The Unlikely 7-Figure Entrepreneur: Change Yourself, Change Your Beliefs, Change Your Life!

By Sarah Griffiths

Are you living every moment of every day desiring to live with passion and have a business that is profitable beyond measure?

It’s time to experience enriching relationships, turning your passion for people into profits!

In this book you will discover what is holding you back and how to find the courage to overcome the beliefs

• Language: English
• Publisher: Winston Cartier Publishing
• Release date: Sep 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9780648288121

Sarah Griffiths

SARAH GRIFFITHS is a multi-award nominated, 7-figure serial entrepreneur, who uses her extensive experience in the area of peak performance, leading with emotional intelligence to help corporate executives and SME companies grow and scale their businesses. Following a stellar career in the corporate sector, she actively runs three profitable companies. As a conscious leader, Sarah actively engages her skills of expertise in the areas of mindset mastery and thought leadership, using NLP and RTT modalities in her coaching and business advisory. She is a passionate specialist in cutting-edge therapy, using this to help her clients receive rapid results in mindset matters and overcoming limiting beliefs, which are the major blocks to real growth and success in all areas of life. Having used these methods to unlock great success in her own life, Sarah now shares these ground-breaking techniques with others. Change yourself, Change your Beliefs, Change your life!

Book preview

1

The Power and Impact of Core Learned Beliefs

There is so much important material about core beliefs that it could be a book on its own.

So many people have some underlying beliefs which are having a negative effect on various aspects of their lives; businesses, goals, relationships, but they do not recognize them or know how to change them to beliefs that serve them in a positive way. My mission is to use my story to change that by raising awareness of this powerful force.

Your Core Beliefs Define You

Until a few years ago I did not fully understand what I am sharing here and neither did my husband Marc; the person I was sharing my life with and we had no idea why some things just seemed so hard! What I need to impress upon you is how much our core beliefs have influenced our relationship and our lives, just as yours are influencing yours. Because we had not recognized or understood them they also caused a great deal of strife, conflict and unnecessary heartache for both of us.

Whether you know and recognize yours or not, we all have core beliefs which are formed from our underlying experiences from our childhood and are the basis of who we are. They are based on what we learn and experience. They affect how we see the world and other people. We are all a product of the environment that we grew up in. That is where we learned what was acceptable and what was not. Many of the ideas and expectations we have are not actually based on our own thoughts, but were handed down to us and are the thoughts of our parents or teachers; those who had influence over us when we were younger. Most of the time we do not realise this or certainly not the extent of it and how it influences our daily behaviours and how we run our lives. It also shapes ALL of our relationships with everyone: intimate partner, friends, work colleagues and acquaintances, plus all of our decisions around EVERYTHING.

Of course our core beliefs can change once we are exposed to other influences, but those that have been a big influence for a long time and are also a part of extended family or even community expectations are difficult to recognize and very hard to break. We revert to those thought patterns in times of stress because they are familiar and comfortable and we perceive them as correct and safe, even if they are not appropriate for our particular situation.

In a very simple example, this could be the sort of situation where someone becomes a lawyer because they are in a family of lawyers and there has always been a lawyer in the family and the expectation is that there always will be. I have coached people who are in this situation and they feel guilty for wanting something else and obligated to meet the family expectation.

Suppose that person is actually very creative and wanted to do art instead and did not want to be a lawyer? How easy would it be within that family to say, I don’t want to continue the family tradition of being a lawyer, I want to do art instead. Very difficult indeed, for many reasons.

There is undoubtedly intentional or even unintentional pressure from the family to become a lawyer and to go against that, there would be the feeling of letting everyone down (this might even be verbalized). Also the person who does not want to be a lawyer might even be questioning; what is wrong with me? Why can’t I just be like everyone else? Why am I upsetting everyone like this? Or maybe there is resentment; Why can’t everyone just leave me to do what I want to do? There is also the perception of safety in following the norm and meeting expectations, keeping the peace and conforming, but what problems might this cause later on?

Another very simple example; how many couples are under pressure to have children because their parents want to be grandparents? I speak to plenty of them. There is a fixed and firm belief, an expectation that that is what you do. But suppose it is not what you, and your partner want for your lives? Maybe you have decided to explore other opportunities and children are not right for your situation, goals and aspirations. Is it fair that you are then wrestling with guilt because you are not meeting someone else’s expectation of how your life should be?

You only feel guilty because of your learned belief that you should have children; it was not your belief all and yet, it is influencing your life in a negative way. Imagine succumbing to that pressure and only having children because ‘you should’!

We have all heard the stories of control from the grave where money is left - on condition that someone follows a certain path! Talk about the ultimate power and control; trying to dictate what someone else should be, ensuring that even in your permanent absence you have control!

These examples may sound extreme, but what you will learn here will show you that some of your decisions are indeed based on what you have been taught you ‘should’ do. It is your road map for life, running on auto pilot in the background and you don’t even realise it.

Your core beliefs, the thoughts you grow up with become your map for life. They are part of the route you mentally create for yourself, the one that you decide will make you happy or, make the people around you love you and be happy with you. You do not realise it at the time, but you will not be happy in a situation that does not meet your expectations of how life will be. You will be unhappy and at the extreme end, even unwell in such negative situations. I personally experienced this effect manifesting in long-term poor health, when one of my key expectations for my life could not be met.

