Welcome to the Anything but Average Podcast, where I, life coach and mindset expert Lindsey Mango will teach you how to master your mind, yourself, and take massive action to create a life that blows your mind. Let’s get started.
Hello, and welcome back to another week and another episode of Anything but Average. Guys, I was literally just cracking up because I realized I say the same thing at the beginning of every single episode. Like, every single episode. And I’m probably the last to know this, since you guys are the listeners. You’re probably like, yeah.
But I can’t help it. It’s literally – it’s what I do. And I was just listening to one of the past episodes and I was like, oh my gosh, I didn’t even realize that I did that. So anyway, you guys are also enjoying your coffee with me because they are still building houses. They will be building houses around us for a while.
They’re literally pouring the foundation next door, so we cannot have that kind of noise and that kind of craziness on these episodes. So you are enjoying – I don’t know if you’re drinking coffee right now, but you are enjoying coffee with me because I am doing this in the morning again.
But anyway, let’s jump into today’s episode. Today is a juicy one. Like super juicy. I’m super excited to share it with you guys. So what I wanted to talk about today was believing versus not believing. If you’ve been listening, following me for a while, or you’ve been doing this work for a while, you’ve probably heard a lot about how important belief is when it comes to creating your anything but average life, when it comes to hitting any goal.
But I want to go in depth today to talk about what it looks like to believe versus what it looks like to not believe, and why it’s so important. Because unless we understand that, you’re probably not going to implement it in a really deep way. And then I’m going to talk about how to start changing from not believing to believing.
So let’s jump in. So belief, let’s talk about just the definition of it. I made this up. This isn’t a Webster definition. But my definition is knowing with 100% certainty that something is going to happen or that the result is going to happen. That’s what belief is. It is often believing, having faith, trusting that it’s going to happen, even when it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.
So why is belief so important? I want you guys to think – wow, I literally didn’t mean to do that. We’re talking about the foundation of the house next door and I literally wrote in my notes why is belief important, it’s literally like the foundation of a house.
It is literally like the – it is the foundation of every single result that you create. And the thing is if you don’t have a solid foundation under a house, or if you don’t have a solid foundation under taking action to create the results you want in your life, anything can literally drop it to the ground.
When I think about a house having a terrible foundation, it’s like, if any storm comes, if anything happens, it’s going to start to crack, it’s going to start to fall, and everything crumbles in on itself. I want you guys to think of belief like that.
But I’m not just going to have you take my word for it today. I’m going to actually explain it so that you can see how impactful it is. So I want to paint the picture of what it looks like when you don’t believe. So when you don’t believe with 100% certainty that the goal or the result that you want is going to happen, here’s what it looks like.
We often spend our time and our energy stressing and worrying about the fact that it’s not going to happen, instead of using that productively. So maybe you’re spending all of your energy in the morning thinking about that instead of being problem solving to find a solution.
And ultimately, when you’re spending your energy and your time thinking and focusing on it’s not going to happen and worrying and stressing about that, you’re not spending that time and energy creating results. So I want you guys to imagine really quick, if let’s just say, two hours, three hours a day, throughout the day, if you were to combine all of the time you spend worrying or being concerned about not hitting the goal, if you spent that time actually using that brain power and that energy to create the result, over just a month how much time and energy that would be.
It would be massive. It would be so impactful, right? So that’s the thing I want you guys to look at. Here’s the other pieces. I’ve got lots of bullets on this. The next piece is that every action you take when you don’t believe is less potent and effective.
Every action you take is less potent and effective. And again, we’re going to drill down even deeper to pull this apart so you can really see why that is. When you don’t believe, every single result or piece of evidence you get creates more confirmation that it’s not going to happen.
So I’ll give you guys a quick example of that. Let’s just say you don’t believe you’re going to lose the weight. That means every time you wake up in the morning, let’s just say you look in the mirror or you step on the scale or whatever it is. I don’t recommend doing that.
But you look in the mirror and you see that maybe your leg looks a little bigger in your mind. Instead of looking at, oh, my arms look slimmer or my stomach is flatter, you’re like, oh, my legs are bigger, look, I’m not going to hit my goal. So every single piece of evidence your brain is set to pay attention to confirms that it’s not going to happen, confirms what you don’t believe in.
The last thing is when you don’t believe, it keeps you spinning and stuck in the same cycle. So a lot of times, what people do when they don’t believe is they try harder, they do more, and then you don’t create the result and then you keep repeating the same cycle and it’s exhausting.
And eventually, you keep not believing, you’re going to give up. Why would you go all in and keep going towards something that you don’t believe is going to happen? So this is what it looks like when you don’t believe.
