People always aspire to make changes and they want to grow but they struggle as they’re looking for something new in their life. Prosperity strategist Chris Salem believes it actually has to do with overcoming limiting beliefs. Chris has experienced much success over a 26-year career as a senior sales executive selling media, aircraft, investing in businesses, and implementing residual income platforms. Chris talks about how he’s faced similar struggles and having major setbacks and battling with his own demons. He shares how he found a way to address the issues that held him back from experiencing a higher level of prosperity where health and wealth are in alignment. This led to Chris’ mission to share and empower others to do the same so their businesses and personal lives could truly experience the meaning of prosperity on all levels.
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Overcoming Limiting Beliefs To Boost Performance with Chris Salem
We are with Chris Salem. He is a prosperity strategist. He is going to tell us more about that. On this episode, we’re going to talk about how to overcome limiting beliefs so that we can reach peak performance. Chris and I go way back. We have so much in common in the way that we think about things. We let our conversation free flow. He’s authentic and he has a passion for empowering and serving business leaders, entrepreneurs across the industry, sales executives, coaches, authors, speakers, you name it. He likes to help them take their business to the next level.
For many years, Chris has seen people aspiring to make changes and they want to grow but they struggle. They’re looking for a new career or something new in their life. He’s just like you. He’s a regular person. He talked about how he faced similar struggles and the key of what he helps people to do, he’s going to tell us more about this. He helps people to get to the root cause of what’s keeping them from the success that they want to achieve. I have a sinking little feeling that it must have something to do with limiting beliefs. That’s why we’re talking about that.
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Chris, welcome to the show.
Penny, it’s a pleasure to be here and so glad. You’ve been on my show and you threw out some great nuggets of wisdom when it comes to productivity and performance. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Chris, what is a prosperity strategist? That’s your title there. What does that mean? What is that?
What prosperity means is experiencing life and business based upon your purpose in life, whatever that means to you. When it comes to experiencing true prosperity, it’s like a balancing act. There’s no such thing as perfect balance. In order to have sustainability in your business, you have to have your wellness in check. When we talk about wellness, we look at the eight pillars of wellness, your emotional wellness, spiritual wellness, occupational wellness, financial wellness, physical wellness, intellectual wellness and so forth. When you put your wellness first and you have that in alignment with your wealth principles, which could be your business, making money, saving money, having more time to do the things you love and spending time with your relationships that matter, you could then experience true prosperity. As a strategist, my goal is to work with individuals and companies in determining what holds them back for achieving their full potential and living a life and operating a business at the next level.
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs: Prosperity means experiencing life and business based upon your purpose in life, whatever that means to you.
That’s what we all want. I read a book once, The Stuff That Americans Are Made Of, and we just want to get to the next level. That is so American to be bigger, to want more. I don’t know if that’s just American or in general human nature. It was Tony Robbins who said, “If we’re not growing, we’re dying.” We’re totally searching that. We’re going to talk about limiting beliefs and overcoming limiting beliefs. How do our limiting beliefs limit our performance?
A lot of times, limited beliefs are in the subconscious mindset. Sometimes people may be aware of what might hold them back, but a lot of times they are aware they’re not where they want to be. They could be struggling or they could be doing well, but they’re not where they think they should be at this point in time. Being aware is important because it lets you know that wherever you are, there could be limited beliefs subconsciously holding you back or preventing you from going to the next level. Limited beliefs are powerful. A lot of people don’t understand what they are but they do have a tremendous impact negatively on holding you back with whatever’s important to you, whether that’s in business and then also things important in your personal life with your wellness and your relationships.
What I find to be the interesting paradox there is that the very things that we want are the very things that we sabotage ourselves and hold ourselves back from getting. You said that some people know and some people don’t know, how does it show up? How do I know that I might have some limiting beliefs?
What happens is a limited belief or beliefs is often also tied to one or more negative emotions.
If they’re not negative emotions, they’re unproductive emotions.
The unproductive emotions would be like anger. Anger is very common, especially for men, but also women experience anger. With women, it can be tied to shame and guilt as well. They could go hand in hand. Without us being consciously aware, we put ourselves into situations where we re-experience that feeling over and over again. I’ll give you an example. Before I went through this process of eliminating my limited beliefs twenty years ago, I would always pick business associates, bosses, or I’d get into businesses that would end up reinforcing the experience for me to deal with anger.
