Exercise 9: Adopt a Challenging Belief

[Joshua]

Exercise 9: Adopt a Challenging Belief

Please post your reflections on the Adopt a Challenging Belief exercise here including addressing some of the questions on page 91.

[Olivia Ong]

Leadership Step by Step Exercise 9: Adopt a Challenging Belief

1. Think of a belief that leads to emotions that you don’t like
2. Think of emotions you would prefer in that context
3. Think of a belief that would create an emotion you prefer
4. Consciously and deliberately think the new belief

I can be late without impacting the impression others have of me and the relationship between us.
I feel conflicted, self-loathing, self-justification, rushed, impatient, judged, and more. – this is because I have conflicting beliefs such as – I have time; being late is okay; being early is a respect to both people; I have to hurry to be on time; being late is disrespectful; being early means I can feel in control and a more steady state of emotions; waking up early gives me more time.
I would prefer to feel abundance, calmness, self-aligned, patient, and in-control.
My new belief is that being late impacts the relationship in a way that I do not enjoy nor that I can afford.

Reflection:
I noticed a trend in myself that I tend to be late to the first thing on my calendar each day. I hate this about myself. I seem to be fairly punctual to everything else in the day except for the very first thing on my calendar. I always plan to wake up early and do things well in advance of time. Because I do wake up early, I believe I have enough time. This leads me to taking more time than I anticipate or plan for and ultimately causing me to rush out at the last minute. Often leading me to travel with more urgency which is less safe, and falling into self-criticism when I am 5-10 minutes late.

I don’t necessarily feel more able than last time because this is something that I struggle harder with than the last belief that I worked on. The thought is taking root. The skill of changing ones’ beliefs has been one I’ve exercised before and often, but not broken down so deliberately. It felt most challenging to identify the belief that I would need to practice to feel the emotions I would want to feel. I still don’t know that I’ve hit the nail on the head. Overall as an exercise – I can use this with my most painful relationships and my most inhibiting limiting beliefs.

[Hayden Kessinger]

You’ve made me realize I have the same problem! Seriously, almost exactly the same! 🙂

[Hayden Kessinger]

Adopting a new belief

I’m realizing that I have a lot of beliefs I’d like to change, including the one I wrote about practicing in class. However, I want to continue to work up to that one and other more challenging beliefs. This week, I’m stepping up a bit, though I’m confident I can be successful.

Ever since transferring to the University of Maryland (UMD) in 2021, I’ve been tinkering with my exercise routine. I’m glad I have, but it’s led to inconsistency and changes in my fitness that have led to unwanted underlying emotions. The last time I had a regular routine was around this time last year when I was training for a marathon. Then I got hurt and haven’t found the same joy and motivation to exercise regularly. Of course, before I started running pretty seriously, I was in maybe the best shape of my life, having just spent a summer biking every day (one day, I even ran 2 miles after finishing a 100-mile ride — shoutout to Jeremiah). Before starting at UMD, I was in love with resistance training and running; I weighed around 160 pounds (now I’m barely 130), and was as strong as I’ve ever been.

I enrolled at UMD with the goal of increasing my knowledge of the human body to help others reap the benefits I was feeling from my own exercise habits. My goals changed pretty quickly as I found my place as a college student; I was exposed to the inequities of public health, social/cultural/historical ties to sports, sustainability, and nutrition. More importantly, I began seeing the intricacies of all these things, plus many other factors, that when combined, contributed to individual, community, and global health. I had always wanted to help people, but I don’t think I fully embodied that goal until I realized all these things. I realized that if I truly wanted to help people, I had to rethink my priorities and strategy.

I saw (and still see) exercise as a crucial and impressive preventative medicine, but when I connected the dots that there was SO much more to the story than just going to the gym, I couldn’t disconnect them. Almost everyone around me wanted to become a physical therapist (I did, too when I first started) or go to med school. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with going into medicine, but it seemed to me that I could be more helpful by working in public health, education, psychology, nonprofits, or something else. Now a couple of years later, I’ve connected many more dots, hence me working on sustainability leadership. In that time, my habits and interests changed alongside my perspectives and understanding of the world. The gym became a smaller part of my life while yoga, running, meditation, and cycling came in and out, sometimes together, sometimes separate. Sustainability became a big part of my life through the Sustainable Ocean Alliance at UMD, as did social justice in many forms. In short, being “fit” was no longer important to me. But, it actually was and still is. I just let it slip and have been justifying its absence (when it’s been absent) ever since.

