Self Concept And Self Confidence & Your Ceiling
Auto-generated transcript
Why is it that you’re doing all the right things and still not seeing the results that you want? You’re listening to the podcast, you’re going to the events, you’re doing the conventions, but you come back home and your income’s the same, you have the same relational issues. It just seems like things are going around and around in circles. We are going to get clear in this episode exactly what you need to be doing to break through the ceiling.
I’m your host Lisa Jeffs. I work with top leaders, performers, entrepreneurs. I have been doing so for almost 12 years, and I can tell you one of the most common challenges that people come to me for is that they want a certain result but they don’t understand why it’s not happening.
A lot of them know exactly what they should be doing. They’re either not doing it or they think they’re doing it but they’re not getting the results. So here’s what is going on. When we go to conventions, when we listen to a podcast, even when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re getting this hit, you’re getting the feel-good chemicals. It makes us feel like we are doing all the right things, like we are progressing, we are learning, we are building awareness.
Except to break through the ceiling—whatever that is for you in your career, in your business—it’s not about doing all the right things. It’s about becoming the person who already has those things. And this is where the gap is. This is where people drop the ball very unintentionally.
So this isn’t the blame game. This is a deeper level of awareness of what is happening because it can be very frustrating when you are investing your time and energy into personal development and yet the same issues, the same story just keeps repeating itself.
Your awareness on the problem can be deepening but nothing is actually changing. And this is where the most frustration comes from. When we start doing personal development work, when we start working on ourselves, when you start talking about your challenges and where you want to go and crafting a vision and looking at all your patterns that are getting in the way of you truly getting to live this grand vision that you have for yourself, it can create a lot of awareness.
That’s one of the first things that happens when I work with clients who are new to this work. They start getting all this awareness, except that’s not where the work stops.
It can’t stop there. And unfortunately, still in the personal development world we have a lot of teaching, we have a lot of guidance that doesn’t focus enough on the embodiment piece. It doesn’t focus enough on implementing what we are learning into our real life, truly changing how we view ourselves in this world.
You can never outdo, out-strategy, outperform your own view of self. This is how we view ourselves in the world. It’s the beliefs that we hold for ourselves. It is the expectations that we hold for ourselves. It is the energetic frequency that we embody on a daily basis.
Let me give you an example. In my own life, a big part of my growth, a big part of my expansion in my business has been unplugging from the self-identity, the self-concept, the way I viewed myself for decades. I always saw myself as if I can make it easy somewhere in the middle.
So I never saw myself as someone really struggling or in a place where nothing ever worked out or it was always a challenge. And I also didn’t see myself as someone where everything just worked out for me or I was the lucky one, the smartest in the room, whatever other label you would want to put on.
I saw myself just living within this middle area. That can be tied to growing up in a household where the pattern was, when we would go shopping let’s say, we never went to the bargain stores but we never went to the really nice luxury stores.
We always went to the sensible store—good quality, nothing fancy, but it’ll last. It was in the middle. And as a child that is how my self-concept started to develop—that we were the people who were sensible, good, not great, just inhabiting the middle area.
This is just a story. It’s just a pattern. A lot of the work that I did was breaking free from that story. I no longer wanted to be in the middle. It was no longer working for me. I wanted to see myself as a top coach. I wanted to see myself as a top leader who worked with the best of the best.
And when I knew that my work was working—that I wasn’t just having awareness of the pattern but I was doing the work to shift it—such as shifting my beliefs, letting go of the beliefs that no longer served me, embodying new beliefs, telling myself a new story daily, visualizing myself working with top leaders, with top performers, making space and capacity within my body to feel comfortable so it didn’t feel like this sense of “outside.”
It felt like I was truly embodying the vision before it started to happen. I shifted within before I started to attract the clients. And when I started to attract these clients, I knew very well something is shifting. This is work. Because that’s not who I was attracting when I first started my business. Again, we’re not judging. There’s no judgment of anyone’s. I’m using these levels just to demonstrate stories that we embody. Part of the work, part of growth is releasing judgment. We cannot move beyond what we are judging.