That is the ultimate insanity.
I would blame the world. I’d say, “Why is the universe doing this to me? It’s everyone else’s fault, not mine.” I was creating it on many levels. Business happens but we play a role in our energy, which is in the subconscious mindset where people are not aware. That’s where the limited beliefs have that tremendous hold of that unproductive impact on your true ability.
For everyone, if you can recognize when you’re having any of those unproductive emotions, anger, sadness, hurt, fear, guilt, shame, those are indicators that something is not right. You can sit in it, accept it, wallow it and let it last longer. They’re important for us to feel. We want to be aware. The sooner that we can be aware that we’re in this unproductive emotion and understand what it’s telling us, as opposed to repeating it, allowing it to fester and feeding it. A lot of people feed it. You want to break that down. How do I overcome this limiting belief that has come up through these unproductive emotions?
The first step is being aware of where you don’t want to be. That’s important that you understand that you want to be somewhere else but being aware of where you are now. You don’t need to know what the limited belief is yet, but the first step is to be aware. Next, you want to be able to accept where you are now. Instead of focusing on the desired outcome that you seek, obviously it’s important, but instead of putting all the energy and focus on what you want to become itself, commit to the process.
When you embrace and commit to the process that will yield the outcome you desire, you’re more likely to overcome that limited belief to move forward within the solution. Awareness, acceptance, commitment to the process and the process works like this. It could be something where you may have certain habits and disciplines that are not yet established. You may have some good habits and disciplines in place, but they’re not being done consistently or they’re not congruently working together to yield the outcome that you desire.
I’ll give you an example of what I do. I will wake up early in the morning about 4:30, I’ve been doing that for a long time. I wake up at 4:30 East Coast time and I will make my bed. People ask me why do I make my bed? I don’t make my bed because I’m a neat freak. A lot of times my wife is next to me but I make it because it gets my mind focused, that I’m going to accomplish something. Something little like that can help. Next, I meditate for twenty minutes. I’ve learned how to be in the moment for most of the day. Meditating every day will teach you how to be in the moment rather than in the past and the future that most people operate their lives in simultaneously. That’s managing the problem.
[Tweet “Meditating every day will teach you how to be in the moment rather than in the past and the future.”]
The solution is being present. By being present, after my meditation, I will journal and I won’t overanalyze or overthink what I’m going to write. Whatever comes out of my head through my arm onto the paper is what it’ll be. It could be one word. It could be two pages. I’m going to put down what comes to mind and how I feel at that point. What that allows me to do over time is to look at myself from a third-party perspective, like if I was looking at myself as somebody else. We could always provide great advice and opinions to people, but we could never do it for ourselves. This is a way to give yourself the right advice to see where certain things that you’re doing are not working for you and it resonates and what you have to do to overcome that.
When you get into the rhythm of meditation and journaling, what that’s going to do is it’s eventually going to get the subconscious mindset talking to the conscious mindset. It becomes an alignment, being in the moment. Little things that you may have suppressed in your in your memory bank will come to the surface and be able to indicate where these limited beliefs are. Where the anger stems from to the root cause of those limited beliefs, the shame, the guilt, the jealousy, the envy, or any combination thereof. I could give you a story that from a business perspective with one of my clients that may resonate where this might make sense.
I had a guy that I coached that was a software sales professional and he was very successful. He was a multi six figure earner in his business. He was married with two kids. They had a wonderful life. He came from a wonderful family. He didn’t have anything traumatic in his background. He had a pretty normal life and he had a lot of success throughout his high school years, college years and his profession. However, he felt that he really wasn’t where he wanted to be professionally in his sales career, which I found hard to believe because I was saying, “You’ve got pretty much everything going for you. How can I help you here?” He goes, “I want to get to the next level. I’ve been able to accomplish doing six figure deals, but I can’t close a seven-figure deal.” He couldn’t find out why. He had no idea. Every time he would be in a situation to do a seven-figure deal, it would never come to fruition.
We began to go through this process, the meditation, the journaling, the organizational habit done daily. Some other things that I had him doing as well. In time, I remember him telling me, he goes, “I didn’t remember this, but I remember my dad when I was young and I had a great relationship with him. He was always my biggest fan. He was always out there at my ballgames supporting me, but he would always be behind the backstop, critiquing me, to make sure that I was holding the bat up right.