Now, here’s what it looks like when you do believe. When you do believe, you spend all of your time and energy creating results and problem solving and figuring it out to get there instead of stressing and worrying. And over time, that is a significant impact.
When I think about the difference between not believing versus believing, I think about golf even though I don’t play. I think about if you are literally a fraction, like a hair of a centimeter off when you hit the golf ball, and the first couple feet it’s not a big deal. It’s not that far off.
But over time, the ball gets further and further away from the hole until it’s so far off that that one centimeter created – I don’t know that much about gold so some of you guys might laugh at me, but like, a mile of a difference between your ball hitting the hole and your ball not getting in the hole, right? That’s what happens consistently over time when you are believing versus not believing.
When you believe, every action you take is more effective. Imagine making every single action you take towards your goal more effective. Like it works better. The next thing is every result, every result, good or bad, failure or not is evidence that your result is going to happen.
So I use the body image earlier for not believing. Same thing. It’s like let’s just say you gain weight. We’re women, sometimes we gain weight. Sometimes you drink a glass of water and you gain weight. If you believe you’re going to hit your goal and you drink a glass of water and you weigh yourself or something and you’re like, oh, I’m a little bit heavier, but you know you’re going to hit your goal, you might be like, oh, I just drank a glass of water.
But if you don’t believe you’re going to hit your goal, you’re going to step on the scale and you’re going to be like, it’s never going to happen for me. That’s the difference. Every single piece of evidence you see is going to reflect that belief.
The next piece, the next thing that happens when you believe is you become more and more effective over time. So that negative cycle you create when you don’t believe, you create the very opposite when you do believe. It’s like exponential growth and exponential results.
And the last thing is you create results. So this is why believing versus not believing is so important. Now, here’s what I also want to tell you guys is any new goal that you set for yourself, any big vision that you have, your vision, your version of an anything but average life is going to stretch your brain.
And I always tell people the first step of creating any result, new result or hitting any big goal is not believing. Of course, your brain doesn’t believe it yet. You haven’t done it yet. It’s the first time maybe you brought this goal into your mind. It’s going to stretch you.
So I always like to remind people when I’m explaining this that not believing isn’t a problem. It only becomes a problem when you use the lack of belief to drive forward your action and you focus on “fixing” the wrong problem. That’s when it becomes a problem.
When you see like, oh, I’m not believing in the goal, I have to focus on my belief, I have to focus on shifting my belief, this is something that we do so heavily in Anything but Average. I have to focus on that, then you’re actually focusing on the thing that matters, whereas what a lot of people do is they take their lack of belief, they use it as the gas pedal to drive them forward and then that creates the cycle over and over again and they focus on all the wrong things and it keeps them stuck in that same space.
So I don’t want you guys to think like, oh my gosh, I’m not believing, this is a massive problem. I just am painting this picture for you guys so that you can see what is the real issue or what’s the real disconnect so you can focus on what matters, so you can get bigger results even faster.
So not believing is phase one of the process to creating a new goal that you’ve never created before. Now, I’m going to actually show you guys the difference between not believing and believing in an example that will really paint the picture, and we’ll talk about a few ways to actually start building belief because I think of belief like a muscle. You have to build it. You don’t just walk in the gym and all of a sudden lift 500 pounds when you haven’t squatted in 10 years. It’s a process. And that’s what belief is as well. It’s like a muscle.
So you guys have heard me talk about the model on here. I think the model is episode number two or three on this podcast. If you haven’t listened to it, go back and listen to it because so much is based off of this. But I just want you guys to think about the model. Just a quick overview.
You have a circumstance, you have thoughts about the circumstance, your thoughts drive your feelings, your feelings drive your actions, your actions create your results. So the thought is what is driving forward everything. Typically, they’re subconscious, but part of this work is about becoming aware and becoming conscious of them.
And I want you guys to think about – and I’m sorry, if you hear my air conditioning, we’re just in flow. So Pavel, my producer, sorry as well, we’re just going to roll with it. We’re trying to avoid the big machinery next door.
But I want you guys to imagine, if you have the thought, “It’s not going to happen,” how you would feel. I would think like, uncertain, unclear, doubtful, frustrated maybe. And I want you to think about if you have those feelings, what action you’re going to take.
Now, some of you guys will go crazy and push and try a million different things and go really hard and be like, oh – you try to make up for your not believing with action. You try to do more. You try to implement more things. It’s why the people who have results, it seems like it’s so simple for them to get results, it’s because they believe.
When you don’t believe, if you’re the action taker, you are going to be like, we got to try a million different things and push harder to make up for your lack of belief, which is why you get burned out and you get exhausted. Some of you, when you feel those feelings, like frustrated, doubtful, uncertain, might not do anything. Everybody’s model looks a little bit different, but you have to look at what thought is driving it forward.
