You Are Not Broken: Erasing Beliefs That Hold You Back

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Hi, and welcome back to the Make Time For Success podcast. This is episode number 213. Today, we're gonna talk about why you are not broken. And this is such an important topic to get through because I think the single biggest impediment to moving faster towards our goals, to making our goals happen, to leading the lives that we want to lead is the feeling that there's something wrong with us, that we're not good enough, that we're not there yet, that we don't have what it takes. You get what I mean. This might sound familiar to you. If it does, stay with me. Let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:47]:
It's gonna be really good. Hi. I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time For Success podcast. So in this episode, we're going to tackle the very interesting topic of why you are not broken and how to address things like self doubt and feeling like you need to be perfect, and all the other things that tend to complicate our path forward.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:00]:
That's what we're going to address today. The thing that motivated me to create this as a topic today was the fact that I just finished hosting a live vision boarding workshop. It's the beginning of 2025. The newness of the year is still with us, and I enjoy hosting these vision board workshops because it is pure creation. It is pure imagining what the future can hold. It is really holding your own positivity for yourself and your future really tightly and closely, and it's such a good exercise to go through. If you've never created a vision board, maybe this year is the year that you decide. Let me get those scissors and old magazines out if you have old magazines, or let me just go through Google Images and download a few that I'm gonna put on a Canva board online and create the vision for myself that I wanna see for 2025.

Dr. Christine Li [00:03:12]:
This is my invitation to you to think big about this year through creating a vision board or through journaling your wishes for the year. Whatever floats your boat, whatever is your best vehicle for doing this kind of work at the top of the year, let's have you do that this year because the year is really wide open, and your spirit and your future are wide open as well. So what happened in the vision boarding workshop was very typical. Typically, I start by advising people that the first step to creating a new vision is to let go of all the stuff that is holding you back, all the stuff that you need to forgive yourself for, all the things that you might have regretted not doing so well, not starting, not completing, that entire laundry list of stuff that is making you feel not so good about yourself. That's the first step. So make sure to just let go, gently let go all the thoughts that you have about the last year. Start off feeling like it's okay to start off fresh. You can make that a new belief every day of this year.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:36]:
Every new day is another brand new slate for you to write on, a brand new canvas for you to mark up. It is okay to start new anytime that you want. So we started off by doing a practice of self forgiveness. Then I did a tapping exercise with the attendees of the workshop, and what we do in tapping in general is we release the old stories that are holding us back and we invite a more powerful, more complete, more confident part of ourselves to take over and to move forward with this new story that we write for ourselves. And what I noticed this time in this session this year was that after doing those initial prepping exercises of forgiveness and tapping, I felt in my heart that what we were looking at was completely a wide open future, that we had arrived as a group at the workshop at a moment where we all got to think, wow, what do I want? How many things? What people? What kinds of travel? What kinds of ascension do I want to see for myself this year? How do I want to vibe? How do I wanna look? How do I wanna dress? How do I wanna eat? All of these choices and all of these decisions are all of a sudden open. There are no restrictions. There's no sense that we need to play small. It's a vision boarding exercise after all.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:25]:
So we get to think of ourselves magnified of ourselves with no limits, and I think it's such a wonderful practice to think of yourself as someone living without limits. So let's dig into this a little bit more deeply. I think the problem that most people face is that they think that they're broken in some way, that if they come across any moment of difficulty or struggle, that there must be something really wrong with them, or they must be a failure of some kind, at least temporarily, but I think that kind of belief system that there's something inherently broken inside of me is very problematic. It's problematic because it causes us to stop and doubt. It causes us to stop and delay. It causes us to stop and then feel badly or unsure of ourselves. And guess what? If you wanna create something, the best way to start is with full powerful 100%, 1000% belief that you're the person ready and willing and capable of getting the job done. So if we're running around privately thinking that we're broken in one way or maybe more ways than one, how much time are we wasting? How much harder is our path towards creating anything, whether it's an essay or a community project or something for your kid or filling out your taxes for the year, everything is gonna be that much harder when your energy is somewhat constrained by your self doubt.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:33]:
So let's put our thinking hats on together and think, how do I get over this feeling that I'm not 100%, that I'm not fully myself, that I'm not fully in my power. And I think there's so many different ways of figuring out how to answer those questions of what do we do now, what do we do to make ourselves more whole. For one, you could just start by doing a vision board. That's an exercise that's really positive and can really fill you up. But there's so many other things that you can do. You can be your own best coach. You can say to yourself, you know what? That doubt, that's just a time waster. Every time you think, oh, I should pause, just think to yourself, that's another time waster.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:26]:
That's just me trying to be perfect. That's just me trying to be careful all the time. I'm reminding myself that I have what it takes to get myself through any obstacle, any challenge, any hurdle, any hiccup. It's gonna be okay. And the more I operate as my whole highest self, the better it's going to be. So let's go. And I think I should spend some time while talking to you reviewing all the reasons why we should move away from feeling that there's something broken about us. I feel that when we think that there's something broken or we worry that we're gonna be found out as broken, a lot of things happen.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:16]:
1, we feel broken, which really isn't a great feeling. We are overcome with a feeling of inadequacy or a fear of being judged. We start feeling negatively about ourselves, things like we're disappointed, we're embarrassed, we're frustrated. All of those negative feelings tend to come in clumps. Right? And when you feel like there's a permanent part of you broken, you're gonna be inviting those negative feelings to come in anytime you're not paying attention, anytime you're trying to start something new. So let's just clear your mind of the belief that there's anything wrong with you at all, because there's not. So the other thing that happens when you tend to feel like there's a part of you that's broken is you start to look outside of yourself for validation a lot. So that means approval from other people.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:12]:
That means you're really oriented towards having really great grades or the next piece of praise in the group, that you're always seeking some confirmation that you are okay. And guess what that is? That oftentimes is a big time waster because you could get the job done even without the praise. You can move forward even without the praise just if you allow yourself to put your feet on the ground and to keep moving. It's when you pause and say, oh, am I good enough, That more time tends to get wasted and you start to doubt yourself, and then you start to leave things unfinished. And, again, that cycle continues where you feel like something's broken and it's you. So let's get rid of that pattern totally. When you tend to feel like there's something broken inside of you, you tend to be more sensitive to criticism, and you tend to be on the lookout for criticism all the time, So that makes you feel and seem like you're not confident because you're afraid. You're literally afraid that you're not good enough, so let's get rid of that pattern.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:28]:
And, of course, there are even more harmful things that happen when we feel like there's a part of us that is broken. We start looking for things to fill the hole inside of us, the feeling that there's something missing. So you start maybe scrolling, or maybe you start choosing other types of time wasters. You start to do numbing activities, things that make you not focused, make you distracted. And when things get really painful, perhaps you might seek things that are not so good for you, like different addictive behaviors, like drugs and alcohol, self harming, things that maybe you do because you are saying to yourself, well, I'm broken anyway. What's the use of my trying anymore? Or trying to climb out of this feeling that I'm not good enough. So, again, this list is put together to encourage you to just clear out the feeling that you have something to fix inside of you. I want you to just do the leapfrog right now and decide it's the beginning of the year.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:51]:
I have a brand new 12 months ahead of me. I am looking for an uncomplicated year. I'm looking for more for myself this year. I'm looking for more satisfaction, and that's not gonna come from tearing myself apart or from seeking other people's approval all the time or from calling myself names when I happen to fail or not be completely what I expect myself to be. And what you're gonna do with that wholeness inside of yourself is you're gonna treat yourself a whole lot better. You're gonna coach yourself a whole lot better. You're gonna perform a whole lot better because all of this stuff goes together. When you operate as your whole self, you are so much more brilliant.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:48]:
You are so much more powerful. You're so much more creative. You're so much more yourself, and that is going to make you more a magnet to what you want. That's why vision boarding, that whole exercise, can be really awkward at moments where you are kind of laughing at yourself for thinking, oh, wow. It's so funny that I can think that I can do that, that I can be that kind of person. But you know what? It's not so funny because you really can be that person. A part of you already is. If you can see the vision, if you create the vision, even if you're laughing at yourself for seeing that vision, it is your vision.

