Beliefs Buster
How to bust a limiting belief
One of my favourite pastimes as a mentor is helping patients, team and clinic owner to break through limiting beliefs.
Ruth Woollett and Michelle Fleming will attest to this and how much I bang on about beliefs!
Beliefs are strong. As I first learned with Jason T Smith and his concept of the identity iceberg beliefs sit below the surface of the actions and behaviours you see in a person.
They are deep set – like a person’s thoughts, values and identity. All floating in the soup we call their environment.
Beliefs are shaped from birth. I have listened to neuropsychologists discuss the topic and say that a large number of our beliefs are pre formed by age 3! Wow.
This is not a post about clinic owners’ beliefs and our flaws, but to help you identify with this topic I will post some very common clinic owner beliefs I see in some of you guys and myself, so you understand.
“I have to lead from the front”
“No one can do it as good as me”
“I have to work hard in life”
“I can only earn lots of money if I work hard”
“My patients need me”
“Staff cause lots of headaches”
“Good physios are hard to find”
“The bigger my business grows the harder it gets and the more hours I work and tasks I do”
“Balancing business and family will always be a struggle”
So how many of the above “truths” do you tell yourself on a daily basis.
A belief isn’t technically the truth – but it sure is your truth.
As you look around and your reticular activating system helps you to filter information from the billions of bits of information that come at you daily, you will selectively find examples of where these beliefs are true. These examples will strengthen and reinforce your beliefs.
OK, we have had a crack at clinic owner beliefs, let’s have a go at physio employee beliefs. Please add to this list in the comments below:
“The boss isn’t here today, they must be doing something really cool and non work related”
“If I ask the patient to come back they will think I am only after their money”
“Business owners are wealthy and greedy and most of their decisions revolve around making more money”
“Physios only last 7 years in their career and once I feel like I have plateaued I should go and do something else”
“I will never be as good a physio as (insert boss’ name here”
“If I don’t follow exactly what the latest research evidence says then I am a bad physio and I am not doing the right thing by my patient”
“I need to fix my patients in the fewest number of consultations possible, even if it means discharging them potentially too early”
So what do you think of some of those beauties?
These are COMMON physio employee beliefs that they are wandering around all day with inside their head – repeating them ad nauseam, projecting onto their patients, team members.
Helpful? I don’t believe so!
So how do you destroy a belief?
Simple (but not easy).
You have to find more examples of where their belief ISN’T TRUE than where it is TRUE and show it to them.
…but more on that later
