What are your limiting beliefs? What if there were practical steps you could take to rewire your brain and create new pathways for confidence and success? This show holds the answers to making effective changes and taking your achievement to the next level. My guest, Karen E. Brown is on a mission to eradicate limiting beliefs and transform the world. Don’t miss her amazing insights in this conversation!
Karen E. Brown is a business psychology coach, speaker, ultra-athlete, and bestselling author. After struggling with her own limiting beliefs and fears, Karen discovered her true potential when she pursued and finished the toughest race in the world, the Ironman World Championship, accomplishing a goal she had held for 28 years, and one normally reserved for professional athletes. Karen shares her journey in her book, Unlimiting Your Beliefs: 7 Keys to Greater Success in Your Personal and Professional Life. In this episode, Karen shares proven strategies to transform your limiting beliefs. She explains how neurolinguistic programming (NLP) can be used to unlock the potential of the subconscious mind, and she take us through an exercise that helps us unlimit beliefs.
Leaving a shallow life behind
As a natural leader and an experienced business coach, Karen E. Brown has always been student of human beings and someone fascinated by their behavior. She discovered that the unconscious mind is the barrier that makes it hard to get past what stops us. For her, a pivotal moment came in 2005, when as a corporate executive, she had the worst boss in the world, someone she refers to as “a pathetic excuse for a human being.” Crossing paths with him was the impetus she needed to launch into entrepreneurship, find her mission, and accomplish her dreams. It would have been easy to continue in her comfortable, corporate lifestyle, but she realized she wasn’t making a difference in the world with her shallow, selfish, materialistic life.
A 28-year dream
Every year, in October/November, Karen E. Brown would find the Ironman World Championship on TV; she was always moved with enormous emotion that brought her to tears when she watched those athletes compete. She had the feeling that maybe she had the ability within herself to compete like that, but she might be squandering it, living a small, safe life. There came a moment that was the intersection of her intention and the feeling that God was tapping her on the shoulder. That moment became the doorway to who she was meant to be and what she was meant to do, and the Ironman was the vehicle to get her there.
What held her back
We all have limiting beliefs. Those are the times when we tell ourselves that we don’t have enough skill, talent, money, time, or support to accomplish something. We hold ourselves back because of what we believe in our minds. For Karen E. Brown, it was when she told herself that those Ironman competitors were elite athletes, while she was on a lower level as a mere recreational athlete. When she learned the scientific way to overcome limiting beliefs, she was able to move toward her goal. Using the unconscious mind to make changes allows us to overcome limiting beliefs. These beliefs begin between ages 0-7, when we are imprinted by the people we emulate and how we process early attempts and failures. As our behavior patterns form, the unconscious mind links seemingly random experiences together into a pattern to keep us safe and limited.
Rewire your brain
When Karen took a class in real estate, she heard about limiting beliefs and the scientific evidence to prove how they work. She saw the key to overcoming these obstacles by taking certain steps. To begin, you have to identify your limiting beliefs, find the gateway into your unconscious mind, and figure out what is standing in your way. Karen E. Brownvexplains how to rewire your thought pattern by claiming the opposite of your limiting belief. The neurons in our brains connect and form thought patterns, and those can be changed to create new thought pathways. The great news is that you can change your thoughts and eradicate those limiting beliefs!
Living limitless
As human beings, we are truly limitless. When preconceived limits are blown away, then we can do anything we conceive in our heads. For Karen, achieving the Ironman goal was mostly a mental challenge, even though you might think it’s a purely physical endeavor. This principle that Karen teaches can be applied anywhere to give clarity to any pursuit, using the power of your unconscious mind.
The physical challenges of training
Karen endured 2-3 workouts each day of biking, running, and swimming–for 6 days each week.
On the weekends, she would train for longer periods, and she supported her body with weekly chiropractic and massage appointments. She did core alignment to balance the body’s movement and had to realize the significant role that nutrition played in her fitness. She had to find what worked for her system and pay attention to her body’s function, which is exactly what happens in the mind to conquer limiting beliefs. It’s all about paying attention to the pattern and taking steps to change it, aligning the pattern with our desired results. Karen explains the value of the often overlooked element of sleep in the training process.
Neurolinguistic programming
Neurolinguistics involves picking up on the words people use or don’t use, along with the context of their words, which gives a direct insight into someone’s unconscious mind. Karen E. Brown gives a specific example from a client who was using negative words without even realizing it. Our unconscious mind doesn’t “compute” those words and doesn’t know how to sort those words out. Karen shows us how to restate those words into something the brain can process. She found that the personal goal she had been resisting, the Ironman, was the gateway to higher levels of performance professionally. If you’re continually resisting something, it is likely the gateway to the person you want to be and what you want to achieve.
Steps in conquering limiting beliefs
There are questions to ask in identifying your limiting beliefs. “When was the first time I experienced this limiting belief? What is actually stopping me from achieving this goal or dream?” Karen E. Brown says to write down the complete opposite of that belief, and the power lies in capturing it IN WRITING. She says to use a journal to carry this with you every day and repeat it when needed. Capture it and create a new thought pattern. When you notice the limiting belief creeping back in, verbally say the unlimiting version of that belief. It will feel unnatural and contrived at first as you form the new thought pattern, but repeating it will help form the new pathway.
The airplane oxygen mask
The reason women are still behind men in the business world is because we are sometimes hesitant to make decisions and act on them. Women have an innate caregiving mentality that tends to put others first. This is due to how the female unconscious mind works, but it doesn’t serve us well in the workplace to have the greatest impact on leadership roles. It’s like someone in an airplane who goes around and puts everyone else’s oxygen mask on and then faints before putting on their own mask.
Highlights of the Episode:
- 4:01 – Feeling bankrupt in her own skin
- 7:48 – Karen’s goal and her one big dream
- 10:10 – How she held herself back with limiting beliefs
- 11:10 – Overcoming limiting beliefs with the unconscious mind
- 14:20 – How limiting beliefs form
- 18:10 – Taking steps to change
- 26:25 – Rewiring and rebooting
- 28:55 – The mental challenge of Ironman
- 34:40 – Fitness challenges in training
- 39:30 – The value of sleep
- 42:05 – How neurolinguistic programming drives performance
- 48:40 – “What you resist grows . . . and becomes your gateway”
- 51:05 – Digging into Tara’s limiting beliefs
- 53:10 – An exercise to conquer limiting beliefs
- 59:05 – The airplane oxygen mask analogy
- 1:03:20 – The Fem Five
Resources Mentioned:
- Unlimiting Beliefs: 7 Keys to Greater Success In Your Personal and Professional Life by Karen Brown
- www.velocityleadershipconsulting.com/nextfem Find the free gifts offered to NextFem listeners!
- The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
- The Four Tendencies:The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People’s Lives Better, Too) by Gretchen Rubin
- Green for Life: The Updated Classic on Green Smoothie Nutrition by Victoria Boutenko
The Fem Five:
1. Favorite book for women:
- The Four Tendencies:The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People’s Lives Better, Too) by Gretchen Rubin
2. Favorite self-care hack?
- “Making green smoothies every morning, with water, plant-based protein powder, fruit, and lots of spinach.”
3. Best piece of advice and who gave it to you?
- “My mother told me that I can truly do anything I want, and I don’t need a man to do it.”
4. Female thought leader of CEO you’re into right now?
5. One piece of advice you’d give your five years younger self?
- “Unlimit beliefs and dream big. Thinking small is not the way.”
Last Time on The NextFem Podcast
Celebrate Failures, Pinpoint Your Purpose and Never Settle for “No” – with Tiffany Pham
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