Are You Eating Burnt Toast?

Each of us is shaped by our family beliefs, expectations and behaviors. These are often passed down through multiple generations. "As you grow up, you're automatically enrolled in an eighteen-year course called "Life Beliefs." This course covers all areas of your existence -- religion, career, style, success, whom to marry or not to marry, pleasure, friends, health, and so on. This course is quite complete; we're in class daily and assigned homework by experienced teachers, usually our parents. The material they teach us has a lived-in feel because it's what was taught to them as children." [Stop Self-Sabotage, Pat Pearson]

I encourage you to reflect on your parents' beliefs: what they said as well as how they acted. Do their beliefs about career, money, self-esteem, love, or health show up in your life? Are your beliefs, whether passed down or unique to you, serving you and your business? Or is it time to develop more abundant and healthy beliefs?
Teri Hatcher, who plays Susan on Desperate Housewives, inherited some of her mother's beliefs. "Toast. You know when you're trying to make it and you just can't get it right? It's too light or too soft, then... totally burnt. Are you the kind of person who tries to scrape off the black? Or do you smother it with jam to hide the taste? Do you throw it away, or do you just eat it?
Up 'til now, I ate the burnt toast. I learned that from my mother. She always took care of everyone and everything else before herself. This habitual self-sacrifice was a mixed message for a child. It taught me that women should expect and settle for the worst and that even if I did get the golden buttered slice, it meant someone else had to suffer.

Then I hit forty. Did I really want to spend another ten years this way? The easy answer: no. The harder realization was that in order to change, I needed to stop eating the burnt toast. I had to be done anticipating failure. I had to be done feeling like I didn't deserve good things, tasty things. And I was. I didn't want to do it anymore, and I don't want other people to do it either." [Burnt Toast, Teri Hatcher]

WHAT ARE YOUR FAMILY STORIES?

How did your parents view money? Was it hard to get? Hard to hang on to? Hard to deserve? Or is it plentiful and available to everyone?

What were your parents' careers like? Did your mother work outside the home? Was work just a job or an expression of love and service?

What did your parents feel they deserved? The leftovers? The good food? Or the very best? Did they feel there was enough for everyone, or that any extra something they got diminished what was left for others?

How did your parents define what marriage meant? Was it a logistical partnership, where two people combined their efforts to raise a family with little emphasis on emotional satisfaction? Was it a love match? Did they communicate their needs clearly? Did one partner significantly compromise their wants, while the other partner didn't?

Your family beliefs influence your life, often unconsciously.

As women entrepreneurs, we want a specific level of success at a conscious level. However, our unconscious beliefs may be that we deserve something less, maybe even much less. I can almost guarantee that, in any showdown between your conscious and unconscious beliefs, the unconscious beliefs will rule.

If you believe you deserve only the smaller piece of pie, or that everyone else needs to be served before you serve yourself, those same beliefs will be reflected in your business success.

Change is possible and it's necessary, in order for you to be a successful as you want and deserve to be.