Beliefs & Personal Agendas: Unlocking The Hidden Power Within

Over the past few years, I intensely focused on understanding my agendas and beliefs in my environment at work but also my home life. I decided to focus on these areas as I found myself experiencing a feeling of friction or tension when certain situations would play out. One such example where this happened was…

I was supporting a team within an organisation to help them create a high performing environment. After spending a little time observing the situation and working with the team to try and address the problems, I began to notice those feelings of friction and tension showing up. I decided to explore where this was coming from; this was early in my coaching career, and I hadn’t explored beliefs/agendas at that point.

As I didn’t know where these emotions stemmed from I felt it would be the best use of my time to become more aware of them arising in certain situations/environments. I decided to focus on deeply exploring what was happening at the moment those feeling where showing up. So to do this, I started to keep a journal…

Whenever I was in a conversation or meeting, and I noticed those emotions arising, I would ask myself the following questions:

1. At what point during the conversation did I first notice the emotions?
2. What was discussed at that point?
3. What was I telling myself at that point?
4. What did I want to get out of that particular engagement?

I needed to do this immediately after as I found otherwise the quality of the context captured faded rapidly. By doing this over a month, I had some great information to explore and a few recurring trends seemed to come up around each question:

1. For this question, it seemed the emotions started to appear when a challenge or opposing opinion would emerge.
2. For this question, it appeared this was happening when the conversation was around something I have a lot of experience/expertise in.
3. For this question, I was commonly telling myself at these points “I know this will help them succeed”, “I don’t think they are ready for this”, “they don’t care about becoming successful/high performing etc.”
4. For this question, it seemed that most of the time, I wanted people to go along with what I was proposing and share how they were going to do that.

From deeply introspecting about the above, I realised something that had been a part of me for a long time and given me some level of success, and that was the Belief:

“I know best”

Coupled with the Agenda of….

“Having people agree and go along with me”

From here, I wanted to go even deeper to understand the realms of Beliefs and Agendas so I could go beyond them to something more powerful. So what are Beliefs and Agendas?

Beliefs

Beliefs are the lenses through which we see the world and make senses of what is happening around us. They provide us with direction and meaning in the things that we do. These beliefs are built up over time and originate from what we keep hearing from the people around us. In the case of my belief, I understood that by having success and expertise in various areas of my life and being the person people went to for answers and support, created and strengthened that belief, that “I know best”.

Beliefs and Emotions

Our beliefs and our emotions are intertwined and deeply connected, that is why when the belief that “I know best” was challenged in those situations, certain emotions started to arise for me. On a scientific level, the information from these conversations was passed through one or more synapses, finally reaching an area of the brain for higher processing, like the frontal lobes. Our beliefs play a part in that filtering process and go on to shape how we make sense of the situation and act/react to it.

The good news is that these cell membranes are flexible and can be changed, so what is a belief for us today does not always have to be the case. We don’t have to be stuck in our beliefs and allow them to change how we think and act; change and growth is an inevitable part of who we are, and we can take control of these situations. It has to be our choice to do so however, as just like someone suffering from addiction if we want to change it then a personal commitment and desire to do so is essential, or it won’t happen.

I went on this journey for myself, and it was fantastic to keep journalling to explore the complete change that occurred for me. The emotional responses went from ones of friction and tension to calm and free.

The Big Belief Myth

One of the most common and biggest myths around beliefs is that they are static and engrained. This is far from the truth, we choose the beliefs we hold, and although we may not even know what they indeed are, when we can identify them, we have a choice as to what our next step will be as did I in this situation.

First name a belief, then tame a belief and finally re-frame a belief

There are some compelling stories out there of beliefs being changed and the emotional and physical effect this can have on people. One story that I found powerful was about a woman who was suffering from severe vomiting and nausea. She had undergone an examination to indicate there was a disrupted pattern matching the condition she complained of. She was then offered a new “Miracle Drug” which would, without doubt, cure her condition. She took the drug, within a few minutes, nausea had vanished, and she showed no signs of the issues she had before. The interesting thing is she was given a substance that was designed to induce nausea. That powerful belief from the doctor that this drug will cure this woman was taken on by her, triggering a series of biochemical responses within her body. In this case, the mere belief cured this person; this shows the real power that beliefs can have over us and how it’s much more fundamental than a thought process as they profoundly change who we are at all levels.

Personal Agendas

Personal Agendas are ways in which we plan a route to the desired destination. They are often fixed like a route on a SatNav, and people follow them to get to the destination they have set. There is also a causal connection to Beliefs and Agendas that I noticed for myself where they reinforce each other, and this can be a positive or a negative thing.

A Pre-Set Destination and Path

When someone enters a conversation or is focused on doing something, we all have a personal stake in it and a personal agenda of what we would like to see happen. This agenda then becomes our focused destination of travel, and we do what we can to ensure we follow the path we have in mind to reach it.

Having a clear destination of what you want to get out of this situation can be a good thing, and it can help us achieve something we want. However, when we pre-define the path for which to reach that destination, then this can be an issue.

