This is episode 283, and today I’m talking to you about belief.

If you want to do things differently but need some help making it happen, then tune in for your weekly dose of coaching from me, Maisie Hill, Master Life Coach and author of Period Power. Welcome to The Maisie Hill Experience.

Alright, folks, welcome back to the podcast. I am going to do my best not to sneeze my way through this episode. For the last week or so, I’ve had this lingering head cold that is really annoying me, and plus I appear to have started to get hay fever. I’ve been thinking for the last year or so, “Oh, is that a bit of hay fever?” And yes, that seems to be what’s going on. I’ve got the double whammy.

But I really wanted to record this episode and have it come out in time for the final week of the 30-Day Goal Challenge that is happening inside Powerful because it has been going so well. And I really wanted all of my clients inside to have this episode for the final week, and of course, you all get to benefit and use it in your lives as well, even if you haven’t been taking part in this round of the challenge.

I think I’m going to save the full debrief for when we finish, and we’ve got all the data, realisations, and things from the challenge itself. But I just want to say that I am so impressed by all of my clients and how you’ve all embraced the challenge in the ways that you have. And when this episode airs, we’re going to be in the final week, so I wanted to record this just for you. 

So today, when I’m prepping this, is day 18 in the challenge. And the way the challenge has worked is that every day there’s a post in the community where all the members can ask questions and get coached. They can also use it for accountability and share their progress, celebrate themselves and each other. And in today’s post, I asked them to rate out of 10 what level of belief they have that today could be huge for their goal progress. 

So, for all of you listening, whether you’re in the challenge or not, I want you to think of a goal that you have for your life. Could be one in the short term, could be one in the long term, personal life, professional life, whatever it is, just think about something that you want to create in your life. What level of belief are you at that you’re going to do it out of 10? And just have that number, hold that number lightly. It’s just a number. 

But the reason I asked this, and the reason I’m asking you this, is because your level of belief is everything. It is quite literally the thing that determines what happens next. So it’s not the circumstances of your life that determine that, not how much time you’ve got left, not what has happened or hasn’t happened in the first 18 days. This is about your belief because there is a massive difference between taking a set of actions from the belief that something could work and taking the exact same actions from the belief that it won’t work. So the actions can look identical from the outside, but the results won’t be. 

I’ll give you an example of this. When I wrote my book proposal for Period Power, I could have written it from the underlying belief that nobody would be interested in it, that nobody would buy the book, and therefore, I was probably just wasting my time. And the proposal document that I put together with my agent to send to publishers, it wouldn’t have said explicitly, “I don’t believe that this is good enough,” but it would have come through in the writing. My tone would have been tentative, I would have overexplained myself, and in trying to keep every possible reader happy, end up not saying much at all.

And that’s actually how I started it, and it was just impossible to write coming from that place. I remember writing a sample chapter or going to write it, and every single fact or explanation I did, I was thinking about, “Oh, what about someone like this? What about someone like that?” And in trying to account for every possible person that could read it, it was just a whole bunch of nothing in my eyes. It really wasn’t that great. So it was taking ages, and the writing was crap. 

And if I’d have continued with that, then my conviction would have been weak because I knew it wasn’t very good. My agent probably wouldn’t even have bothered sending it to publishers, but certainly if the publishers got their eyeballs on it, they would have felt that. And then when they rejected it, I could have then told myself, “Oh, you were right all along, Maisie,” and just used that as evidence for an unhelpful internal narrative. 

So when my clients tell me that they’ve tried something and it didn’t work, I always want to know where did they take that action from? And in asking that question, I’m also getting a sense of what level of belief that they tried it from. How are they thinking and feeling about their planned course of action? How were they seeing themselves as they went to do that?

These are all the things that really matter. Because sometimes when something doesn’t work out and you don’t get the set of results that you wanted, you do need to take a different course of action. But other times you just need to do the same thing again, but from a very different place with completely different thoughts and feelings driving it and a different level of belief.

So I’ve already asked you the same question that I asked in the community today. You’ve got your number for the thing that you want to create or achieve in your life, and the level of belief that you have that you’ll be able to do it. But this is not a way for you to judge yourself. It is just useful information because your number is going to tell you something. And of course, if your number is high, if it’s like a seven, eight, a 10, then you probably already know what you need to do in order to go about achieving your goal, or at least you’ve got a strong idea, and you show up, and then you keep going.

When you’ve got this level of belief, it doesn’t matter when challenges show up, and that means that if you’re ill, for example, like me, your level of belief means that you can be ill and take care of yourself, instead of thinking that being ill means you won’t be able to achieve your goal, and therefore you have to pick between your goal and being ill, and maybe you’d be more inclined to push through. 

And it means that if your week three of the challenge has been harder than weeks one and two, high belief is going to help you to find a way through it. You will adapt and you’ll problem solve, and you’ll keep going, and you won’t make those things mean things about you and use them as evidence of how it’s not possible. Sometimes people are very invested in how things aren’t possible. It’s always better to switch your thinking to what could be possible. I’m going to get on to that more in a moment.

