Awards, Clouds and Limiting Beliefs - What Winning a Business Award Taught Me About the Power of Limiting Beliefs

I won an award this week. What a lovely thing!

I was contacted by a representative from the Prestige Awards a while ago and informed that their research team would like me to put myself forward for the Hypnotherapy Practice of the Year (Scotland) Award.

My first questions? What’s the catch and how much does this cost?

I’d say these are perfectly reasonable questions when you are cold called about an apparent award. We all know how these schemes work, don’t we? I was doing my due diligence. Nothing wrong with that. Once I’d been reassured that it was free and all above board and ended the call, I of course went straight onto their website and social media pages to check it out in more depth. All pretty reasonable actions wouldn’t you say?

Once I’d had my reservations quelled, I decided… what the heck. I’ve got nothing to lose. So I spent an afternoon completing the application form and sent it off.

Then I forgot all about it.

Yesterday, I was contacted by a representative to give me the good news that I’d won. My immediate response to this lovely news made me take note.

I could sense the anticipation on the end of the line as the rep built up to delivering the good news. The poor guy was expecting elation, perhaps a gracious, ‘Oh thank you so much!’

What he got instead?

‘Oh really? How many people was I up against?’

Now this is where it gets interesting for me.

I’d checked this all out after the initial call. I knew it was legit. I was reassured that I was up against 20 other candidates. So why the skepticism?

Did I really even need to ask myself that question?

It’s because they picked me.

If anyone else wins an award, I accept that they deserved it. I’m pleased to see that their efforts have paid off.

I haven’t won much in my life, but any time I do, this same pattern repeats. I play the award down. I’m skeptical. Why me? Did no one else enter? Is it a pity prize?

I know I’m good at what I do. I know I have skills and qualities that I admire in others. Deep down, I know all of this.

But even deeper down there’s an old learned belief: I’m not good enough to win.

Nowadays, the old ‘I’m not good enough’ patter doesn’t stop me from doing something if I want to do it. I’ve quelled it through many hours of tapping on different experiences from the past where I’ve been left feeling ‘less than’. But this experience raised something to the surface for me…

It’s not completely gone. There’s something else I need to explore. Something specific. Something about not being good enough to win.

So now I know where I need to go next with my own tapping practice. I need to investigate when I learned that I’m not good enough to win. Because that’s the specific underlying belief here. Not that I don’t deserve this prize necessarily, but that I’m not good enough to win in general.

This is the thing about limiting beliefs. They don’t appear as one whole, fully formed grey cloud hanging over you that can be fully dispersed in a single therapy session.

Instead, they appear in fragments. Sometimes the big, heavy cloud completely blocking out the sun. At other times, smaller, fluffier clouds, just taking the warmth and shine off a little.

In EFT sessions, we work on fragmenting that ‘cloud’ by tapping on as many aspects of it as we need to in order to disperse the belief it is holding entirely. It’s about doing the investigative work with a practitioner to get as specific as possible. We’re not just tapping on the broad belief of not being good enough; we’re exploring the specifics of this belief and tapping on those.

I’ve broken up that big grey cloud by doing my own work so that it doesn’t put me completely in the shade any more. I’ve tapped on as many specific aspects of this belief as I can think of so now I no longer accept the belief as strongly.

But yesterday, one wee fragment of that cloud came along and blotted out the sun. I’ll tap on that so that I can enjoy my win.

Thank you to Prestige Awards for recognising the hard work I continually put into my business.

And to Kade, the rep who called me yesterday, my apologies if I didn’t immediately sound thrilled. It’s most definitely a ‘me’ problem! I’ll work on it. 😆