FREEDOM FRIDAY: First, unf*ck your beliefs
You can listen to the podcast version of this episode on Apple, Spotify, or this audio player:
"Your beliefs fuel your thoughts, which fuel your emotions, which fuel your actions, which fuel your results. Want to change your results? Change your beliefs, first." — Curt Mercadante
This episode brought to you by the wonderful USDA organic products at Cultivate Elevate. Click here to get 10% off their Shilajit or trios of mushroom powders, Ginkgo Biloba, and more!
Our "hustle-and-grind" society is always focused on ACTION as the solution to what ails us. But taking action without first changing your beliefs might simply lead you to be tired — while getting the same results you've always gotten.
In this Freedom Friday episode, Curt discusses this simple equation:
Beliefs = Thoughts = Emotions = Actions = Results.
Want different results? First, unf*ck your beliefs.
FULL, UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE:
Curt Mercadante:
This is the Freedom Media Network. This is the Freedom Friday episode. I am your host, Curt Mercadante. First, I want to let you know that this episode is brought to you by Cultivate Elevate. A couple weeks ago, we featured Matt, the founder of Cultivate Elevate, on this podcast and we talked about all the ways in which their organic, natural products can help you, and how those products have become a staple of my day. Each and every day, I take their 6mix mushroom powder with my coffee. I take their gingko beloba in the afternoon. I take their shilajit in the morning. Shilajit, whatever you want to call it. It helps my mood, it helps my gut health, it helps my joints, especially when I go hiking here at altitude. It also helps protect me from EMF radiation. If you think that's tinfoil hat time, go back and listen to that episode.
Curt Mercadante:
Guess what? In the show notes, or wherever you're watching this, there's a link. You can click that link. You go shop at Cultivate Elevate, guess what? You get 10% off their products. 10% off. Go click the link. Go to curtmercadante.life. There's a number of ways you can find the link. Click it, go shop, 10% off. You're welcome for offering you that deal.
Curt Mercadante:
Now, let's jump into today's episode. I teach people a lot of strategies, rules and tactics. One of the things I teach them to do is how to sell. I'm really good at selling. I'm really good at building companies from scratch. But here's the hard, honest truth. I can teach you all the tools and the tactics. I can teach you the strategies, the process that I know these things work, but they will not work for you if you keep fucking yourself because of your underlying beliefs. What do I mean by that?
Curt Mercadante:
I could teach you the best sales process in the world, but if you wake up each and every morning, thinking, "Sales is dirty. Sales is begging." That no one wants to hear from you. That no one's going to pay you what your worth. Guess what? That process ain't going to work. That process ain't going to work. You know, most self-help programs focus on the actions. I'm going to motivate you. I'm going to teach you tactics. I'm going to teach you tools. They focus on the actions.
Curt Mercadante:
But you've heard me on this podcast repeat a simple equation before: your beliefs fuel your thoughts. You attach emotions to those thoughts. It fuels your actions, which give you the results you want. If you don't like your results, most people focus on the actions. I'm going to hire a self-help guru, and we're going to focus on the actions, because they're going to motivate me. They're going to teach a process that focuses on the actions.
Curt Mercadante:
Well, when you focus on motivation and willpower, when you only focus on the actions, this is the reason gyms are full on January 1st, but they're empty at the end of the month because people only focus on the actions without changing their underlying beliefs that fuels the whole thing. I mean, this is the strong foundation. Without that strong foundation, your house crumbles. I don't care how good your process is. So, you got to change those beliefs. Otherwise, it's garbage in garbage out.
Curt Mercadante:
Now, what are some of those underlying beliefs? I've talked about them on a regular basis on this show. I have to struggle. I have imposter syndrome because I have success and I wasn't worthy. I talked to someone earlier this week who said, he actually said the words. Now, he talked about being emotionally resilient, but he also said the words that he expects stress in his life. He expects people to screw with him in his life. And I said, "Listen, with all due respect, you may be emotionally resilient when you don't need to be because your underlying beliefs are attracting ass holes into your life. Your underlying beliefs are attracting more stress into your life. Your underlying beliefs are attracting people you don't want into your life."