But if your number is lower, and be honest about your level of belief, then that is where your work is. Because if you’re at a two or a four, and you just try to grind your way through this final week from that place, you’re going to make it very hard on yourself, and it’s not a great way to treat yourself. And you’re probably not going to like the result that you create, which again, will then become evidence that you were right to doubt it in the first place. That’s a very common pattern that does need to be interrupted.

So here’s what I see happen when someone’s belief is low and they don’t address that. By the way, for all of my clients listening, you are all very good at addressing these things. I’m thinking about more generally when I’m just like bumping into civilians in my personal life who are like talking about the things that they want in their life. And of course, I’m always viewing it from how I approach goals, and I’m always just so fascinated to like overhear conversations or speak to people directly about the things that they want, and I can see their mindset and how it’s holding them back.

So what happens when that low belief doesn’t get addressed is they either give up on their goal or they keep taking action because they are committed to it and they are trying, but they’re taking action whilst also preparing to be disappointed. So there’s this like bracing quality to it, like you’re trying to pick up speed, but your foot is just on the brake, just ever so lightly there or just hovering above it. So you’re doing the thing, but also waiting for it not to work.

And that half expectation is going to show up in how thoroughly you do it, in how committed you are to overcoming obstacles, which, by the way, is just so much easier to do when your belief is high. They become hurdles. You know, like hurdling the sport. Is that what it’s called, hurdling? Anyway, the hurdles that are part of the race. You can just glide over them and even enjoy their presence, whereas low belief means you’ll shy away from those, or you’ll just stop and look at them when you could go over them or you could go around them. You just stop and look at them and think, “Well, that’s a reason to stop.”

Low belief also means you’ll shy away from doing any evaluations. Those of you in the membership, particularly doing this challenge, know how much I value evaluations, and those of you who are actively doing them really see the benefit of them. But with low belief, you’ll shy away from doing them and you’ll miss out on the evidence of where things are working and just conclude that nothing is, because brains never look for the truth. They’re always looking for confirmation of what they already believe.

So if you believe that it’s not going to work, you will notice evidence that it’s not working. You will filter everything you can perceive through that lens. And that’s just how brains work, which means that low belief is something that doesn’t just affect how you feel, it affects what you’re even able to see and perceive and therefore evaluate. This is why when we’re doing the evaluations, it’s always so useful when you get my eyes and the coaching team’s eyes on your evaluations, because there’s things that you will miss that we see. And just because our belief in your ability to do things is higher than yours, then we are able to see things that are actually going well that you’ve missed. So this is just how brains work.

And when you’ve got low belief and you get to the end of a challenge like the one that we’ve been doing, and maybe your result has been disappointing, or your belief has been low going into it, you’re probably going to have a whole load of thoughts about yourself, about your goal, and about the challenge itself, when actually what happened was that you just tried to achieve something whilst simultaneously believing that you probably couldn’t. So that’s not a fair test of the goal. It’s not a fair way to evaluate yourself or the challenge. That’s just, it’s like you’re testing what’s possible from low belief. And the answer to that will always be less than what’s actually possible. 

Now, before I tell you what to do about this, there’s a couple of things that you need to know about building belief. The first is that if your belief is low and what I’m saying here is resonating and you’re thinking, “Oh yeah, I need to build belief,” that isn’t a reason to stop working on your goal, because it could actually provide you with a way out of taking action. And the reason you would do that, other than trying to avoid any discomfort you’re experiencing with your goal, is that you think it takes time to build belief. Therefore, you need to take your time building belief. And if Maisie said on the podcast that building belief is important, then I should devote the rest of the challenge to building belief.

And there is, of course, a place where that statement is true because what I’m saying here matters. It is important to build belief, but I want to challenge you, as if the challenge wasn’t challenging enough, I want to challenge you to build your belief in minutes, not days or weeks. You do not need to spend the next week devoting hours on end to building belief.

I want you to be able to build belief when it’s the suckiest day of your cycle, when your head is filled with a cold, and when you have no evidence that you’ll be able to do something. That’s the level of skill that I’m talking about when it comes to building belief. 

The second thing is that when I say build your belief or increase your belief, you do not need absolute belief. You do not need to be at a 10 out of 10, 100% of the time with zero doubts. You do not need to feel completely certain or to have silenced every doubt forevermore. Clearly, that is not a helpful standard to aim for because all you’re doing is giving yourself a reason to not take action. And in doing so, you’ll rob yourself of the opportunity to learn and create evidence that you can do this thing.

So the standard that we want here is, can you believe in yourself despite any doubts that you have? Can you have one thought that raises your belief and works for you? One thought that creates some movement, some forwardness, some sense that this is possible, despite whatever is going on in your life. And that could just be something as simple as, this could work out. Right? Instead of thinking there’s no way this is going to work out, just be like, “Well, this could work out.” Or, “I’m willing to get this wrong until I get it right.” Or, “I’m becoming someone who does this.” 

So notice how these aren’t like bells ringing triumphant beliefs, but they are pointed in the right direction, and that is all you need to work with. And I love using words like could or might in these sentences because it means you’re not going to get into an argument with your inner critics about if it’s possible or not. It’s just the idea that it could be possible. It might be possible. And then that means you can get going and do things from that helpful place of it could be possible.

