I tell every person I have a coaching conversation with the same thing: “During our conversation, you will have an insight that will change the way you see the world. And when you change the way you see the world, your entire world changes.”

It’s like the glasses you wear. When you change out the lenses you look through, you see things you didn’t see before. 

In the workplace, we don’t talk much about beliefs. However, as a coach, I spend a lot of time with clients listening for their beliefs. Most of the time, they aren’t explicit. But as I listen, I can hear the beliefs that cause them to either succeed or struggle, to have an impact, or to get hung up. It’s the way they see their world. 

Beliefs are what cause you to show up in the world the way you do. Beliefs shape how you approach others, how you see possibility, and how you approach a problem. They can even explain why you may have the skills and qualifications needed for a job, but know in your gut that it won’t be a fit.

A group of psychology researchers led by Dr. Jer Clifton at the University of Pennsylvania have published research that asserts the way we see the world comes down to one single question: 

“Do you believe that the world is a good place or a bad place?”

How you answer that question is correlated to seeing the world as safe (vs. dangerous), enticing (vs. dull), or alive (vs. mechanistic). Within these three categories, the research team has defined a set of 26 primal beliefs that emerged from the data. 

Through their research, they found that seeing the world as good or bad is not a product of our circumstances. For example, someone who is rich doesn’t necessarily view the world as abundant, and someone who is poor doesn’t necessarily view the world as barren. 

Instead, how you view the world can actually predict behavior, and things like optimism, satisfaction, curiosity, agreeableness, and depression.

If you aren’t happy with a circumstance in your life, look upstream to your beliefs.

If your beliefs aren’t serving you, you can ditch them. You can replace your beliefs with new ones. It sounds simple, and it is, but it’s not necessarily easy. 

Whole new ways of seeing the world and interacting with it open up to you when you do this. This is a major component of living a created life, rather than a default life.

A single insight is everything. The shifts in thinking that my clients experience have led them to do incredible things: 

• Create new positions for themselves that didn’t previously exist 

• Launch businesses that innovate in their fields

• Say “yes” to things that feel scary

• Ask for what they want, even when it feels like a moonshot

• Create energizing work environments

• Become better advocates for themselves on their teams and with their managers

• Make career choices in integrity with their values

• Create new beliefs that support them in engaging in crucial conversations, establishing healthy boundaries, and being at their best in work and in life.

If you have a hunch that the way you see your world is what’s holding you back, you and I should have a conversation. Your world may change forever.

Love,

Audrey