To integrate is to release judgment. So it wasn’t that I was judging myself in the middle and saying this is bad, I’m bad, I shouldn’t feel like this, I shouldn’t be like this. The question is: is it serving me? Is it serving you and your vision? If it’s not, then we have to change the inner story first to align to the vision that you hold for yourself. This is a big part of the work that I do with my clients in the Magnetic Leadership itself. We get crystal clear: what is the aligned vision we are moving towards?
So we are not just learning concepts, we are not just doing work that feels good but doesn’t lead to any long-lasting changes. A big part is aligning our courageous actions to the vision that we are calling. Through the process of clarity, of aligning ourselves, shifting the inner narrative, shifting the inner stories, shifting our expectations—what we expect of ourselves, what we are willing or not willing to tolerate—and then showing up every single day in full alignment with the version of us that is already embodying and living within the vision.
This closes the gap. This is what leads to change. This is what leads to actual transformation and not just inner awareness. Applications are open for the program. If you’d like to chat to see if it’s a good fit, please head on over to the description and apply. First we have to do the work in our inner compass. What are the stories that we need to release? What are the labels that no longer serve us? Labels that my clients come to me with that we work to release are things like people pleaser, yes person, nice guy, nice girl.
Fill in the blank—whatever label it is that we are embodying often has limitations. And it’s okay. I’ve had many labels that I’ve embodied over the years that have served me for a certain time. But again, we’re talking about breaking through the ceiling. We are talking about what it takes to actually grow, to experience something different, to experience something that is so out of what we have been experiencing. It takes a whole new level of showing up.
You cannot show up as the same person with the same beliefs and the same stories and just try a couple of strategies, try a couple of tactics and expect this huge windfall to come in. It’s not going to happen. We have to do the work that is actually effective. And that is first going in and assessing what the story is that we’re operating, looking at what our operating system is. What are the stories? What are the beliefs? What are the limitations? We do the work to release them. We do any healing that’s necessary. And then we start crafting the new self-concept.
We start to understand what we need to embody on a daily basis. And then we look at the courageous actions that are in alignment with it. Because Lord knows we do not need more on our to-do list. We do not need more things to do. We need to align to the actions that are in full alignment with the vision that we have.
The problem that I see a lot with my clients, with people in our communities, is they are not clear. There is not a level of clarity that makes it crystal clear: I am doing the correct actions that are in full alignment with the vision I’m moving towards. It is so easy to get wrapped up in the self-saboteur, the inner saboteur, who loves to throw us off track and keep us in busy work and keep us doing things that don’t actually move the needle—not because it’s trying to destroy our life or drive us crazy or frustrate us. It’s trying to protect us.
But at a certain point we need to come in with self-authority, with real inner power, and make a decision that we are no longer okay staying the status quo and we are ready to grow beyond. Because that is what we are here for. We are here to grow. We are here to expand. We are here to enjoy. We are here to have fun. It is not meant to be a struggle 24/7. It is not meant to feel like you are climbing this ladder, climbing the mountain, trying to get somewhere. It is meant to feel expansive.
And the fastest way to start feeling like that is to let go of the limitations and know with crystal clear clarity the self-concept, the identity that is needed to embody your vision. And let me tell you this is not about crafting something fake and phony. It is not about faking it till you make it. This is about tapping into your true authentic power state. This is another concept from the Magnetic Leadership Accelerator.
Our authentic power state is the truest of us without all the stuff, without all the BS that we’ve picked up over the years—the limitations from parents, the limitations from siblings, the limitations from school, from teachers, from society. We let that all go and we fully embody the authentic power state that is us. And this is the work that moves the needle.
Leader, I love you. I appreciate you. If this was helpful, drop me a comment. We will answer them on a future podcast. If you’re interested in the Magnetic Leadership Accelerator, please go and put your application in. And as always, let’s stay connected.