Curt Mercadante:
Because there's a simple, simple principle here, and you may believe it, or you may not believe it. And if you don't believe it, I ask you, "How's your program working out for you?" And that simple principle is you get that on which you focus on most. And if you think that's a cliche, I just have a question for you. How's your program where working out for you? If it's working out great and you are fulfilled in every face of your life, then you don't need this podcast. You don't need this podcast. If your health and fitness are excellent, if your relationships are excellent. And when I say your health and fitness are excellent, I don't just mean your masking shit with a bunch of prescription drugs. I mean excellent.
Curt Mercadante:
If your relationships, your mental, your physical, spiritual health is excellent and you don't struggle, you haven't worked on your underlying beliefs, then more power to you. You don't need any of what I'm talking about today. But the great majority of people, if they don't change your beliefs, they focus on their actions, and then they get so upset about the results.
Curt Mercadante:
Because, listen, you're not consciously thinking, "I want to attract bad people into my life." I have a former client who posts all the time about the crappy people he's attracting to his life. And he told me, "Kurt, are you saying that, through my thoughts, I attract certain types of people into my life. I don't know if I can believe that." I said, "I'm not just saying it. It's law. It is absolute law. If you focus on attracting the wrong type of people into your life, clients, other relationships, personal relationships, whatever, that's what you're going to get."
Curt Mercadante:
He said, "I don't know if I can believe that." I said, "It's law." But let's go two tracks. There's metaphysical and just the purely physical plane. Now, metaphysical, we've already talked about that. You focus on it. That's what you're going to get. You put your energy out in a certain type into the world, that's what you're going to get back. Now, if you can't buy that, okay?
Curt Mercadante:
Let's look at the physical part. Let's look at the physical plane. If you wake up expecting to attract crappy people into your life, do you think you're going to give off good vibes? Do you think you yourself are going to be attractive? If you wake up in the morning thinking none of the right clients, none of my ideal clients want to hire me. I always attract the wrong type of clients. And that's your underlying beliefs, do you think you're going to give off great and attractive vibes to potential clients? Hell no. Hell no.
Curt Mercadante:
I mean the same people who deny metaphysics will talk about, "I got a bad vibes from that person." Whether you want to call it metaphysics, energy, whatever you want. When you focus on something, you give off a vibe. Your brand is a vibe. How you influence others and how others influence you. And if you wake up with a shitty attitude, you're going to attract people into your life. It is that simple.
Curt Mercadante:
So, how do we fix our underlying beliefs? Well, in my freedom business blueprint bootcamp, my upcoming men's retreat, we start by getting you to do nothing. That's right. We get you to do nothing. You see the hardest thing for people to do is do nothing, is to sit still and bring themselves to zero. If you want to know the power of zero and what I mean by that, go back and listen to my episode in my interview with Dr. Joe Vitteli. We get to zero. Get up early in the morning, 4:30, 5:00 in the morning and sit in stillness. Don't have a goal for sitting. Don't sit there and say, "Oh, I'm going to be mindful. I am going to crush it. And I'm going to get my..."
Curt Mercadante:
No. Don't have any expectations. Just sit in silence. When your thoughts start going to your to-dos, your tasks, to things that make you anxious, just bring it back to your breath. Focus on your breath. Because when you focus on your breath, you're focusing on the present moment. And freedom. Lack of anxiety is in the present moment because you're not worried about the future, marinating in the trauma of the past.
Curt Mercadante:
Now, most of you, and most of my clients, and I don't want to sugarcoat this, the great majority of people, won't do this. They won't do the work of getting up early and sitting in stillness. Why? Because it's part of our subconscious programming that we got to go, go, go. We got to wake up. We got to drink our coffee. We got to get our adrenaline. We got to get motivated and jump into our day. That's part of our programming. If we're not struggling, we're not moving. If we're not struggling, we're not progressing. If we're not motivated, then we're not making progress.
