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Chapter 3

Break the Chains

The programming that drives you, from your earliest experiences to the relationship dynamics that you’ve grown accustomed to, contributes to who you are and how you show up in the world. All patterns, whether positive or negative, have one thing in common—they lull you into autopilot mode. They are such a part of your daily life that you can pass through them unconsciously, not registering the mental and emotional impact a pattern is having on your life. Consider how you get to work each day. When you first started your job, you paid attention, as the drive was not quite second nature yet. You may have experimented with a couple of different routes to see which was better from a traffic and convenience perspective, then you likely never looked back. The best way was settled upon, and, from that point on, you’ve gotten to work the same way each day for days, weeks, and then years, the daily commute on repeat in a way that barely requires you to be conscious.

Your commute to work is a benign example, but what about the patterns that have real impact? If you don’t become conscious of their presence and begin to examine where your default mode of operation is cruising along, you remain unaware of the ways in which how you operate isn’t serving you and, in some cases, is actively sabotaging you.

Patterns can show up in a multitude of ways. They can be internal and subconscious, appearing as habitual ways of thinking, feeling, or responding to the world. Patterns can also show up in relation to others in the form of repeated experiences, personality types, and relationship scenarios. They are closely tied to your limiting beliefs and to the interpersonal dynamics you tolerate on a regular basis. Patterns are essentially the expression of your programming, and whatever remains unaddressed, you will find yourself repeating. The programming feedback loop will go on and on until you consciously put a stop to what isn’t working for you and replace the pattern with a conscious, healthy way of showing up.

Is all programming bad? No, not necessarily. There is likely some programming that appears to work in your favor, at least on the surface. For instance, if part of your programming is that you don’t quit, that has played a huge role in your high-achieving mode of operation. However, there is a potential dark side. If you equate quitting with failure, it will be much harder to step away from something, even when it’s in your best interest to do so. As you begin to identify and recognize patterns of thought and behavior, it’s imperative that you resist the urge to make snap decisions about whether a pattern is something that hurts or helps you (or some of both) before you’ve had time to consider all the angles.

Go Inside Your Head

Revisit your limiting beliefs from Chapter 1. How are they making an appearance in the form of patterns in your thought processes? Are you a worrier? What do you worry about? Are you afraid to fail? What do you tell yourself about what failure means? Do you avoid confrontation? What are the words in your head when you’re backing down from a discussion or deciding not to put in your two cents? When something goes wrong, what is your mental response?

Let’s consider worry to illustrate how a limiting belief can turn into a repetitive pattern.

Limiting belief: Nothing ever goes my way.

Thought: What a beautiful day. The baseball game will be fun.

Worry: What if it rains? It will have been a waste of time to go all the way out to the field, and what if the rescheduled time isn’t convenient? I really don’t want to have to go to a game this weekend, we have too much going on.

Pattern: Habitually expecting the worst and following that thought to its doom-and-gloom conclusion.

On the surface, this may seem like a fairly benign cascade of thoughts. If you take out the baseball-game scenario, you can see the underlying danger in the limiting belief and its associated pattern:

Nothing ever goes my way = I expect the worst

Worries big and small can reveal a wealth of information to you about your approach to life. When you apply the pattern generally, you can see the theme and how damaging it is to be in the cycle. How will you ever reach your full potential if you expect the worst? If you believe that things don’t go your way, you not only convince yourself of a sucky outcome, you invite it.

Let’s do this again with respect to self-worth to further demonstrate the impact of the link between limiting beliefs and patterns.

Limiting belief: I lack the discipline to follow through.

Thought: I want to create a process for my organization that will help streamline the way we interact with our clients.

Worry: I won’t get the support I need. This is a big project that requires the input of others. Maybe I’m not up to the task.

Pattern: Retreating from opportunities due to fear of failure.

In this case, a programmed belief that you tend to leave projects incomplete due to a lack of discipline leads you to either back away from a challenge altogether, or leave it half-done because you lack the discipline to see it through. The impact of this limiting belief/pattern combo is:

I lack the discipline to follow through = I will fail

For each of these examples, you could plug in all kinds of different scenarios and still reach the same ultimate conclusions about how your limiting belief holds you in a self-defeating pattern. The extent to which these patterns are insidious and subconscious makes them difficult to identify. The key to that identification is to wake up. You must come out of autopilot mode, become conscious of how the things you tell yourself lead to the patterns that bind you, and strategically break down the thought process that keeps you stuck in the cycle. We will get into how to do that a little later on.