320. SOUND BITE: Why Do I Keep Doing This? Patterns, Beliefs & Change

[00:00:02] Okay, here we go. VIO. Welcome to Soundbite, a reflection inspired by recent conversation on Girl, Take the Lead. I'm your host, Yolanda Canny. During my conversation with Broadway actress, author and success coach Leslie Becker, we talked a lot about limiting beliefs. Leslie shared something she called the gotcha exercise, a way of catching ourselves in those moments

[00:00:33] when we hear the thoughts we've been repeating about ourselves. And she asked a question that stayed with me. Where did they come from? Is that really me? Or did it come from someone else? And somewhere along the way, I began believing it was true. I've done a lot of work around beliefs over the years, but our conversation got me thinking about something that may come even before we identify the police.

[00:01:04] The fact that they said that we have happened to us. The fact that we know that we don't have to go to the right now is a lot. But at any time, it was a lot of work around you, but I was always the right, because we keep what we have to go before. And we get from what we've talked about. And I get to point in my speech. Actually, I get it out. And I'll call it away because we don't have to do a call. And then you don't want to relate a little bit about how we can. But when you're talking about all the mistakes or not, you don't want to tell us about how we can have to do it. That's true. We thought we were playing a little bit more fun in that we've talked about the next week that we don't have a lot of work. But when the last night or the dayur Rain and the ciertор

[00:01:33] make them obvious. But I wonder if repetition somehow does exactly the opposite. It makes them feel normal. Think about it. Maybe I'm always the one who takes responsibility when something needs to get done. Maybe I repeatedly find myself feeling unappreciated. Maybe I avoid asking for

[00:02:00] help. Maybe I get defensive when someone questions me. Maybe I keep saying yes and then wonder why I feel resentful. Maybe I need to prove that I know what I'm doing. And each time it happens, there may be a perfectly reasonable explanation. Of course, I take over. Nobody else is going to do

[00:02:27] it. Of course, I say yes. They needed me. Of course, I defended myself. They misunderstood what I meant. Of course, I didn't ask for help. I could handle it. And maybe all of these explanations are true. But what happens when we stop looking at each experience individually and begin putting them

[00:02:51] together next to one another? What if we pull back far enough to ask, what keeps repeating here? Do I want to change it? I think that's where patterns become really interesting because the circumstances don't necessarily have to repeat. People can change. The workplace can change.

[00:03:15] Relationship can change. We can get older. We can become more successful. We can move across the country. I did that. And yet something about the experience can feel strangely familiar. Maybe it's not the situation that keeps repeating. Maybe it's the role I take on.

[00:03:40] The fixer. The fixer. The pleaser. The one who has to know. The one who takes care of everybody. The one who stays quiet. The one who needs to prove herself or maybe what repeats is an emotion. Resentment. Fear. Shame. Anger. Feeling overlooked. Feeling responsible.

[00:04:10] Feeling like somehow I'm not enough. So perhaps another question is, who do I keep becoming when this happens? That one gets my attention. And this is where I think patterns and beliefs begin to connect. A pattern is something we may eventually be able to observe. But underneath that pattern,

[00:04:38] there may be a belief or a lot of beliefs, we can't see yet. During our conversation, Leslie talked about her fear of auditions. For a long time, she didn't consciously recognize that she had built up a belief that she wasn't good at auditioning. She just felt it. And the more she repeated the thoughts

[00:05:03] around it, the more they became something she believed. I think that distinction is important because beliefs don't necessarily announce themselves. They don't walk into the room wearing an tag that says, hi. Hi, yo. I'm your limiting belief. Would that make things easier? Instead, they can live underneath our thoughts, interpretations, reactions, and choices.

[00:05:32] Which means finding them can take some work. For me, one of the ways I do that work is through journaling. I write about what happened. Then I tried to go underneath what happened. Why did that bother me? What was I feeling? Why did I make that? What did I make that mean?

