Welcome to Visionaries Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your bold and inspiring ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and a business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here. Hello, hello, and welcome to episode 10 of the Visionaries Pursuit podcast.
I am so excited to be with all of you today. Today, I'm recording this podcast from New York City. I am here because one of my brothers is running the New York marathon and I'm here to support him, cheer on him, and see all the amazing runners who are proving themselves, they can do something that for the majority of us seems impossible.
I love being in the city because it always reminds me really of the possibilities, of the creativity, of how boundaries are only set up in our minds. And that's what I wanted us to talk about today. And I want to start by sharing a story. Back in 2016, my husband, who back then was my boyfriend and I, were living in Chicago and we had made the decision to move to Los Angeles.
Andrew, my now husband, had just finished an almost two year sabbatical from his work. He had been traveling and taking pictures. And I had just quit my job and was starting this business, my own coaching practice. So let's say that income was not at the strongest and we moved to Los Angeles and rent was way, way higher than what we were paying in Chicago.
And we're looking at each other and being like, Oh my God, this is going to be tough. Our budget is constricted at the time. What are we going to do? And the first place we went is how can we save? Where are places that we can reduce our expenses, really live in a very frugal way? Because we didn't have that much income.
And every time we sat down to make a budget and say, okay, we are not going to be able to go eat in this restaurant, or we're going to have to restrict our travel, felt like my chest would be compressed. It wasn't a good feeling. It wasn't fear. It was more like limitation, um, scarcity. And I didn't enjoy that.
So I went for a run and when I was running, I started seeing these beautiful houses, these beautiful cars, so much abundance. And I started asking myself, who are the people who live in these houses and how are they different than me? And I had this idea of like, you know what? My way of living in the city is not by restricting myself, by upgrading my self concept, what I believe about myself.
So I can make the income to live in any of these houses, buy any of these cars and have to be worried about how much money we have and can we afford this or not. And that idea was revolutionary. Because all of a sudden I didn't feel constricted. I didn't feel scared. I started thinking of the possibilities of the ways I could make more money.
Of how I can learn more about financial systems, growing my business, growing my marketing, learning all of that gave me so much energy and excitement. Thank God, since then we have been making more and more money and being able to afford the life that we want. And it all started because of that idea of the self concept.
Self concept is a term from psychology that is the idea of the self. Constructed from the beliefs one holds about oneself and the responses of others. So basically, our self concept is what we think about who we are, what is possible for us, what are we capable of, and what is not. It has to do with our identity, how we see ourselves from the outside, how we show up in the world.
And all of us have our own self concept. And when we look at the life we currently have, that life reflects back the self concept we have today. So if you want to know what your self concept is, look at your relationships, at your job, at your money, at the levels of stress you manage, about how you take care of yourself, what boundaries you set.
You're all disciplined. All that reflects your self concept. Because if we believe we can only make X amount of money, guess what? That's the amount of money we're going to make. The self concept of a billionaire is significantly different. Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC. That's when you're going to make them.
Now, billion dollars sounds very far away for the majority of us. So I'm going to give you a couple of examples in a more practical way. One of the things I've done as a coach for many years is help people get a promotion or change their jobs and grow in their careers. So, let's say I'm talking with a client who at the moment is at the director level within a corporation.
What we start working on is for this person, for my client, to start acting as the next level as, let's say, a vice president. So we start looking, what are the different ways a vice president shows up to meetings? How is a vice president thinking differently about the problems at work than a director? How are they managing their time?
How are they setting boundaries? How are they allowing themselves to be visible throughout the company? And then I asked my clients to start living as a vice president. And guess what? Next time they're going to promote someone, they're going to look at my client because they are the person who's already acting as the vice president.
Or let me give you another example. Some years ago, I did this personal development class and they gave us an assignment in which wherever we went, let's say a networking event, a party that we were invited to, Instead of acting as, oh, I'm the guest, I've just been invited here, like feeling smaller or more shy.
The idea was that we had to show up to these events like we were the host, even when we were not the host. Our self concept during those events, party or networking event, was I am the host. And the moment that we believed, I am the host, the way we interacted with others was completely different. How we would greet new people, how we would make connections with people we didn't know, how we would hold ourselves, our energy in that space.
So these are very simple examples. But I want you to notice really when we tell our brain that we are one person versus when we're another one, our behaviors, our emotions, our energy, everything changes. So if you want to realize a vision that is way bigger than the vision you have today, you have to upgrade your self concept.
And one of my favorite things to say is what got you here won't get you there. What I mean is the personality, the self concept you've been developing for years to get to where you are is not what's going to get you to the next level. So, for example, for me, for many years, The way I got to do my job really well and get promoted and continue growing my career was by being reliable, the person who knows everything, who does all the things, who works very hard.