Dr. Christine Li [00:15:38]:
It is a sign that your intuition, your being already knows that it's possible for you. So let's spend whatever time we need because this is so important to eradicate anything that is holding us back, anything that is making us think that there's something wrong with us, that there's something broken, that there's something that we need to wait on. Because, really, when we take action, when we have a clear plan of what we want and desire for ourselves, there is literally nothing that can stop you because you're gonna be persistent. You're going to be consistent. You're gonna be strong this year because you've decided, you know what? I'm gonna make time for success. I'm going to not waste my time anymore convincing myself that it's not possible because I know that if I stick with it, that if I act with my whole self and my focus and my concentration and my will and my creativity and all the other skills that I have, that I am gonna make my visions come true. I really hope that this episode inspired you to believe fully in yourself, to help you begin a pattern and a habit of challenging any bit of self doubt that might come through in your brain or in your heart or if someone starts to doubt you and it's someone outside of you starts to challenge you, that you get to say, you know what? I'm okay. I'm actually more than okay.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:27]:
I'm ready to go. If you would like a worksheet that goes with this episode to remind you how to set up a vision board and how to believe fully in yourself and stay away from any ideas that you are broken, I invite you to go to maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/whole. Again, it's maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/whole. That's w h o l e. Alright? I will see you in our next episode, which drops next Thursday, and thank you so much for doing this important work with me. I can't wait to do more of it starting next week. Take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time For Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:19]:
If you enjoyed what you heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website, make time for success podcast.com, for past episodes, show notes, and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name Send me a d m and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. Talk to you soon.