Simon Hodges photographed by Matt Porteous

LUX columnist and life coach Simon Hodges continues to explore how we can move away from a survival-based way of thinking and towards a mindset which will help us thrive

In my last column, I posed a few questions, one of which I want to explore more deeply, as it is fundamental to personal transformation: What are the beliefs that I previously bought into which are no longer serving me?

Our Belief Systems

So here is the reality: our belief systems drive our behaviour and everything that we do in our daily lives, and I really do mean everything!

Even though we have tens of thousands of thoughts a day, we tend to only focus on a handful and this handful is far too often rooted in fear. Have you stopped to notice recently which thoughts you habitually pay most attention to? What themes seem to keep coming up?

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Let me bring this alive for you with some real-life examples of how our belief systems play out day to day. How many of you are familiar with the following?

• Constantly hearing a grating voice in your head which crops up just as you’re about to do something slightly scary and exciting?
• Feeling frequently frustrated and unfulfilled in your life knowing that you are capable of so much more, but without being able to take the next step?
• Noticing that you feel a lot of fear-based emotions in your life, such as anxiety about the future or rumination on the past and its failures?

What does this all mean? Well, beneath all of the thoughts and memories that came up as you read those questions is a limiting belief waiting to be outed!

What are our belief systems and where do they come from?

Our belief systems are simply the stories that we believe to be true about ourselves and how we see the world we live in. These might be something like:

• You can’t make it in life and be successful unless you fight – no pain, no gain!
• The world is a place of scarcity, filled with people who are out to get me.
• When I open up and let people in, I always get hurt.
• It’s better to play it safe in life and be ‘the diplomatic one’, rather than take risks and fail.
• It’s selfish to put myself first, I must always look after everyone else.
• I need to be reserved and calm – expressing how I feel and being emotional are signs of weakness.
• Everything I do has to be perfect – anything less is failure.

The vast majority of our belief systems stem from our childhood / adolescence and how we interpreted events that occurred during these times and specifically, the meaning we gave to these where we felt emotionally triggered by unpleasant or unwanted feelings. These can be from big life events like death, divorce, injury and illness, or from much smaller and seemingly innocuous things like:

• how you felt sad and unworthy when your Dad never gave you praise for something you felt was important and meant a lot to you.
• how your sibling was always the centre of attention and got away with murder, but you were often ignored or disproportionately punished and felt that you weren’t loved as much.
• how your parents often argued and so you felt you had to be the ‘good girl / boy’, never ask for anything and make everyone else happy.

The reason we interpret these events as above, comes down to three simple needs that are hardwired into our DNA and pre-programmed. We all want to feel:

• Loved
• Worthy
• Enough

When we experience events and interactions where our sense of anyone of the above is compromised, our default reaction is to make up stories (belief systems) to protect us from these unwanted feelings happening again, or at least with less intensity. Inevitably, the stories we choose are built on fear and we end up avoiding doing or saying things, playing safe, and generally not engaging as fully in life and our relationships.

And here’s the killer punch: the vast majority of us are living lives well below our potential because we are unconsciously allowing these limiting (and self-sabotaging) beliefs to run our lives day to day, like the corrupt software of an out of date computer.

Photograph Matt Porteous

What can I do to change my beliefs?

The short answer is: a lot! It is scientifically proven that you can rewire your brain and re-programme your belief systems in as little as 90 days, although my experience is that it is more like 180+ days in reality (more of this in my next column).

Read more: Durjoy Rahman on promoting South Asian art

But all change starts with awareness, so first of all, you need to become more aware of the internal chatter in your head, the prevailing emotions you feel day to day and start to assess where in your life you feel least satisfied. When you do this, you will gradually begin to see what is really going on in your head – whether you like it or not!

In short, you cannot make positive changes to move forward until you first become aware of what is holding you back and shine a bright spotlight on these beliefs to see if they really are your ‘truth’ or in fact are just ‘stories’ which you created unconsciously as a child when you didn’t have the awareness to know better.

From this base of core awareness, you’ll be able to ask better questions and to start to consider other choices which might serve you much better – choices which will ultimately leave you happier and more fulfilled with where you are now and where you’re going.

Find out more about Simon Hodges’ work: simonhodges.com; @simonhodgescoaching

Simon Hodges. Photograph by Matt Porteous

In last month’s column, life coach Simon Hodges explained how and why problems arise in familial relationships. Here, he shares his top tips for breaking free from a competitive mindset and reactionary behavioural patterns

From an early age we are taught to live in scarcity. We learn that the world is made up of limited resources and that we are in constant competition for them. We talk in ‘not-enough’s, and think in terms of wins and losses.

