What holds you back, limits your personal power and gets you stuck? Due to the popularity of self-help books and concepts most of us are aware of how our limiting beliefs and assumptions about ourselves can play a major role in keeping us from moving forward and maximizing our potential. But what most people don't realize is how equally pervasive and powerful the unconscious negative assumptions we make about OTHERS can be, and how they can constrict and distort our own world as well as the nature of the relationships we create with others.
How can you uncover any unconscious negative beliefs and assumptions you have about others? And once you understand what your limiting beliefs are how can you change them? Here are some examples and tools that can help:
How Can You Uncover Your Unconscious Negative Beliefs and Assumptions About Others?
One powerful clue you can use to surface your unconscious beliefs and assumptions about others is to look for situations in your life where you honestly believe you want to act one way, but find yourself not doing what you think you want, or getting what you believe you are after. That is, look for situations where there is a disconnect between what you want and what is happening. Here are two examples:
Two years ago I worked with a client who sincerely wanted to be able to create deeper connections with others. She felt that throughout her personal and professional life she had been unable to "really connect" with people, and felt unable to honestly share her thoughts, feelings, experiences and values with others although she firmly believed that she wanted to. Her inability to create such connections had impoverished her life and created an ongoing and pervasive sense of loneliness. She was motivated to change but yet found herself unable to do what she professed she wanted to do, and clueless as to why this was the case.
Rather than asking her directly "why" she was unable to make such connections, or "what was getting in her way" - questions she would likely be unable to answer, I instead began to play back to her attributes about herself that she had shared with me over time and asked her to tell me, for each of her "natural inclinations" that I read back to her, what might be the assumptions she was making about others. These questions she was able to answer:
- Question: You say you feel like you always need to be in control. When you feel like this, what assumptions might you be making about others?
Answer: They want to seize control also and there will be a battle.
Question: You say that you like to sugar-coat things so as to avoid confrontations with others, or in an attempt to protect them. When you do this, what might be your assumptions about others?
Answer: That they can't handle the truth.
Question: When you say you don't feel comfortable sharing your intentions or asking directly for what you want, what assumptions are you making about others in these situations?
Answer: I assume they will say 'No' to me and not want me to have what I desire.
Question: When you don't make eye contact with people or set boundaries by silence or exclusion what assumptions are you making about others?
Answer: I assume that they don't want to connect with me either.
A second example was shared with me by a fellow coach. She worked with a client who was a consummate innovator and loved to come up with amazing gimmicks and gadgets that he wanted to patent and market, but for some reason it was not happening. He kept saying to himself, "I want to be able to do this - but I am not being successful at it." So the coach said to him, "I am curious - tell me about a successful entrepreneur - what would that look like to you?" Being caught off guard and unaware of the coaches intuition that prompted the question, the client immediately began to rattle off a list of seven traits he felt were shared by most entrepreneurs - including the belief that they are greedy and usually make stupid decisions. So the coach, after asking permission to read back the seven traits of entrepreneurs that the client had just listed, read the list and then posed the following question - "Why would you want to be a successful entrepreneur if this is your idea about them?" An "Ah Ha" moment for the client ensued as he realized how his unconscious beliefs about others had effectively prevented him from doing what he believed he wanted to do.
How Can you Change or Eliminate Negative Beliefs and Assumptions About Others Once You Are Aware of Them?
Clearly the first step in unwinding the negative impact of unconscious beliefs and perceptions of others is to recognize that you have them and the depth and breadth of your assumptions. But once you recognize them, the next logical question is, "Now what? How do I change these beliefs and assumptions?" Here are three tools that can be effective in these situations:
1. Awareness and Intent
The power of awareness and intent should not be underestimated as a remedy in this situation. Sometimes just the very fact of becoming aware of underlying limiting beliefs and assumptions, together with a conscious intent to not let them dominate your thinking and actions, can free you to make different decisions or take different actions.
2. Cognitive Reframing
Another way to deal with uncovered negative limiting beliefs and assumptions about others is to ask yourself some specific questions to help evaluate the situation and your reactions to it in a different context that will empower you to move forward instead of keep you stuck. The following questions can be especially useful in this instance:
- What is the evidence that these beliefs and assumptions I have are true?
What is the usefulness of these particular beliefs and assumptions? What are they costing me?
What are alternative beliefs and assumptions that might be equally true? What could I choose to believe instead that would be more empowering?
3. Taking Action in Opposition to your Negative Beliefs
Sometimes it is helpful to simply commit to take actions that knowingly contradict the actions that would seem to make sense given the negative beliefs and assumptions you have uncovered. Thus for example, in the case of the above client who discovered she had unconscious beliefs that others wanted to always be right, would not give her what she wanted, would not want to connect with her, etc. she could choose to reach out to someone, to share her thoughts, or ask directly for what she wants. Rather than first trying to mentally convince herself to change her beliefs, she could simply act as if other beliefs were true. The connection between beliefs/feelings and actions is not one way - it is not just that our beliefs and feelings drive our actions, our actions can change our beliefs. Thus, for example, when we see ourselves taking action to deeply connect with others it tends to move our beliefs and feelings towards a more positive interpretation of others - one that will help bring our thoughts into congruence and alignment with the actions we see ourselves taking.
The Bottom Line
It is not only the negative and limiting beliefs we have about ourselves that constrain our possibilities, our decisions and our actions - but also the unconscious negative beliefs we have about others. Often our beliefs about ourselves are highly visible to us - as they tend to make themselves known as the "little voices" in our heads that keep repeating their negative assertions; for example, "You are not strong, you are not smart, you are not good looking, etc." We tend not to have "voices" that proclaim our negative assumptions about others - instead these assumptions, while powerful, remain hidden and unconscious. Nevertheless they are just as damaging and deserve to be uncovered and dealt with.