Beyond Your Limits with Dr. Christine Jehu

132. COACH CORNER: Where are you placing limits on yourself? Digging deeper journal prompt

• Dr. Christine Jehu

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The final of our three digging deeper episodes for the journal prompts to start the year.

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Speaker 1:

What does it look like to live a life beyond your limits? Hi, I'm Dr CJ, a copy obsessed psychologist coach and your personal virtual mentor. Too many of us are holding ourselves back, placing limits on what's possible and believing the false stories in our head that say we can't accomplish a goal or a dream. Together, we will rewrite the stories holding us back, tackle barriers and limits and build an incredible foundation for going after our goals and dreams. I'm here to support you, to challenge you and to coach you through and beyond your limits. And a quick caveat while I am a psychologist, this show is not therapy or a substitute for mental health treatment. Please connect with a licensed mental health provider for those needs. Alright, are you ready to live a life beyond your limits? Let's get after it. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Beyond your Limits. I'm your host, dr CJ, and we are digging into the third and final journal prompt offered from the first episode of the year, episode 129. And this episode is all about digging into our limits and conscious and subconscious beliefs, and so I'm not going to give too much more of an intro, because we dig into it in this episode of Diving Deeper. But I want to say something real quick before we get into the episode. Keep an eye on your podcast feed on Thursday morning, because I am dropping a huge announcement about the project that I have been teasing you, that I have been working on behind the scenes, and I have an incredible episode coming up that's going to tell you all about it and some behind the scenes and what's to come. So mark your calendar, set an alarm, do all of the things, because it's going to be so great. I cannot wait to. Sorry, I just really screamed in your ear. I'm so excited, I'm so excited. Okay, I can't wait to hear what you think. Let me know what you are getting into with these journal prompts, what you're uncovering, what you need from me. We're in this together and let's oh, I just cannot hide my excitement for what's coming up Thursday. Anyhow, I'm going to stop blabbing. We're going to get into this Digging Deeper episode for the journaling prompts about limits. Okay, we are digging a little bit deeper into the third and final journal prompt offered from episode 129, when we were looking at what's to come in 2024 and looking at some of these journal prompts around discovery for the new year. So today's journal prompt is in what areas are you placing conscious or subconscious limits on yourself, and what would it look like for you to take a step or two beyond those limits in this year?

Speaker 1:

When I think about this journal prompt, I am reminded of the folks in my personal life, the folks that I work with in my clinical practice, where we have limits that have either been placed on us. Some of us have had people tell us you will never XYZ, or we've been rejected from a job or school or a group, whatever it is. We take that to mean that we're not enough or we're not capable, and Sometimes these are really explicit and it can change the pace and the trajectory of our life. Other times are a bit more subtle and it's that little voice in the back of our head that, when we get an idea, is kind of knocking on the door and whispering no, you can't, I Don't believe in you. What do you? Who do you think you are? You don't have the skills for this, and that comes from somewhere right. People have either said that to us or we've overheard it, or Maybe you have never seen a person who Looks like you or has an identity variable that you have out doing the thing that you're doing.

Speaker 1:

Nobody in my family had a PhD when I started to pursue it and and. So I was out in this on my own and didn't know what I was doing and and and didn't, hadn't really seen other than the, the faculty that had been teaching me in an undergrad. I didn't know other people who had PhDs in psychology or PhDs in general, and so I didn't. I didn't necessarily know. And then I was going into into Got my masters in sports psychology and then I was shifting into the clinical round realm and applying to, to counseling psychology positions, and I knew that I had to make the argument for why I deserved to be there, because I didn't come with that, that classical, that classic Path, so to speak, right. A lot of people had done a masters in counseling or had XYZ experience and credentials, and mine was different and the world of sports psychology was still booming, and so I could have Listened to that little knock and the little little voice in the back of my head that says, hey, you don't belong here, this is non-traditional, nobody's gonna understand you. But I, you know, I it was there and I was really grounded in what I wanted to do. Now that is an instance where I was able to override, because my desire and my vision for what I wanted to do in my life was stronger than that limit that was trying to sneak up and Hold me where I was.

Speaker 1:

In other times in my life I wasn't as successful and often you know it was it was in my sport career. It was a lot with soccer and Very actively comparing myself to other people and saying, well, I'm not as good as so-and-so, or I didn't have this training. I didn't get Selected to be on this select team. I was on you know the B team or whatever. And I started placing those limits on myself. Now, when I was with my team, the teams that I was on, I was, I was thriving because I was one of the higher performers on that team. But I had been told you're not good enough to be on this advanced team. And by saying you're not good enough, they also are saying we don't see the potential in you, we're not going to bring you here and develop you so you can be on this lower level. And I started to believe that and I placed limits on myself and I didn't go after growth and development Because I was scared and because I let those voices and those limits win, and so my encouragement for you in this year is why not lean into understanding what some of those conscious or subconscious limits are?

