you have the same capacity, okay? All right.

Number five, the fifth thing that I will say is that having a coach makes a difference. Okay so, I personally love having a coach in the gym. I love having a coach for my brain, right? But just like so that you can kind of understand, like at the gym, how my coach helps me is she gives me suggested rep ranges, right? She's like, I think this many reps, and like this is what you need to know about form. These are the cues that you need to be thinking about as you do it. Sometimes, like when I'm at the gym, it's nice to have a spotter there as I go to a new weight, somebody who can, like, catch me if it doesn't go the way I want it to. And that's what a coach can do for you. And that's what a coach does for us in our belief work, right? They show us. They give us cues in our thinking. They show us where like maybe our form isn't quite right. And where we're making it harder for ourselves than we need to. My coach shows me where my thoughts are holding me back, and where I need to, like, release my resistance so that I can get the most traction with that thought, right? And that perspective is so invaluable. And it also helps me like when I get discouraged on my goals, like she's like, you're right on track. You are right there almost ready for that next, you know, bump in weight. And she never gets discouraged with where I'm at. And no matter what, I'm trying to believe my coach has no problem believing it. Just like so amazing to be able to see her belief in it. And I'm like, okay like, it is possible, she believes it. And I work towards what she's, like, encouraging me to get to.

Okay, the sixth thing that I want to talk about is like breaking the movement, or the belief down into parts, okay? So, sometimes when you are working on like a specific lift or something at the gym, and you want to increase your strength in it, but you just can't move up in strength, sometimes what we do is we work on different parts of the movement, right? Like at the bottom of the movement, or the negative part of the movement, like the eccentric part of the movement, or the top of the movement, right? Like you need different muscles to come into play at different parts of the move, right? So, the muscle can get stronger, and we can lift more when we go back to the full movement. Okay, so I think this is really important in belief work as well. And you want to kind of think about the main belief that you're working towards, right? The goal belief has a whole bunch of supporting beliefs around it, right? Like if if the main belief is a tabletop, for example, you have all these legs that support the tabletop, and you can work on all the supporting beliefs, and that will increase your capacity to believe the the main belief that you're working on.

So, I'll just give you a little example. I've been working the last couple of months on a belief in in my coaching practice, in my business, and it was like really far out of my comfort zone. I had this revenue goal. I wanted to believe that I could, you know, hit this new point in my revenue and like, it was like probably double what I had ever done before, okay? And when I was struggling to kind of like get my mind around that, and believe that, my coach really talked to me about, like, breaking that belief down into like other parts, other other movements of other beliefs that could strengthen that one, right? And so, I broke it down into different areas, right? Like, first of all, what do I believe about my ability to create results in general in my life? Right? Like what do I believe about my ability to create any results, right? Like not just in this revenue goal, but like my results in my life? What do I believe about my capacity to do that? What do I believe about my coaching? What do I believe about the value of my program? What do I believe about my clients? Like all of these beliefs are contributing to that main belief. And so when I can really, like, spent some time, like increasing the strength, and capacity of those little supporting beliefs, then my belief in the goal gets even easier, okay?

So, if there is something that you're trying to believe, what are the supporting beliefs that you need to believe about it? Like, let's say you're trying to increase your beliefs in a relationship, right? What are your beliefs about your ability to create the feelings you want? What are your beliefs about this other person? What are your beliefs about you in the relationship? What are your beliefs about the strength of the relationship? Like you can break it down into so many like smaller beliefs, and really increase your strength in those ones.

Okay the last one that I want to give you is the idea that you never have to give up. No matter how long it takes to believe something, and no matter how long it takes to like increase your capacity to believe something, you never have to give up on your work to believe it. Okay, like not only does my brain doubt my ability to create the result I want, like the three hundred pounds or the revenue, my brain also just doubts my ability to even believe in it. It's just like, no, sorry, like that one is out of reach, right? Like you can believe up to here, but no farther, right? And that's just not true, like we can always believe more. We can always like press our capacity to be even bigger, and stronger if we don't give up, if we are unwilling to give up.

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So, I've already told you guys like I'm such an Olympics addict, right? Like I love watching the Olympics. I love everything about it. I love watching the athletes, like, blow their own minds. And I love like their families. Oh, my gosh. I could just seriously watch the families, like, cheering them on all day long. Anyway, I just saw this meme the other day. You've probably seen it where it talked about Hidilyn Diaz from the Philippines, and she won the gold medal for women's weightlifting. You know, it showed this meme where it showed her in 2008 where she finished second to last, and then it showed her progress through the years, right? 2012, like she didn't even finish, 2016 she got the silver. And then, this year she got the gold, and it just showed her progress through the years, right? And you know, the thing is, like in 2008, like her belief was that like a certain point and she just kept at it. She kept at it. She kept believing, she kept working on that belief until her results lined up with her belief. And she just didn't give up. And you don't have to whatever it is you want to create in your life, there are no time limits like you get to just keep believing.

So many times, people are like, well, I've been working on it, it's just not working, it's not for me. And that's not the case. Anything you want to believe, anything you want to create, you can if you're willing to keep working at it. And I think actually you're going to be amazed as you start building the beliefs you want, how fast your life, and the results catch up with those beliefs, right? I am amazed all the time when I look around my life, and I see the changes that have occurred within the last four years. I progressively overloading my beliefs, starting with just like the very first one, which was like, if she can do it, maybe I can do it. That was like my very first tiny belief that I had about weight loss. Hey, and that tiny little like baby step of a belief like maybe I can, right? Not very powerful. Like that started everything. And by progressively overloading my beliefs, I've been able to create incredible things in my life. And I am no different than you, I promise you, we all have the same capacity as we believe, and as we build our beliefs, our results have to catch up with those beliefs. That's how it works.

If every result in your life is because of what you think, it is so important to build the beliefs that will then build the life you want, like it doesn't happen by accident, isn't outside of your control. You are the only one who can decide to believe new things and do the work to be able to believe them. And when you do that, when you decide on purpose what you want to believe and then you build your capacity through work to believe those things, your life will change in all the ways you want it to. And that, my friends,
is one hundred percent awesome. I love you for listening and I'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today, if you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your earth life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com. This is where the real magic happens, and your life starts to change forever as your coach. I'll show you that believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay. And that, my friends is 100% awesome!