[00:05:56] Why was that important? Where else have I felt this? And sometimes I have to just keep writing and writing because the first answer isn't necessarily the answer. It may be the explanation I've been giving myself for years. The rationalization, the story I already know.

[00:06:21] It's when I keep digging that sometimes I get to something else. Oh, there you are. A belief. Maybe it's, I have to get it right. I shouldn't need help. I'm responsible for how other people feel.

[00:06:46] If someone disagrees with me, I've done something wrong. If I don't know the answer, people will think less of me. Whatever it is, once I can finally see it, I have something I didn't have before. Something I can question. And you know that I'm a big fan of Byron Katie's work. And one of the things I value about her approach is the invitation to question the thoughts we believe. Is it true?

[00:07:16] That sounds like such a simple question, right? It isn't always because some of our beliefs have a lot of evidence behind them. Or at least what we've come to interpret as evidence. We may have spent decades collecting examples that support them. And that brings me back to patterns.

[00:07:39] I wonder if sometimes a belief helps create a pattern. And then the pattern becomes evidence for that belief. If I believe I have to take care of everything myself, I am not going to ask for help. Then I end up taking care of everything myself. And there it is. See, I knew I couldn't depend on anyone.

[00:08:07] The belief and the pattern keep reinforcing each other. Round and round we go. Until maybe one day we see it. And I want to be careful here. Because seeing a pattern doesn't mean we fixed it. Finding the belief underneath it doesn't mean it disappears. Leslie and I talked about this too. It isn't one and done.

[00:08:36] A belief we've practiced for years may take practice to change. And I know from my own experience that I can recognize a pattern and still find myself doing it again. But here is the difference. But there is a difference. Now I can notice, oh, I know this place. I've been here before.

[00:09:04] And maybe the moment of recognition creates just enough space for a choice. Do I want to respond the way I always have? Do I still believe what I used to believe? Does that still belong to me? Or does it belong somewhere else? Or is there even another possibility here? Maybe that's where bravery enters this

[00:09:32] conversation after all. Not the big dramatic kind of bravery. The quieter courage. Leslie and I talked about. The courage to look honestly at ourselves. Because recognizing a pattern can be uncomfortable. It can be much easier to examine each individual situation and explain why this time was

[00:09:59] different. Looking across experiences asks us something more of us. Not blame. Not judgment. Curiosity. Like, what keeps happening here? Why do I become? Why do I keep becoming? Who do I keep

[00:10:25] becoming when it happens? What might I believe that makes this response make sense? And perhaps most importantly, is that belief still true for me? Because we can't question a belief we haven't found. We can't change a pattern we can't see. So maybe this week, instead of asking yourself what you need to change,

[00:10:54] simply get curious about what keeps showing up. There may be something underneath it worth discovering. And I'll leave you with this question. What keeps repeating in your life? And what might it be asking you to see?

[00:11:15] Hmm. And speaking of other things that can be difficult to see in ourselves, in our next episode, I'll be joined by Carrie Siggins, CEO of Stone Age and author of Talk With Trust, How to Own Feedback, Spark Growth, and Build Stronger Teams. Carrie and I talk a lot about feedback, trust, and the courage it takes to say, and hear what needs to be said.

[00:11:45] She'll introduce us to her SHARES model, a practical framework for preparing for and navigating difficult conversations. But as Carrie and I discover, having a framework is only part of the work. Because what happens when that feedback is about us?

[00:12:13] What happens inside us when we feel ourselves getting defensive? And can we learn to notice that reaction, pause, and stay in the conversation rather than protect ourselves from what we're hearing? God knows I try to protect myself an awful lot. That's where we're headed. Next on Girl, Take the Lead.

[00:12:39] Until then, remember, leadership takes bravery. And sometimes bravery begins with seeing the patterns we've learned not to see. Thanks for being here. Bye. Okay, that's good. We're going to stop that. We're going to stop that.

[00:13:09] To Zoom. Okay, stop.