Despite its intrinsic importance to me, after falling “out of shape” relative to my gym-bro days I’ve struggled to be fueled by intrinsic motivation. I’m always comparing my physical appearance and strength & conditioning to my past self or others. It’s frustrating to be incapable of running half the distance or lifting half as much weight as I previously could. I received a fair numbers of compliments when I was “in shape” so I think I unconsciously tied it to my identity. Now that I’m not in amazing shape, I feel like I’m letting myself and others down. Even though I know the science and have plenty of good reasons to exercise, I’m often held back because the extrinsic motivators dominate my psyche. I started going to the gym because it was a fun way to spend time with friends and I enjoyed learning and getting stronger. Today, many of my workouts are plagued with thoughts about being weak or comparing myself with everyone. I’m like kids who had their intrinsic motivation to draw/color clouded by extrinsic motivation.

I saw the exercise for this week as a perfect opportunity to do something about this. I wasn’t wildly successful, but I’m happy with the results.

Using the 4 steps, here’s how I guided my belief change for this week:

1. When I exercise, I think about how I used to be so much more fit and strong, and I believe that I’ll never get back to a level that I’m proud of. This makes me feel hopeless, sad, defeated, and insecure. And thus, I end up stopping my exercise early or not starting altogether.
2. I’d prefer to feel content with myself as I am and optimistic and excited for the opportunity to get stronger.
3. I’ll believe that when it comes to my physical fitness, I can be better than I was yesterday and enjoy the moment, as I did when I first started.

To clarify my new belief, I didn’t think about literally being better than I was the day before. It was just a new way to think about it. Rather than worry about who I was a year or two ago, I could think about who I was yesterday. The idea wasn’t to do 21 push-ups today if I did 20 yesterday. Rather it was to deliberately reflect on what I could do to “be better” than the day before. That may mean one extra push up or it might mean no push-ups and just yoga instead in order to recover and regrow damaged tissue.

Did I feel more able than last time?
Yes and no. By design, it was a more challenging belief to address. As you can tell from what I wrote above, it has intricacies far beyond just exercising. It’s tied to my personal well-being and feeling of worth. Plus, I’ve been telling myself a similar story for years: that I won’t get back to my previous fitness level. That said, I found success as I did last week, I’m sure because of the first exercise.

Did the skills start taking root?
Yes, I have several more beliefs in mind that I would like to change and feel confident my skills to do so are improving. I think the new belief I came up with this week could be improved to be more effective for me. So, I still have plenty of room to get better at the process.

What did it feel like?
It felt great! Empowering, fun, exciting, motivating. At times I had the same old “ugh, I’m just lying to myself” type of thought, but by acting on my new belief, it gave me something to focus on instead of the old story about my past habits or lack thereof.

Where and how might I apply my experience to the rest of my life?
As I said, I’ll keep changing beliefs to improve my life. Eventually, I’m sure I’ll be able to use it to change my beliefs about others and larger ideas.

[Evelyn Wallace]

Exercise 9: Adopting a new challenging belief, by Evelyn Wallace

It turns out last week’s exercise actually qualifies as a challenging belief, so this week I tried to adopt a new less challenging belief. I’m going to go off script here because I have some things to say:

First, as I shared in my last reflection, I’ve had some profound experiences with behaviors-as-identity long before I enrolled in this class. I shared the example of simply deciding back in 2017 that I wasn’t a person who ate sugar in excess anymore, even if I had behaved in that way often throughout my life up until that point. Once I decided inside my own head that that wasn’t who I wanted to be, all I had to do was allow my behaviors to match. I just needed to give it time to enact the new belief. Josh said that he sees this as will-power, or simply believing the opposite of the old belief; I experienced it differently, but I also began to understand after last week’s session that this exercise is coming at beliefs in a different way. As soon as I recognized that these exercises are more about a transformation of an old belief (as opposed to the deeper dive of identity/ behavior), it was easier for me to see it through. I still maintain that I did the assignment correctly last week, even if I didn’t provide the clarity Josh was looking for in his 4-part question (old emotion/ old belief; new emotion/ new belief). Also! I updated my belief from last week about my ex. My new belief is that he is on his own journey doing the best he can, which makes me feel patient and compassionate.

