Hello again from wonderful Darwin, Australia
Have you ever wondered how a bumblebee is able to fly?
I had not really thought about it until, on one of my visits to John Maxwell Team (johncmaxwellgroup.com/wendyburns) Conference in Florida, my husband visited NASA. In The Space Science Centre there he saw a poster that said: “The aerodynamic body of bumblebees is not fit to fly, it’s good that the bumblebee doesn’t know what NASA thinks.”
In May I asked you to cut the rope on the things that are holding you back. I know it can feel like you are stepping off a cliff. Sometimes we step up to make the cut then we step back, still quite unsure. That’s okay, show yourself some grace in this, I know I had to.
It’s the small daily steps that takes us closer, remember that small steps overtime lead to great change. In Remarkable You, I shared about how I had very little education. For a long time, I believed that I was not smart enough to have a professional career.
In chapter 11, P75 in Remarkable You, I share on how to enable a belief in yourself, and how I took steps to be consistently accountable to myself with my choices to strengthen this belief.
Who do you believe?
Imagine if the bumblebee listened to NASA, and believed it couldn’t fly? The Bogus Stories that other people put in our heads and hearts stop us from believing we can fly. Instead of looking outside for approval, we need to believe in ourselves, and in our dreams, not let doubt ground us before we even try.
I believed the negative voices around me for too long. Once I decided to stop listening to those voices, I really started to see change. But it is not enough to just say you believe in yourself, you have to prove it by taking action. I showed I believed in myself by taking daily steps towards a different future, including and most importantly for me was focusing on my choices.
Choices of attitude, behaviour and belief in who I was, to spite the circumstances I found myself in. A big key for me was my language, how I spoke to myself. The voices I listened too mattered and my own voice was imperative in this. For so long my voice echoed disbelief. I was always telling myself that I was not worthy, that I could not take the next step and even if I did I would fail.
How did I turn disbelief into belief? My first action was looking in the mirror and telling myself, that I could take the next step, that I was worthy of better choices. Sure this was very hard at first but I keep going until I could believe what I was saying. Also, I became much more aware of the negative words I was saying to myself and yes even my thoughts, and then switching from telling myself it was hopeless to speaking hope. Not ‘can I do it’ but ‘how can I do it’. I worked hard to cheer myself to the next step. Each step took me one step closer in my belief.
Learn to fly by showing you believe
Let me be your cheer leader. Strat by using a journal and writing down the areas in your life where you have reinforced the words of disbelief, you know the BS, the bogus stories.
Once you have written these down, then let me encourage you to write a counter statement, you can use the words such as ‘I choose to know that I am worthy, that I can make great choices etc’. Next step is to put in place an action that will support this turn around statement. One step consistently will move you further in your belief.
Action changes ownership!
We can be just like the bumblebee and not allow bogus stories to decide what we can do. We learn to fly by taking daily actions in the direction of our dreams. Just like the little bumblebee, the size of our wings does not matter; what matters is the size of our courage