Many of the families I work with are built on this model. They are driven by fear – fear of loss, and of losing – which often leads to huge financial success achieved through the relentless exertion of control. But when the world you have built is founded on fear, you end up believing that control is the only thing that can stop you from getting hurt. And if the stakes are so high, why would you ever delegate and willingly allow uncertainty into your life?

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Time and again I see how this competitive mindset ultimately erodes trust. It is a vicious cycle which leads to parents feeling isolated, believing that no one can understand the weight of their responsibility. This, in turn, can leave children feeling unwanted and unneeded. In the ‘I win, you lose’ culture, it turns out that everyone feels like they are losing!

With this lack of trust and destructive sense of competition, families learn to live off a pattern of reactionary behaviour. The smallest criticism and briefest remarks are often met with machine-gun fire (over)reactions. We go from nought to sixty in a matter of milliseconds. We assume we are being judged and fall back into a habit of confrontation and conflict, often without even meaning to or knowing why.

So, how can we step out of these unwanted patterns of behaviour?

Photograph by Matt Porteous

The Journey

Changing deep-seated patterns is one of the most difficult things we can (try to) do, and it is where I focus a lot of my time and energy in helping the families I work with. In many ways it is like recovering from an addiction. It is extremely tough (even brutal) at the start, messy and confusing in the middle, but incredibly rewarding in the end.

The first step is to accept that all change begins with awareness. Understanding what the behaviour is, and coming to terms with the damage it has done and will continue to do to yourself and those around you, is essential in establishing the ‘why’ behind your desire to change. It is also a key stage in realising that although you are part of a family, only you can be responsible for changing your behaviour.

Read more: Simon Hodges discusses why we act the worst with those we love the most

In truth, the reality of changing habits is that most people won’t. Willpower alone can’t get you through. You have to make making a change a priority, keep an open mind alongside a willingness to try almost anything, and have people who can hold you accountable along the way (this is where a coach can be indispensable!). To help you out, here is a small selection of my top tools for interrupting unwanted behaviours.

‘Mind the Gap’

In every family there are points of conflict which seem to recur and repeat like a broken record. The same arguments eagerly pop up and our reactions become more and more automatic and involuntary the longer this goes on, and eventually, we lose ourselves to our unconscious behaviour.

Before you bundle onto a runaway train of outrage and confrontation: ‘mind the gap.’ Take ten to twenty seconds to pause, breathe and do nothing. Give yourself the space to interrupt this old pattern and ask yourself a better question – i.e. ‘How would the most loving version of myself behave right now?’

I often ask my clients and their families to come up with a familiar code word which anyone can use at any time to press pause on an argument (using your dog’s name works wonders here…!) and take stock.

Photograph by Matt Porteous

Laugh at Yourself

‘The man who trips is the last to laugh at his own fall, unless he happens to be a philosopher.’ – Baudelaire⁠

We spend so much time in our heads and our own busy little worlds that reality begins to distort our own version of the way things work.⁠ Learning to laugh at yourself is the fastest way to step out of your ego and the destructive behaviours which feed off it.

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Self-deprecation and laughing at your own foibles and falls make even the most embarrassing and excruciating failures seem inconsequential. It diffuses tension; it pulls the rug from under the ‘serious’ and allows you to distance yourself from your reactive ‘self’. Laughter lets you step out of your old stories and see them for what they truly are. It also brings joy, and this joy brings families together – it lets us cross from fear to love.

Words, words, words

I’ll get the cliché out of the way first: if your friends spoke to you the way you speak to yourself, how long would they be your friends for?

The language you use to describe the world you live in is true from the moment you use it.

Language alters the way you see things and how you interact with those closest to you. You can convince yourself of anything with the right words, and you can change your behaviour if you slowly begin to change the way you describe your life and the people around you. What words make up your internal monologue? Are they keeping you small and making space for fear, or are they empowering you to move away from old beliefs and behaviours?

The Nub of It

Scarcity seeps into everything once you let it in. It is a world view built on the fear of missing out, of losing and being lost, and it keeps us small in every way. Scarcity happily offers up control as the solution to all anxiety, and then it prescribes confrontation and conflict as the most direct route to a feeling of superiority and self-worth. In a culture or family grown on the assumption of lack, scarcity wins all.

But if we step out of old, competitive patterns of behaviour and break free from a reactionary approach to our relationships, we can stop fear in its tracks, we can pass from scarcity to abundance, and in an abundant world, trite though it may sound, everyone wins.

Find out more about Simon Hodges’ work: simonhodges.com; @simonhodgescoaching