I had my head down, my feet or shoulder width so that I had my eye on the ball. I had success with most of my life, but in that situation when I was playing baseball at nine to ten years old, every time I was in a position to advance the runners or perhaps win a game for my team, I would strike out, ground out and I did not obviously have success.” I asked, “Where did that come from?” He goes, “I don’t know. I didn’t even recall it until it came to my mind through a meditation and a journal that I did.” I said, “See, there you go.” It starts to leak out this information.
What we ended up doing is he ended up finding out that he had passive anger towards his father. He had a great relationship. His dad was wonderful. It wasn’t that his dad did anything bad. He internalized it in a way that worked against him. What happened here was every time he would be in a situation to do a seven-figure deal, for some reason in his brain and his mindset, he became that nine or ten-year-old kid again at bat and he would strike out. Not at the six-figure deal but the seven-figure deal. Until he was able to acknowledge the root cause to his limited belief that he couldn’t do a seven-figure deal and it was tied to his father with passive anger. Once he truly forgave, now we have awareness, we have acceptance, now it’s to forgive.
By forgiving the source, his father, for this limited belief that was established from this experience he had playing baseball, he was able then to not only forgive his father for his father but for himself and to truly release that out of his system. He would only experience passive anger when he was mainly in those types of situations where he wasn’t able to accomplish something and that all went back to his father. Once he was able to go through this process, we were able to tweak some of the habits and disciplines that he already had in place and add onto it. In time, he was able to move forward in the solution rather than this small problem that he had with this limited belief.
In four months he did his first seven-figure deal. People don’t realize how powerful it can be. Something very subtle like this could have tremendous impact on what you do every day in your business and your personal life. Some people have even traumatic experiences. I had a bad upbringing. I was verbally abused, physically abused, they know on some level that has a part. Unless that’s addressed, you can’t have true sustainable success at the next level by operating and managing the problem.
Overcoming Limiting Beliefs: Nothing changes until you change it. Change is a process.
It’s going to come up. We are designed to work through these things and that’s part of our journey. Forgiveness is important, if not for the person that you’re forgiving but more so for yourself. The reason we keep repeating situations over and over again is because we haven’t gotten the lesson. I’m a firm believer that if we continue to experience the same thing, it’s because we haven’t gotten the lesson. We haven’t applied it and we haven’t forgiven and accepted, gone through that process that you were talking about.
It’s a way to say, “Do you get it? Let’s do something to change it,” because nothing changes until you change it. Change is a process. The process works both ways. The process can take some time to address the problem, but also the solution is also within the process. When you focus on the process within the solution, by incorporating the right types of habits and disciplines that will reinforce that, in time you’re able to have more success achieving what you desire to go after. Whether that’s growing your business, taking that to another revenue level or an income level or you’re looking to make a difference in your community.
You want to improve the quality of your relationships. You want to have better wellness for yourself, maybe you’re overweight and now you want to drop 50 pounds. All of it ties back to a lot of this stuff. We have a choice. We have the choice of managing the problem or operating within the solution. This is where I want to create the awareness that you have that choice and you can operate within the solution. You just have to address the problem first.
I want to go back to earlier you had said that sometimes when we get into those unproductive emotions and in repeating these situations, we’re in the blame game. In playing that, it’s the circumstance, it’s the person’s fault and so forth. I know that when we have these limiting beliefs and these unproductive emotions, that we’re limiting our potential. A lot of times we will reinforce that and feed that with this blame and make it bigger because we’re looking for reasons why it is so.
Something that I sometimes have people to shift their mindset in that and I’d like to get your opinion on this. Instead of saying, “Why this is so,” and finding reasons why they’re making their selves right, it’s to say, “That’s bullshit, because,” and then look at the other side. Shift your perspective and prove all the reasons why what you’re telling yourself is not true.
That’s what I call the inner critic. The inner critic is always going to tell you things that you think are true about you but they’re not. The inner critic is very charming. It doesn’t matter what personality you are, if you’re an introvert and extrovert, it does not matter on the outside, but your inner critic is always very charming. It could be very convincing to let you know who you are, when in reality that’s not who you are. You have the choice whether to listen to the inner critic or not. The key is you can gain control over that by resolving the root cause to the source that creates those limited beliefs.