While I was supporting the team, the destination we were heading for in many of the conversations and engagements was to help the team increase their performance. I, however, coupled this with pre-defining a path for how to get them there. At the time, I didn’t realise that the path I had believed was the right one was one that was taking them away from that destination. This path was even stronger in this situation because it was coming from my experience and also industry frameworks that say they give specific results.

It’s only by going through this experience and others like it that I have realised that the path we take to reach a destination is always unique and will also change. So pre-defining it is counter-intuitive, and if we are open to new possibilities and ready to explore, this is the strongest place to start from.

Motivated By Self Interest

Personal Agendas can also be intrinsically tied to our self-interests “What is in it for me?” The higher the self-interest in a personal agenda, the stronger it will be and the more likely that you will not to want to let it go. This also becomes a problem as Personal Agendas are an internal ranking strategy for the importance of doing something, the more it’s tied to our self-interests the higher the perceived rank and the less we consider what is the best thing to do for the whole.

I see a lot of people operating from the Personal Agendas and Self Interest standpoint, even more so as I am aware of it for myself, it has become much easier to tune into when others are doing it as well. When I was supporting the team, I also had my self-interests at play. I wanted to be perceived as having the answers so the organisation would retain me; I wanted to prove that what I know is right and it works and I wanted the leaders to see what I had to offer was valuable.

Going through this change, I could start to see how my self-interests were amplifying my thoughts and the personal agendas I was carrying. I began to see and understand that by letting go of these and creating new agendas and self-interests so many more possibilities could open up for the people I am there to support and me. I continued to explore until I arrived at the most important thing to me that I wanted to always focus on, which is Self-Interest.

To unlock the potential of the people around me, allowing me to feel relaxed and fulfilled.

The Beliefs and Agendas Relationship

Beliefs and Personal Agendas have a casual relationship and serve to amplify each other. We need to pay careful attention to explore our beliefs and agendas and understand if they are a positive or negative relationship.

In the situation I had with the team, I had my beliefs, personal agendas and self-interests so let’s explore the relationship here…

Belief: The more I believed that “I know best”, the stronger my agenda would be to have the team follow the path I had laid for success. As this is challenged, the stronger I believe people require a clearer path to follow.

Personal Agenda: The stronger and more detailed the path to follow becomes, the higher my belief is in “I know best”. As the path is not followed or challenged, the more I feel people don’t know what they are doing and “I know best” how to solve it.

Self Interests: The higher the self-interest is for doing this, the surer I am that the path is the best and most top priority to follow. As these self-interests become at risk, the more defensive and forceful I become about the path and the stronger I believe “I know best.”

The three areas above were negatively impacting me, and it was a causal loop in the fact that each area was connected in some way and just amplifying the situation. Now if I look today what these look like for me its a very different story…

Belief: I now believe that all things move from possibility to actuality. This now amplifies the importance of holding space to allow possibilities and choices to emerge.

Personal Agenda: My personal agenda now is to cultivate and hold a space that allows people to deepen their awareness and make conscious decisions around what they want to do next. This strengthens the belief that we move from possibility through awareness to actuality through choice/decision.

Self Interests: My self-interest now is to unlock the potential of the people around me, allowing me to feel relaxed and fulfilled. The higher this self-interest is present, the more relaxed I feel, and the more likely the space can be created to help expand awareness. As this self-interest becomes at risk of not happening, the more I believe in new possibilities allowing us to achieve it.

My Path To Change

Profound change around the areas of beliefs and personal agendas is not an easy thing to achieve, it takes time, and I used an approach of micro-changes leading to new behavioural patterns — a subject I will touch on soon.

Through my journaling, I had identified a pattern of specific conversations, meetings, events etc. that I could target to begin changing. Before each one of these, I would put a 10–15min placeholder in and do the following:

• Breathing: I would take three deep, slow breaths in and out paying close attention to how my body feels as those breaths go in…… and out…..
• Clear the Mind: As each breath exited my body I imagined those thoughts and agendas leaving with them and my mind becoming clearer and clearer
• Always Visible: I captured the essence of my new Belief, what I wanted my personal agenda to be and what my self-interest is and wrote them in my book which I would have open in front of me. When I felt those feeling arise, I would look at that page and say the words back to myself in my mind, reminding me of who I wanted to be.
• Reflection: I continued to reflect on this to understand where I went off track, what happened and how I could strengthen myself for the next time.

The practice above is something I have created and used for myself; however, I encourage you to craft your own.

This whole journey has changed me as a professional, a husband and a dad. It’s allowed me to tap into my inner potential for supporting people most sustainably and as powerfully as possible, and I continue my life in exploration towards my next change.

It would be great to hear from you all around…

What beliefs do you carry with you?

Are they positively reinforcing you and who you want to be? If not, how might you begin to shift that for yourself?

Who might you become if you were able to craft new beliefs for yourself?

#beliefs #agendas #change

[1] Biochemistry of Belief
[2] Personal Agendas & Self-Interests