This all got me thinking that I still have some work to do in recognizing my own “smaller” beliefs. For example, I sent a semi tongue-in-cheek email to Josh and Hayden about the community platform research we were each tasked with having completed by a certain date. I said something to the effect of “I’ll be as prepared as I can be, but you two have already done a lot more research than I have. Just do me the favor of offering a decent severance package when the time comes.” Hayden called me out (supportively!) right away. He encouraged me to use the following belief for the week’s assignment: “I believe that Josh and Hayden know more than I do about community platforms and therefore I’m going to get fired.” Something clicked when he said that. Oh! Maybe beliefs ARE everywhere. And maybe they can be contradictory and even temporary. I’m starting to get it, I think?

I’m not going to share the belief that I chose to address this week because it’s personal and embarrassing. Instead, I’ll share the process/ evolution with blanks. “I believe that competent adults don’t [do this thing,] but I [do this thing] so I am not a competent adult.” That starting point felt too challenging. Like, do I change my mind about what competent adults do/ don’t do? Do I change my mind about what I do/ don’t do? Isn’t that just doing the thing Josh told us not to do by negating/ “oppositing” the old belief?

So then I recognized the behavior pattern of when I [do this thing]. It tends to be at the same time of day/ under the same conditions. And because I don’t want to get in trouble for not answering the question, here is the 4-part belief/ emotion transformation.

• Old belief: I [do this thing] under [x conditions]
• Old emotions: this makes me feel like an incompetent and immature adult
• New belief: I can [do other things/ replacement behavior] under [x conditions]
• New emotions: this makes me feel like a more competent and mature adult

I got to practice nearly every day and it got easier. I also didn’t succeed every day. I did [the thing] once or twice. But I stopped myself sooner and practiced the replacement behavior. It feels like I’m on the right trajectory.

I would also like to share that there is a pinnacle challenging belief that I thought I was going to use for this “challenging belief” exercise, back before I knew that the belief about my ex qualified as challenging. The pinnacle challenging belief (and the associated behavior) have transformed organically in the last few weeks; it seems like just shining a light on the fact that I harbored conflicting beliefs which led me to behaviors I had conflicting opinions about, just that alone was enough to shift the belief and the behavior.

Okay I’m ending there. Josh: go easy on me if you believe I didn’t do any of this assignment properly, okay?

[Jim Jenkins]

9 – Adopt a new belief (major)
Background: major company reorganization and employee layoff.
current emotion-current belief-new emotion-new belief

1. Find a belief that leads to emotions you don’t like.
Belief that the reorganization will result in a negative work environment that tears the group apart.
Emotions: loss of control, insecurity, fear about the future, the kind that makes you sick to your stomach.

2. Think of emotions you would prefer in that context.
Empowered, excited, happy

3. Think of a belief that would generate the emotion you prefer.
The reorganization is an opportunity to redefine the function into an inspiring and positive work environment

4. Consciously and deliberately thinking and acting the new belief
Have engaged 2 people to work with me on adopting new beliefs
Making an overt point of acknowledging people’s work to others (more valued)
Started discussing core competency picture

REFLECTION
1. Did you feel more able than before?
Yes and no.
More able to pivot my thinking to opportunities and focus on what they could be
Spoke to couple of people about their participation and engaged them on changing beliefs
Some bigger obstacles to overcome

2. Did the skills start taking root?
Coming up with a number of other limiting beliefs to look at so believe I am noticing more in myself and in others.
Thinking and speaking about how to encourage a new belief with others
Applied it to a community board conversation to help with a difficult matter

3. What did it feel like?
Promising and energizing that I am developing this skill
Thirst to understand more deeply to turn into a superpower

4. Where and how might you apply your experience in the rest of your life?
Elevating my leadership effectiveness, fitting in with senior leaders, influencing culture change, having a better life, broadening my influence, helping my family more.