Now imagine, if you’re taking a ton of action but your thought driving it is, “It’s not going to happen,” no matter what kind of action you’re taking, that’s going to still create a result that isn’t like your peak result. And then of course, if your action looks like not doing anything, that’s also going to create not a result.
So that’s what it actually looks like. And this is why I’m constantly questioning my clients, questioning all of them on well first, I’m going to ask you where you’re at, what’s the thought driving this? If you were to say I know this is going to happen, I need ideas, we need to brainstorm, that’s different than if you come and you’re like, it’s never going to happen but I need you to tell me what to do.
I’m going to be like, well first, we got to focus on your belief because that’s what’s driving this forward. Now, what does it look like when you do believe? I want you guys to think about if you have the thought of course it’s going to happen, the feelings that would create is probably – I always say the word create weird, I realize.
This is just evidence that you don’t have to be the most smart person in the world to run a super successful company. But I want you guys to think about if you have the thought it’s going to happen, it’s done, it’s happening, how you would feel would be certain, calm, peaceful, maybe excited, motivated. And what actions would you take if you felt those things?
Some of you guys, your action wouldn’t be so much. It would be less action. It would be like, I’m going to focus on these three things, I’m going to do them consistently. Some of you guys would actually start taking action.
Now, if you constantly have the thought it’s going to happen, as you take those actions over time, it’s going to create the result that you want. This is the difference between believing and not believing, and this is why it’s the most important thing to focus on first.
This is why I challenge my clients when they come to me and they’re like, just tell me what to do or just tell me a strategy is I always want to know what thought is driving this. Because if we’re just packing on action and strategy on top of a foundation of not believing, that is going to keep you from creating the result. And my job is to help all of you guys create massive results in your life.
So are you believing or are you not believing? And are you actually focusing on that to create the change versus all these other things to create the change and create the results that you want?
So now that you’re aware of this, how do you actually start believing? Like I said earlier, building belief is like building a muscle. It’s something you do over time. It’s something you do with consistency. This is something that I teach my clients in Anything but Average, but I’m going to give you guys some tidbits today on how to actually do that.
So you have to look at what thought you have now. Maybe the thought is it’s not going to happen. Maybe the future thought would be – like the thought you would have if you did believe was it’s going to happen. The thing you want to work on is finding a thought in between there.
Maybe the thought is it could happen. Every time you start to notice yourself thinking it’s not going to happen, can you shift into it could happen? And you’ll know you believe it based on how you feel. It will change the way you feel.
So lean on – I call them bridge thoughts. Lean on something that’s going to help you bridge the gap. Don’t try to stretch yourself, again, from squatting 10 pounds to squatting 500 pounds. Go from 10 pounds to 20 pounds. It could happen.
The next piece of that is, where is there evidence that it could happen? Why is it going to happen for you? And really challenging your brain to stretch itself and see like, okay, this, this, and this is why it could happen. I had one person reach out to me today, I did lose 10 pounds back in the day, of course it’s going to happen, I am the type of person who can create results. Look at the other results I’ve created. Where is there evidence that it’s going to happen?
The other piece of this is choosing belief. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but it’s learning to choose – I always joke that there’s an angel and a devil in our brain and on our shoulders. And the devil is always telling us that it’s not good enough, that it’s not going to happen, all of these things because it’s trying to protect us.
It thinks if I just believe that, then I won’t have to experience disappointment, instead of choosing the possibility of the angel on the other shoulder that’s like, of course it’s going to happen, it could happen, it’s possible for me.
And part of the work is consistently choosing the angel over and over and over again and being like, well, it’s possible that it won’t happen, but it’s also possible that it could happen, and choosing that consistently. Now, that comes with elevating your awareness. You have to know when your brain is saying it’s not going to happen versus it is going to happen.
You have to know how to bridge that gap, like I just talked about. And this is a huge piece of why I have a job as a coach because a lot of times, we’re not seeing this piece of it. We love to focus on all these other things and we’re like, it’s like a blind spot to see this.
But consistently working on this is what’s going to create your results. It’s what’s going to create massive results over time. It’s what’s going to make every action you take more effective, it’s the thing that the people who make it have and the thing that the people who don’t make it, who end up quitting or who just keep creating the same results and get stuck at a plateau don’t have.
So always go back to your belief. Look at your belief. Am I believing? Am I not believing? I love you guys and I will talk to you next week. Bye.
If you want to take this work even deeper and coach with me in my signature program, go to lindseymangocoaching.com/anythingbutaverage. In this program, I will teach you how to take this work and create results so you can have a life that blows your mind in the areas of money, purpose, health, lifestyle, and romance. I can’t wait to see you on the inside.
