01/05/2025
What unhelpful beliefs are loud in your head? 💬
These are the beliefs are louder than they need to be - although not necessarily objectively wrong.
Let's take two English speakers:
1️⃣ This speaker's unhelpful belief is "Fluency means speaking quickly."
2️⃣ This speaker's unhelpful belief is "Fluency means speaking correctly."
For both of them, these beliefs are really loud and they're impacting they're behaviour and they're confidence:
1️⃣ This speaker struggles to be understood - they speak really fast, meaning they sometimes stumble over pronunciations or throw words together in a random order, and people often ask them to repeat themselves. They've spent time trying to work on accuracy but - in the moment of speaking - all that goes out of the window. They feel terrible about their English because it's as if they're making no progress at all. They listen back to recordings of meetings they participate in and they cringe at the mispronunciations and errors. Over time, this really has an impact on their confidence and they've stopped speaking up as much and started to believe that working in an English-speaking environment isn't possible in the long-term.
2️⃣ This speaker struggles to know how to participate in conversations. They want time to think about what they want to say, and to construct it as best they can. But before they've had time to gather their thoughts, the conversation has moved on. When they do speak, they feel the pressure of eyes on them and feel as if they're taking up too much time but they can't seem to relax or speed up, even though they're capable of doing so. They've found themselves frustrated at work because people who are louder and more dominant are having their opinions listened to, even though their ideas are - frankly - not great. They feel like they have no impact on their job, their team or their career.
For each of these imaginary people, their unhelpful belief isn't wrong (the other person would benefit from taking it on board!) - but it's outsized, it's having too much of an influence on their lives.
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