Do you believe in life after "should"?
Professional update: I’ve officially finished my coaching accreditation programme!
Thank you, thank you. I can feel your applause through the airwaves. Very cute.
The course was brilliant for a lot of reasons, but there was one session in particular that made everything click in a way I didn't see coming.
It was a session on beliefs.
The funny thing about beliefs is that most of us get to adulthood and think we have a pretty good handle on what we believe.
We've done the work, read the books, and have a vague awareness of our "limiting beliefs." We know, rationally, that we're capable and worthy and enough and all the rest of it.
And yet...
The old stories keep showing up. In the way we talk about money. In the way we shrink before asking for what we want. In the way we feel vaguely guilty for resting, or spending, or taking up space.
Why does that keep happening?
Here's what I learned.
Beliefs aren't just harmless thoughts.
A belief - and I mean a real, sticky one, the kind that doesn't budge even when you know it's irrational - is formed through a very specific combination of three things:
Authority. Someone in a position of power tells us something, models something, or reinforces a message. A parent. A teacher. A manager. A doctor. Or just the ambient hum of the culture we grew up in.
Emotion. We attach a feeling to it. Reward, punishment, shame, pride, fear, love. The stronger the emotional charge, the deeper the groove.
Suggestibility. We were in a state where we were particularly open to receiving that message. Young. Vulnerable. New to something. In the presence of someone we trusted completely.
Put those three things together and you get a belief that doesn't live in the rational part of your brain.
It lives somewhere older. Somewhere that doesn't respond well to logic.
Which is why you can know something isn't true and still feel it like it is.
Here's my example.
I've been thinking about money differently lately.
Last year, I sold my house and moved out of London. This year, I'm building a business from scratch. And throughout all of it, I've had decent savings sitting there due to the house sale, while simultaneously feeling like I'm in a near-constant state of financial stress.
It took a couple of friends, gently and separately, to point out what was actually happening.
You know you're allowed to use that money, right? Not just for a deposit. For your life.
And I stared at them both like they'd just shown me their tits in the middle of the street.
Because there and then, I realised that somewhere along the way - watching how my family talked about money, picking up on what savings were for, absorbing what responsible adults did with a financial safety net - I had formed a belief.
Savings are for deposits on homes only. That's what they're for. You don't touch them for anything else.
Now apply the formula.
Authority? My parents, family, and the British cultural script around homeownership that's basically a religion in this country.
Emotion? Safety. Responsibility. The feeling of being a Good Sensible Adult. And underneath that, the fear of what it meant to not have a deposit. The anxiety of being without that safety net.
Suggestibility? A child watching how the adults around her talked about money. A young woman in her twenties who absorbed "this is just what you do" before she had any framework to question it.
That belief wasn't mine. It was handed to me before I was old enough to decide if I wanted it.
This isn't to say it's a bad belief. Saving for a home, building financial security - that's genuinely good advice for a lot of people in a lot of circumstances.
The problem wasn't the belief itself. It was that I'd never consciously chosen it. It had solidified from "a wise thing my family did" into "the only thing a responsible person does", without me noticing, without my input, and long before I had the context to decide whether it actually applied to my life.
A guideline had become a law. And laws don't have much interest in your individual circumstances.
And I want to be clear: I'm not about to make it rain. I'm not pissing the money up the wall, as my East End family would say.
But I do get to choose what I do with it. And that feels new.
What's interesting is how obvious it all seems once you name it. Of course savings aren't only for deposits. Of course I'm allowed to use my own money to support myself while I build something. Of course.
But "of course" doesn't mean anything when the belief is pre-rational.
That's the thing about the beliefs in the basement. They don't care that you know better. They were there first.