[Beth]

Changing Beliefs 2

The emotions and beliefs I identified were:

1. I believe people’s fear has resulted in electing an authoritarian leader and that we are seeing a frequently repeated cycle in history.

2. I feel grief, powerlessness, hopelessness, resignation and anger

3. I would rather feel connected to my own power and hope and the willingness to do something in the face of the government that has been chosen.

4. My new belief is that I experience my own power and hope when I act from love and curiosity with everyone, those with whom I see eye to eye politically and those I do not.

[Eugene Bible]

Reflection #9: Adopt a Challenging Belief

For the 9th exercise of Leadership Step By Step, I had to do the exact same thing as in Exercise 8 (feel an unwanted emotion, identify the unwanted belief, find a belief to replace it with), but now with a challenging belief. The trick is…I feel like the two beliefs I ended up trying to change for the last exercise were both pretty challenging beliefs, and for this exercise I felt like I had to one-up myself.

In some ways, I feel like the belief I decided to try to change for this week was not the best choice for this exercise, partially because it was possibly too challenging, but also because I didn’t feel the particular unwanted emotions often enough that I had enough chances to try to change the underlying belief over the course of just one week.

The unwanted emotions I felt were discontent, disappointment, and frustration. The belief that was leading to those emotions was: happiness is something to aspire to or to achieve.

I actually identified this belief over the course of exercise 8, when, one very early morning, the sun hadn’t risen yet, and I was sitting in my darkened living room with my baby boy, both of us in a state of drowsy quiet and calm. I was doing what I usually do in my early mornings: being pensive, thinking about the coming day, thinking about my goals, and trying to meditate a bit. And as we sat there quietly on the floor, baby in my lap, both of us looking out of our glass sliding door, I happened to be thinking about the things that I’m not satisfied with – the goals I haven’t achieved or my lack of progress on some of my goals. I felt like maybe in some aspects of my life I haven’t come as far as I “should” have, and that I need to work on those things if I’m going to be happy in life, hence feeling discontent, disappointment in myself, and some frustration. After several minutes of pondering this, the sun started to come up, and I got out of my own head for a moment and thought “Look at the sunrise. That sunrise is completely unique to today. This is the only time this particular sunrise will ever happen. This moment will only ever happen right now with everything just as it is: me and my little baby boy just sitting here quietly watching the sunrise, with those pinks, purples, and oranges filling the sky filled with puffy clouds. If I can’t feel happiness in this moment, right here and right now, I never will.” That thought stuck with me through the rest of the week.

When I began to think about a belief I could attack for the challenging belief exercise, I thought, that sunrise thought could be perfect, and decided the belief I wanted to try to use to replace my unwanted belief was: “happiness is found in the now” as opposed to being something you wait for, or even work for.” With my life as it is right now, there’s absolutely no reason for me to be unhappy, and I wanted to challenge myself to find more happiness in the “now”. The emotions I wanted to feel were contentment, satisfaction, calm, and joy (happiness?).

As I alluded to previously, the difficult part of this exercise was that it was semi-rare that I felt unwanted emotions related to happiness. But they weren’t completely absent. There were a few specific times when I was doing something mundane like hand-washing dishes and was tempted to pull out my smartphone and turn on a video or podcast while I did it, but stopped myself and thought “Happiness is found in the now. Stop searching for happiness from something outside of you, find it within” and was instead able to just sit there, focus on my dishes, and feel how good it felt to just wash each dish and feel the satisfaction of knowing I did it well. It was a sort of meditation, and felt really good for the few times I was able to try out the new belief.

Thanks to this exercise and the previous one, I think I am starting to become more conscious of the beliefs of my inner monologue and noticing more when I feel unwanted emotions. Now it sometimes feels like I’m looking for opportunities to feel an unwanted emotion just so I can challenge myself to try to come up with a belief to combat it with. These exercises were a useful tool that I think is applicable to just about everyone and would highly recommend trying it. I can see where in leadership this skill would be invaluable: A person with the ability to change their beliefs at will has the ability to shift perspectives and in doing so alter their own reality – to create a world they want to see, first in their mind, and then in the real world.

[Author]

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