My poor health and feeling of helplessness and despair was exacerbated by the fact that it was my husband, who knew what I wanted and needed, who prevented me from taking the entrepreneurial path that I was destined to follow.

What expectations might you be projecting onto someone else? Taking away their freedom because they do not want to disappoint you? Do you realise you could be making them physically unwell with the stress of trying to be what you want them to be?

So, how did our own core beliefs have such a drastic effect on our relationship and married life?

How did we recognize it? and, most importantly…

How have we dealt with it?

It is true to say that we both had some very strong points of view and defining beliefs that came from our childhood. These were essentially our core beliefs that we did not recognize and so did not question, even when they were not serving us in a positive way.

It is imperative to state that we both had parents who loved us and we acknowledge 100% that they did their best with who they were, what they knew and what they had, to provide for us and set us on that road to future happiness and success as they understood it.

This is a good place to make the point that they are also products of their own upbringing (in Britain, after the war, a very tough time) and had their own sets of beliefs and expectations. We do not in any way blame our parents for the beliefs that were instilled in us and how it later affected us; they were not even wholly responsible for them. We honour and love them as our parents and always will. They are all remarkable people that we love dearly. We are grateful for their presence and input in our lives.

Both of Marc’s parents are now deceased and we miss them and acknowledge that their passing at the relatively young ages 58 and 69 also altered Marc’s thinking and attitude to life in recent years.

So, what do these beliefs look like and where did they come from?

My environment growing up was that I lived in a town in Essex, the eldest of 4 children and whilst some of our family were around and my grandparents were not too far away, our family had moved there and did not come from there. There was no expectation that as we grew up we would necessarily stay in that town. We definitely felt free to travel, experience life and settle wherever we chose. I was definitely an entrepreneur, I have always worked for myself or autonomously and I do not do well with routine or being confined by the boundaries of a job. That was apparent from a very young age but not necessarily recognized or supported. I got my first job at 13 because I wanted to make money!

My main driving beliefs were, (I say were because I now recognize them as untrue and have over time changed them to much more positive beliefs that do serve me.)

I am not good enough for anyone or anything and especially not for God and the Church

I must work, otherwise we will be poor

My husband cannot be the only provider, I need to help too

A promise is a promise and cannot be broken

Love is wanting your partner to be happy

You are an achiever, set goals and go for them!

So, where did these strange beliefs and influences on my life come from? And how did they affect our relationship?

1. My parents were going to be missionaries and then I was born! Whilst my arrival put an end to their plans, I grew up going to church and believing in God. It was an important focus for our family, until I was about 10 when it all abruptly stopped. Leaving the church so suddenly at that age had a very negative affect on me as I lost an important identity.

2. I did not realise it, but we were relatively poor and when I was 8 years old and started junior school I was bullied for this, which lead to very low self- esteem and a lack of belief in myself later on, in fact it seriously affected me until I was 45 years old when I finally got to grips with it. I had some very bad experiences around this, not just from children but from adults, too, who really should have known better, especially teachers and church members.

It was while I was struggling to fit in and keep up with my peers that my parents were asked to leave the church we attended, which further confirmed my feelings of not being good enough. I was being rejected at school and now we were rejected by the church too! How bad could it get?

Under hypnosis I have also uncovered memories of other situations that I had projected a child’s interpretations onto, further reinforcing the idea of just not being worthy and good enough.

3. Because we were poor and my mum did not work, my whole focus as I grew up and was being bullied became about working to make sure there was enough money. I never had any thoughts of not working or being a stay-at-home mum like my mother. I felt powerless, as of course I was as a child, and developed an unhealthy obsession with not being good enough and needing to fit in.

4. It was impressed upon us when we were young that a promise is a promise, it cannot be broken. When someone makes a promise, you can absolutely trust that they will do what they say.

5. As far as I could tell, my parents were very happily married. They seemed to work in harmony and cooperation together and I formed the view that love was about wanting your partner to be happy. This seemed logical; if both people in a couple had that view, then what could go wrong?

6. Despite not having very much, we were encouraged to get an education, travel and see different aspects of life.

Underlying everything for me was those early experiences of not being good enough. I am not sure which affected me the most, the church or the school one; they were both very negative influences.

So what were Marc’s main influences and the beliefs that he formed? And why were they so different to mine?

Marc is a twin with a younger brother, so he’s one of 3 boys. They are all very talented musicians and singers. He grew up in a Welsh Valley town where his very extended family had lived for generations. They are all still there or very close by, apart from us, as we emigrated to Australia in 2006! Their focus as an extended family was church and God; it was the centre of everything. As you might imagine, this created an expectation of how you should do life; who you are, what you can become and how you should be as a person. Even how you should think and speak and what you should do. It was definitely a road map for life that should and could not be varied. It had been like that for generations. It was the accepted/expected way to be, the absolute and defined map for life and happiness.

Referring back to my earlier example of the lawyer, Marc was an excellent golfer and wanted to be a professional, but there was no support or encouragement for that, because weekends were all about church which could certainly not be interrupted for golf. Marc did not question this at the time, he accepted that it was how things were.

So his beliefs, based on his upbringing and what was modelled to him, in a very safe, secure and happy childhood were: (as he has defined them)

Serving God and the church are the most important things in life

Only Christians are good people

The way to get ahead is a good steady job until you retire

Your wife will look after everything else so that you can live your life

She will go along with whatever you think is right

You must treat other people well, but family will always forgive you

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