Curt Mercadante:
And yet I know many of you struggle. You're motivated. You're stuck in quick sand in your not making progress. And then you hire some other self-help gurus to tell you how unmotivated you are, give them more money and they'll motivate you more. But you haven't changed your underlying beliefs. That's why every day I tell my clients get up early in the morning. We show them how. We have several techniques, emotional freedom technique. You might notice tapping [inaudible 00:08:21] We discussed with Dr. Joe Vitteli. Getting up early in the morning and being still. And yet most of you will not do it. Most of you will not do it.
Curt Mercadante:
You think the hard work is the hard work. And yet the hardest work I find is to get people to be still. The hardest work is to get people not to struggle because it's your underlying beliefs telling you, you have to. Last week, I told you about the programming I got from my dad. The work ethic, how tough he was. It was a great bit of programming. Wonderful. I got my work ethic from him. What I didn't learn was how to rest, how to relax, how to be still. I thought I had to go, go, go. And if I hadn't made a sudden change four and a half years ago and shut my agency down at peak revenue, I'd probably be dead today. And I'm not hyping that up.
Curt Mercadante:
And I'm not saying that to glorify the struggle. I'm saying it to glorify stillness. I'm saying it to glorify joy and relaxation. Let's start glorifying that intent instead of the struggle. People get so worked up on LinkedIn and other social media networks when I talk about the fact that you don't have to struggle. Why? Because they have embraced struggle as part of their story. They have to struggle. It's become part of their beliefs. And so, you know what? Struggle begets struggle. You believe you have to struggle, so you do.
Curt Mercadante:
Now, if you overcome struggle, if you've overcome challenges, that is absolutely wonderful. Struggle is not a competition. My good friend, Marcus [Aurelius 00:09:48] Anderson came on this program a couple years ago and said, "Adversity isn't a competition. We all go through adversity. But that adversity doesn't have to define you." Doesn't have to define you at all. When you think you have to struggle, guess what? You're going to. When you think you're going to wake up and attract people into your life, the wrong clients, the wrong partners, whatever it is, you're going to attract them.
Curt Mercadante:
But most people won't do the hard work of ease. The work, the discipline of getting up in the darkness, in the morning and being still. Not checking your social media, not checking your email, not thinking about to-dos and tasks of the day. And if your thoughts go to those, you're aware of those thoughts, but you flick them away like little pieces of energy, and you bring it back to your breath and you zero out.
Curt Mercadante:
I recently had a client, "How can I do that?" I mean, this client was wasting so much time, not able to service the one client he had, much less work on his own marketing, because he was looking at Twitter all day. He was giving his energy over to that. Well guess what? That's why he was anxious. Where your energy goes or where your focus goes, your energy flows. He was focusing on the noise of the world, and that was coming back and he was wondering why he wasn't making any money.
Curt Mercadante:
So, we have to focus on those underlying beliefs. Look at your emotions. If they're attaching to thoughts that aren't aligned with the results you want, look at your beliefs. The foundation is creaky. The foundation built on crap will get you more crap. It is that simple. And if you don't believe it, I ask you again, how's your program working out for you? When I talk about not having to struggle, people say, "You don't know what you're talking about." We don't have to go into my life story, but we all have bits of struggle, and I'm here to tell you, you don't have to.
Curt Mercadante:
"Well, I'm successful and I've struggled." Okay. Like I said, go take my free audio course on curtmecadante.com. We go through your freedom index, different parts of your life. There's 10 questions, and you look. You got to be honest with yourself. Am I free and fulfilled physically, mentally, spiritually, in my relationships? And if you're not at a 10, perhaps you're struggling too much. So, it all depends on how you, I guess, define the word success. If it's just money while sacrificing your relationships and your self care and your health, then if that's how you want to define success, I guess you're successful.
Curt Mercadante:
But if you only focus on the actions, which in our society is what we focus on, instead of the underlying beliefs. By the way, I'm not just talking about business here. I'm talking about in every facet of your life. Think about our current medical establishment. What do they focus on? The actions. You don't feel well? Here's a drug. Action to treat symptom. Instead of going into the foundation, what are your underlying beliefs that affect your lifestyle factors, your stress or anxiety? Stress and anxiety are the number one killer in the world today, whether or not you want to believe it. And all they want to do is treat it with actions. Here's a drug.