How do you feel coming back to the blaming, because so many people are in that space? How does using these excuses and the blame make us the victim? How does that get us out of having to solve the problem?
It’s always easy to come up with excuses or to blame somebody else. It’s a way that people when they’re angry or frustrated, they can let that out. They’re trying to express themselves to try to relieve the stress and the pain of the emotion or the unproductive emotion that they’re experiencing. Instead of doing that, because that’s energy that’s being wasted, is to own and take ownership and be responsible for your unproductive emotions. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It doesn’t mean that you’re not as good as the other person, everybody goes through this experience on various levels throughout their life and throughout their business career.
When they make themselves the victim, they’re taking away their power.
Transparency’s important. Transparency is originally looked at upon as a weakness, when in reality it’s a strength. That’s why you’re seeing a lot of leadership methodologies shifting towards transparent leadership than from traditional leadership. It’s being accountable. It’s being vulnerable. It’s letting people know that you’re a human, “Yes, I make mistakes. I’m not perfect, but I’m always striving to become my better self and to become better in my business by always looking for areas that I can improve upon and come from my authentic self rather than my false self.”
Are there any last parting words that you’d like to leave the audience with?
Stop beating yourself up. You might be in a good place in one area and not a good place in another and that’s fine. Maybe you’ve had some success in your business and you want to take it to the next level. Accept where you are and be aware there is a process that can get you to where you want to be. You’ve got to own it, you’ve got to commit to it and you’ve got to do the work. No one is going to be able to do it for you. There are great strategists and consultants like Penny where we’re going to be able to guide you to get you to where you want to be. In itself, we can’t make you do something. You’ve got to do the work. You’ve got to take ownership of that. If you’re looking to take yourself into a better situation, you’ve got to be open to good guidance and making the commitment to the process to make it work.
Thank you so much, Chris, for being here. There was a question about is it more important for you to believe in yourself or do you have to have other people believe in you?
It’s always more important to believe in yourself. Don’t get me wrong. If you believe in yourself, you’ll always have the right people that are going to be around you that believe in you. The people that don’t are not going to matter because you’re not giving them power, no longer they’ll have control over you. This goes to anything. It could be in your personal life or in your business. Even when you’re starting this process, if you don’t believe in yourself, it’s okay. Commit to the process because in time this process will lead you to believing in yourself because that’s all you’ve got is to believe in yourself. The people that will support you and believe in you will do that on a much higher level when they sense from an energy level that you believe in yourself.
[Tweet “If you believe in yourself, you’ll always have the right people that are going to be around you that believe in you.”]
Believing in yourself means also accepting that we’re not perfect. Believing in yourself doesn’t mean believing in perfection. It means believing that you have the potential to change. Anything that’s learned can be unlearned and they can be molded and changed, just like we’re changing every day. Chris, thank you so much for being here.
Penny, thank you. It was a pleasure to do this and I’m glad it was able to work out.
For all those in our audience, there were a couple of great nuggets in here that you can take away and the practices that you can do in the morning. Remember, this is all about taking back time. That means that by meditating in the morning, by using certain habits and disciplines that are going to work in your favor to help support you, it means that you’re investing time in yourself.
That time that you invest in yourself is going to open up your potential. It’s going to open up your peak performance. The questions that you asked yourself and how you perceive something, also in that acceptance of where you are and getting clear on where it is that you want to be. Those are all great things are going to help you to invest in yourself to Take Back Time.
Links Mentioned:
- Chris Salem
- The Stuff That Americans Are Made Of
- http://ChristopherSalem.com/about/
- https://www.Facebook.com/penny.zenker/videos/10217112798836660/?notif_id=1529522102825915¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic
About Chris Salem
Chris Salem has experienced much success over a 26 year career as a Senior Sales Executive selling media, aircraft, investing in businesses, and implementing residual income platforms. There also been major setbacks such as dealing with 12 years of addiction and battling with his own demons. Eventually, he found a way to address the addiction and issues that held him back from experiencing a higher level of prosperity where health & wealth are in alignment. This led to Chris’ mission to share and empower others to do the same so their businesses and personal lives could truly experience the meaning of prosperity on all levels.