Speaker 1:

I think oftentimes we run from them because we start to feel bad about ourselves and get in this process of like beating ourselves up for those Limits that are there when Oftentimes we didn't create them for ourselves. Sometimes we do, sometimes we do, sure, but I could argue with you that it's actually the anxiety that's creating them and it came from somewhere. I think when you look back at when we're kids, we fall and we get back up and we try again, or something doesn't work and we keep going and we persist because we don't have the created limits from the adults around us or from failures. We don't really even have the language for failure yet and so if we could go back to that place of curiosity and understand where it came from, we can start to diffuse it. So one of the things that I ask clients when they're talking about, I'm gonna say, voices in their head, not from a psychotic perspective, but from a. This is the self-talk that I have.

Speaker 1:

I'll often ask who's voices it in and they're like what? And I'm like no, listen to it, whose voice is it? And nine times out of 10, the voice is of someone else and it's not actually their own voice. And if it is their own voice, I'll prompt them with has it always been your voice? Because oftentimes it starts as the voice of someone else and morphs into our own voice, because we start believing it Right or we start integrating that limit into our sense of self, into how we view and experience the world, and so then we start to think that it's about us, when really it came from somewhere else.

Speaker 1:

So if we can start to identify hey, this isn't my voice, this is XYZ teacher, or this was my parent or my sibling, we can start to create some distance and some countering to what that voice is telling us. And then oftentimes I'll work with clients to say, okay, so what would you want it to say? And they give me the language. I'm like okay, so can we counter it with that? And they're like no, not yet. And so I'll offer okay, well, what if you think of me telling you because there's a trust there? And so if we put it in someone else's voice that we trust and believe, and we start to hear that person's voice in the counter to the limit voice that's going on our head, then we can start to create movement and start to challenge that limit, start to find the belief within our self, even if it comes from somebody else's voice, and then in time, when we've taken action and we've had more experience, that voice starts to shift to our own. The number of times I've had clients say to me I was in XYZ situation and then I heard you telling me this, and then a couple months later it was in their own voice.

Speaker 1:

So let's understand. What are those voices? What's that self-talk? Who is it and how can we start to counter it so that we can start to take steps beyond our limits? But first we have to meet the limit and start to challenge the limit, and then what can we do to start moving beyond? How can we stretch ourselves to move just a little bit beyond where we've been holding our self back, where we have put that wall up, where we have shut the door?

Speaker 1:

What would it look like to approach the door Then? What would it look like to knock on the door? Maybe we're knocking and then sliding over to look at it and peek in the window of where we want to go, start to see what's on the other side. We open the door and we peer in the door. Maybe you stick your head in we're not fully stepping over the threshold, but you peek your head in Okay, what's on the other side? You can start preparing for what's there. And then we approach the door, we knock on the door, we open the door and we take the step through. And then, once we're in there, we start seeing what that's all about. Right? There isn't this expectation that you see a door and you walk up and you bust through and you're like I'm here. That's not realistic. That's not where we're at. That's not what I'm asking you to do. I want you to understand where are the doors, what have the doors been communicating to you? Which doors are you open to approaching? And then, what could some of those steps look like?

Speaker 1:

And, as we talked about on the last Journal Prompt episode, we're not approaching all of the doors at once. Pick one or two and start taking those steps. This is not all or nothing. This isn't one of those things where we're gonna have an automatic button and we're opening all the doors. We're gonna approach, we're gonna grow, we're gonna learn, we're gonna stretch, we're gonna stumble. Yeah, we might fail. That door might slam right back in your face, but it's like, okay, you opened it, so what do we need for the next time? And then the next time? Okay, so let's take a look at where we're placing those limits, understanding where those limits are coming from, understanding the self-talk, starting to challenge it. And then let's go approach those doors, approach those limits and see how we can start to create shifts and be empowered.

Speaker 1:

All of this, all of this, is about empowering ourselves to live the life that we desire, to look at what's unique about us, to grow in our foundation and our strengths so that we can approach the things that we really desire. We can start to weed out what really doesn't matter to us. If there are limits in your life where you're like that don't even matter to me, then drop it. Like, why give that space and time in your head? Drop it, you don't need that. Sort out what's important and let's approach and go after the things that matter most to us, that are going to help us live that life that we truly desire, that we deserve and that we are worth having.

Speaker 1:

Okay, friends, as always, I'm here to support you. I love you. Let's stay connected. Text me, dm me. However, you know how to get in contact with me. I wanna hear what you're working on. I wanna hear your insights. Share them with me. Share them with me. This is more exciting and more powerful when I hear from you about what your takeaways are, how you're making shifts in your life. That shit lights me up and keeps me going and keeps this content coming for you, content that's impactful. If I don't know what you're struggling with or how you're wrestling or what's going on, I'm just over here talking and making shit up that I care about, but I wanna talk to you about what you care about, so let me know I can't wait to connect with you and encourage you and celebrate you and all of the things. Alright, friend, I love you and we'll talk soon.