Curt Mercadante:
It's the same thing with self-help. You're not getting the results you want. Just focus on your actions. We got to go deeper. We got to go down to the surface. We got to go down into the bedrock of your beliefs, and most people won't do it. Will you? I'm challenging you today to do the hard work of sitting still every morning, becoming aware, zeroing out every day. Because guess what? By the time you're 35, 95% of your cognition is controlled. You're a robot. You're an automaton. It's controlled by your subconscious programming.
Curt Mercadante:
So, when you wake up and say, "I'm going to make a change today," that's your 5%. If you don't deal with that 95%, your subconscious is kicking your conscious mind's ass all the time. Again, this is why people start off with these big New Year's resolutions, and they're done by January 31st. They haven't dealt with the underlying beliefs and to deal with that. Every single morning, you got to deal with it. You got to sit in the quiet. You got to zero out. You got to bring your mind to zero, to the void.
Curt Mercadante:
And once you do this for a while, yeah, you can clear out and zero out decades of programming. But guess what? Every day we could pick up more detritus. It sticks to us like barnacles. So, every morning we got to clear it out, get back to zero. If you wake up with that fire and, "I'm going to be motivated and oh my gosh, but I'm nervous and I'm nervous. And I got to call these people." Zero it out. Go back to your breath. Bring it back to zero. Clear out the bogus beliefs, the limiting beliefs. Because if you don't zero those out, no amount of actions is going to do it.
Curt Mercadante:
Now, I'm a fan of action. You need the entire equation. Beliefs, thoughts, emotions, actions, results. But if you're only dealing with the actions, here's the deal. You can waste your money on me. I'm going to teach you how to sell. I know how to sell. I've helped people build their businesses. I've built my own. But no amount of skills, tactics, tools are going to make a [hill's bean's 00:14:42] difference if you don't change your underlying beliefs.
Curt Mercadante:
And I have clients right now who are wondering why they can't sell. "I'm doing the process." They're not doing the process. First of all, because they're not consistent, because they wake up in the morning, don't believe it's going to work. And when they do it, they give off crappy vibes, because they believe they're not worthy. They don't believe it works. They think sales is dirty. They think sales is begging. That's an underlying belief that is screwing their actions and they wonder why they're not getting the results they want.
Curt Mercadante:
Again, I don't say this to make you feel bad. I say it to light a little bit of a fire, to put out the fire every morning, to bring it back to zero. To clear out your limiting and bogus beliefs. And if you're interested in learning more, how to do that, we have a wonderful program. It's called the Freedom Circle. We have three live virtual events per month. Two workshops on everything from meditation to emotional freedom technique. We actually teach you the techniques. I personally teach you these techniques to clear out on a regular basis.
Curt Mercadante:
We also have a mastermind and we have our freedom circle vault. Go to freedommedianetwork.com. Click on The Freedom Academy. You can find the Freedom Circle there. We offer solutions to help you get back to zero. But whether or not you ask for my help to do it, or someone else, there's a lot of books out there how to clear out. Go get some of Dr. Joe Vitelli's books. The hard work isn't the hard work as you may think it is, related to actions. The hard work is actually every day, sitting in stillness, zeroing out those limiting beliefs. Because if you don't change the beliefs, you're going to keep getting the results, whether you like them or not.
Curt Mercadante:
Everyone, thank you so much for listening. This is the Freedom Media Network. I am your very grateful host, Curt Mercadante. And if you get value out of our podcast, our show, out of our videos, I would so appreciate it if you would go leave us a positive rating and review wherever you listen to our podcast. If you watched and joined the live stream today, give us a like, give us a comment. Please engage here. Your name, your city, your state, your town, your country, your continent, where in the world you're joining us from, whether you join live or you're joining the replay.
Curt Mercadante:
Again, thank you so much. I wish you an abundant rest of your day, weekend and life, in which you enjoy freedom, happiness, joy, relaxation, every single day. Thanks so much. Take care.