Imagine a really confident or like arrogant person who’s very argumentative and talented at belittling you and putting you in your place. I want you to imagine them saying to you, “Listen, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen you try to do things before. I know all the ways that you have failed, and I know that there is zero chance that you can do this.” That’s your inner critic. And instead of getting pulled into that argument with them or just like believing them, instead of reviewing everything with them, which is one way of dealing with the inner critic, that is an option, but instead, what I want you to do here is just reply by going, “Yeah, but it might be possible.”

And then they’re going to go, “Yes, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I remember that time that you did this, and you failed at that, and who do you think you are to even think that you can succeed at this?” And you’re just going to say, “Yeah, but I might.” And then you show up for that possibility. It’s easy to show up for the possibility when the odds are stacked in your favour, and it’s very easy to show up for the possibility when the odds are stacked in your favour, when you feel you’ve got a 90% chance of success. But what about when you think you’ve got a 2% chance? Can you still show up for the might be possible? That’s how to do it.

And I’m going to give you some details of how you can do that, and this can take minutes. So here’s how you coach yourself into belief. Remember, this is not my permission to spend the final week journaling and self-coaching instead of doing the thing. This is something to spend minutes on.

Start by writing a list of all the reasons why you are capable of doing this. Write down what you know to be true about yourself. Like, for example, I know that I’m resourceful and that I can figure things out. So if you plunked me in an unfamiliar situation, a setting that’s maybe a bit uncomfortable for me with new people, all new things, that is the thought that I would automatically reach for in order to settle myself and help me to focus on figuring out what to do.

So instead of spinning out thinking, “I don’t know what to do. I’ve got no experience with this, I’m not going to be able to do it,” I just switch into, “I know I’m resourceful and that I can figure things out,” and then I will figure things out. So you want to do the same for you. What do you know to be true about yourself that is a thought, a belief that you can have that is going to serve you? 

And then ask yourself, what would I be thinking if I knew this was possible? What would I be doing differently? What actions would I take? What risks would I be willing to take? What help would I ask for if I actually believed this was going to work? Or if that doesn’t feel particularly available to you right now, think of someone you know who is very successful, very confident, someone you know personally, could be someone famous, how would they be thinking about this goal? How would they be approaching it?

This is all about whether the thoughts that you’re walking around with are creating expansion in your body or contraction, whether they are spurring you into action or making you put your foot on the brake a bit, or a lot. This is all about whether the thoughts you’re walking around with are creating expansion in your body or contraction. Are they spurring you into taking action, taking courageous action, or are they making you put your foot on the brake and just stop and distract yourself with other things and be pulled into other people’s emergencies and stuff like that? So you just want to have a sense of, are these thoughts working for you or not? Find the thoughts that do. 

And then from there, I like to ask, how can you stack the odds so that they are in your favour? There might be practical things you can do, like communicate and make arrangements in advance. So, say if you need time to work on your goal, you let your loved ones know that’s what you’re going to be doing in advance and communicate what your preferences are.

So if I want some deep focus time to work on a project, I can stack the odd in my favour by talking to Paul and Nelson about that in advance and making a plan for it. Maybe I might want to work over a weekend or go away to work for the weekend, or I might need to shift my other work plans around in order to accommodate that focus. But the thing that is always, always in your control, and how you can stack the odds in your favour, is through your mindset. Because no matter what is going on in your life, your mindset is always up for grabs, and that is a huge way that you can stack the odds in your favour. 

I also, as well as talking about how to increase belief, I want to talk to those of you whose number is high and things are going well. Watch out for success intolerance. So that’s when things are working, maybe you’ve already achieved your goal, or it’s within reach, and somewhere in your body, there’s some discomfort that’s to do with things going well, of being about to have the evidence that this is possible for you.

And I know it sounds weird because there’s so much discomfort when you’re in low belief that we assume that creating the evidence and like actually doing it is going to feel so great. But what can happen is that another set of beliefs start to kick in, but this set is about what you believe your success will mean, as in, what’s so and so going to think of you? How are your relationships going to change? And whatever negative consequences your brain thinks will happen as a result of you succeeding.

And it’s just your system approaching the edge of its familiar operating range. You just need to breathe into it and keep going. But wherever you are at with your goal right now, if you’re ahead of where you expected to be, behind, somewhere in the tricky middle, the question is the same. What do you believe about what’s possible for you in this week?

Because that belief is what determines what happens next. Not the circumstances, not the amount of time, not what the first three weeks look like, your belief right now in this final stretch. And increasing that belief is available to you. Just follow the steps that I’ve given you. There’s a transcript for every episode available on my website that you can find, and like pull out all those questions. That is what I want you to do today. 

Alright folks, that is it for this week. I will catch you next time.

Hey, if you love listening to this podcast then come and check out my membership, Powerful, where you get my best resources and all the coaching you need to transform your inner and outer life. Sign up to the waitlist at maisiehill.com/powerful, and I’ll see you in the community.