fleas first while I was in grammar school and struggling to learn the times tables. I was whining “I’ll never learn these stupid times tables.” In response, my dad asked me a question I have never forgotten, “Is that what you want?” To explain As A Man Thinketh (free eBook) in grammar school language, my dad told me a story about fleas.
Put a dozen or so fleas in pint size mason jar and loosely screw on the standard metal lid. Place the flea filled jar where it is relatively quiet so you can listen. After a few seconds, you will hear a faint “tink, tink, tink” as fleas crash into the metal lid while trying to jump out of the jar, which is perfectly normal (humorous mp3 file).
Then a strange thing happens.
The fleas continue to jump, but they stop hitting the metal lid. The faint “tink, tink, tink” stops. After a few hours with no “tink, tink, tink,” you can take the lid off the jar and the fleas will not jump out. They believe they will hit the lid, so they do not jump high enough to exit the jar … and freedom.
Forty years later, I was attending a marketing seminar for small business owners.
The speaker said that natives in the jungle will catch monkeys by putting a banana in a narrow mouth jar. A monkey slips his hand into the jar and grabs the banana. However, with his hand clutching the banana, he cannot pull his hand out of the jar. While the monkey is caught between the quandary of releasing a banana and living in a cage, the natives run up and make the decision for the monkey. The speaker then compared the monkey to a small business owner who cannot release a failing product or fire an incompetent employee. Both the monkey and the small business owner have the limiting belief that the banana in the jar is the only banana in the world.
I don’t know about you, but I have had unconscious beliefs that caused me to “grasp a banana.” One particular banana was a line of archery products that had been predicted (by a senior VP of the largest arrow manufacturing company in the world), to be revolutionary. With expectations of making really big money, I manufactured and attempted to sell those products for ten years without ever making a profit, not even for a single month. Like the monkey holding onto a banana, I really believed the products I had patented would revolutionize the market.
It took a heart attack to cause me to ask difficult questions regarding business, money, personal fulfillment, etc. Like most survivors of a heart attack, I paused to think about what was really valuable in my life. The archery business was producing no value. It was a banana in a jar. I stopped my archery business as quickly as a thorn deflates a bicycle tire. The reduced stress resulting from deflating the archery business caused me to consider how many other bananas were keeping me captive.
How many of my beliefs were bananas in a jar? How could I determine when a banana that I had in my hand was providing nourishment (empowering belief) or stuck inside a jar (limiting belief)? What is the inherent difference between a beneficial belief (5 minute video) and a limiting belief? How many beliefs are formed so early in life that we feel like the beliefs are part of our individuality?
For example, the meaning of the word “money” is usually formed before the age of six. Consequently, one of the first questions I had to answer was “What is my first memory about money?”
Somewhere in my early childhood, I acquired the idea that money is like a pie that is cut into pieces so everyone who wants some pie can have a piece. The unspoken assumption was that everyone should get an equal piece of the pie because that is how we cut a pie in our family. Therefore, in order for me to get a larger piece of the pie, someone else must get a smaller piece of the pie.
Economists call this theory “scarcity economics.” Scarcity economics is true for finite resources like land, gold, or water. However scarcity economics is a limiting belief when applied to creating new products.So, how do you make a fixed pie of scarcity economics into an expanding pie?
Bring more value to the right marketplace, at the right time.
Increasing value in the marketplace increases the size of the pie. The larger the pie, the more pie available to others who participate in the same marketplace … including yourself. That is what my archery products were supposed to do; create an expanding pie. However, because I was in the wrong marketplace (California is not big on archery) the business became a banana stuck in a jar.
Perhaps you may be asking "How can I tell if a belief is a limiting?"
This is actually quite easy. Ask yourself these three questions.
1. "Does this belief pull me towards becoming more of the person I want to be?”
2. “Does this belief compel me to do a little more than I am currently able to do?”
3. “Will this belief prevent me from having everything that I want to have?"
It doesn't matter whether a specific belief is called true or false, limiting or enhancing, conscious or unconscious. What matters is whether a specific belief moves you TOWARD or AWAY from what you want? If a belief does not serve you, now is the time to replace it with a belief that does.
To change a limiting belief, consider using empowering questions. Asking empowering questions takes the cajones of a brass monkey because the question plays mind games with your own mind. As you can see from the following examples, an empowering question assumes that you have already accomplished what you desire and you just want to know how it happened.
“How was I able to own a sail boat and spend six months cruising the Greek Islands?”
“What did I do to produce four extra income streams in just one year?”
“How was I able to reduce my body fat to 20%?”
“What skills did I develop that promoted me to VP?”
“What did I change about myself in order to attract my soul mate?”
Limiting beliefs will never give you the life that exists in your dreams because limiting beliefs are like goldfish in a small fishbowl.
A few months ago, Dr. Robert Anthony told a story about a limiting belief. If you
move a goldfish from a small fishbowl in your home and take it to a lake, the goldfish will continue to swim in the same small circle? Why? Because he has accepted the limiting belief that if he swims farther, he's going to bump his nose. He's always swam in circles, because it has done always been done that way. Any other way is "impossible."What would happen to your levels of happiness, health, wealth, and wisdom if you had no limiting beliefs?
The first line of this newsletter states that everyone has one or more self-limiting beliefs. I just realized the sentence assumes a limiting belief about my ability to eliminate limiting beliefs. Unlimiting limiting beliefs can be really sneaky. (23 minute video by Tony Robbins)
Before you check out, check out the next wave of health enhancing products to hit the American market. Go to my home page , click on the picture of the RedOx, and then look at a video “RedOx Water Helps Blood” to learn how water can be more than just water.
May you continue to increase happiness, healthiness, wealthiness, and wisdom, in whichever order you prefer.
Tom Van Drielen
