Trevor Holmes explains how overcoming your limiting beliefs can help you find work life balance
Source: Pixabay. CC0 Public Domain
Many years ago, I was feeling unsatisfied with corporate life in the UK, so a close friend suggested I travel. This adventure led me to run a successful scuba diving business. For the first three and a half years, I worked 18 hours a day, 7 days a week and never took a day off. I needed work life balance.
I should have been happy to be a part of something so big and successful, but I couldn’t help but feel as though I had gone as far as I could. That there felt like there should be more to life.
In 2010, my only surviving grandparent died so I headed back to England to attend the funeral. I caught up with my friend, the one who had suggested I go and travel all those years ago.
He said that I looked grey, and as though I had, “had the life force sucked out of me”. I started to explain that although the business was doing well, I wasn’t happy. I felt unfulfilled, and my relationship was starting to fall apart. He suggested that I take a week-long practitioner course in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and that it would help me find some answers to my lack of work life balance.
During the NLP process, I learned about limiting beliefs and where they come from. I began to see how they were stopping me from the life I wanted.
Growing up, I remember hearing that, “you could only be successful if you put in lots of hard work”. I took that to mean that the more you worked, the more successful you would be. I thought being successful was measured in how much money you had or earned.
My limiting beliefs were what made me work around the clock in my dive business. I now know this. But once I saw this, I was able to address quite a few internal contradictions that I had. These were some quite challenging decisions that I’d been putting off for some time.
Walking through the process of NLP myself, I was able to transform and redesign my life. To make it into one that gave me the freedom and internal satisfaction that I’d been trying to find.
I know what dissatisfaction feels like. So that’s why I help others, so they too can address their limiting beliefs, find work life balance, and get the same level of freedom and personal satisfaction that I have. Sometimes, a simple shift in perspective is all it takes to set you free.