Well, there was a point in my career that even if I worked as hard as I could and I did everything by myself, I couldn't grow more because there were more hours in the day to be able to do all the things. And it was a time I got my first seam to manage. And all of a sudden everything changed. It wasn't the self concept wasn't like, I have to work hard.
I have to know everything. I have to be the best. It changed to. I have to rely on others, I need to train others, I need to communicate really well what our goals are, and I need to learn how to motivate people to get there. So think about the vision you have for your life right now and decide who do you have to be to get there.
I want to clarify something. There is a difference between predicting who you have to become. Versus declaring who you have to become. So predicting is, okay, the examples I get from my clients. I'm a director. I can predict who I need to become to be a vice president. Why? Because I can see other vice presidents, I know my past, I know my experience, I know my level of income, so I can marginally grow that.
And that is a way. But for many of us who are visionaries, who are trying to achieve something that today seems impossible. Predicting doesn't work. You can't think of, okay, You know, right now my business is making 150, 000, so, you know, predicting would be like, how can I make 200, 000? But if you want to go from 150, 000 to 10 million, you can't predict.
You have to declare who that person in the future is going to be. And the way you create this declaration is by using your imagination and your desire, not by looking at the past and what's possible. You have to allow yourself to go into a new territory, a white piece of paper, where there's nothing written, no rules, no past experience, no past knowledge.
No, I come from this family you are, or I've made this income. None of that. You have to go to that page and think, who is the CEO? Who is the founder of a 10 million business, and then use your knowledge and your wisdom to declare who that person is, how does that person show up? What does it say? What does it believe?
How does it dress? What boundaries does she know how to set and hold? What does she believe about money, about her business or project, about her customers or investors? You have to go to that future and declare a version of yourself That right now, today, you don't know, and it is very helpful if you sit down and you write it.
And it's even more helpful if you have someone help you do this, so you're not constricted by the limitations of your own brain. Now, that person who's going to help you has to either be way further ahead of you, or So, they are clear and more convinced that that future self exists or has to be someone like me who is trained to believe in the impossible.
And you have to go and you have to write down who is this person in the future. And then you have to bring that to your life today and start acting like that version of you. Let's say right now your belief system is you can do it all by yourself. And when you go to see that person in the future, you realize that that person is not Doing many things, but they're managing people.
So you bring that to the present time and you have to start managing people. And you start learning how to delegate, how to motivate others, how to build incredible teams. Or let's say you go to the future and that future self is very visible. They're visible at their workplace, they're visible in social media, they're visible in the world, they have a very clear opinion, they share it.
So guess what? If right now you've been playing it safe and not sharing your point of view, then you're going to have to start doing that today. Or let's say that future self. Is going into different rooms and believing she belongs there and she's going into those rooms and she's having conversations like if she was the host, like if she knew all these important people, then that's the way you need to start acting today.
So let me summarize here. Our self concept, how we see ourselves, what we think about what's possible and not possible about ourselves. If we want to create something that is marginally possible for us, then we have to upgrade our self concept a little bit. But if we want to create something that it seems so out there, so impossible for us today, We have to use our imagination to declare a future self concept and start living as if we were that person today.
The other important work that we need to do is to pay attention to all those limiting beliefs our brain has today about that future person. Well, as a woman, we don't get as many investors because of the product I want to sell. It's harder to find investors. Those are the limitations of your self concept today.
So you have to study with your, again, this is all made up, but it's powerful. With your imagination, what are the beliefs about that person in the future about getting investors, getting money, getting clients, selling their products or services? And then you have to work every day in believing the same thing that your future self concept believes about herself.
Remember that a belief is simply a thought that we've practiced over and over and over. A belief is not a fact. So let me actually explain a little bit about that. Facts are things we can bring to a court of law and proof. For example, the amount of money you have in the bank today. Or the weather, the temperature that it's in your city at this time, or something you said that was recorded in a camera.
A belief is none of that. A belief is a true, a subjective truth you have about yourself or about the world. So you don't have to look at the bank account today where you see you have, I don't know, 300, 000. You have to believe in your mind that you will have 3, 000 and start believing. That you are the person who can have that amount of money in the bank, that you are the person who will be leading this company into this new phase, that you are the person who other people want to work with, who see you as a leader, who want to join you in your vision and your project.
A belief is not a fact. A belief is a subjective truth, a thought. You've practiced and practiced so much that now you believe it. So you need to start practicing believing. What your self concept in the future believes, and that's a work you can do today. So to upgrade your self concept, go to the future, declare who you have to become, start living as if you are that person, and strengthening the beliefs that that future self concept has.
One last thing. When I say living as if. It's not pretending to be that future self, it's actually acting as if you already were. And why this is important is because when you're pretending, you're gonna feel like fake, uh, I'm not believing this. When you're acting as if you are going to feel uncomfortable because it's a new way of being, but you're deeply in your heart going to know that this is the person you are becoming.
Okay, so let's upgrade our self concept so we can live and become that vision we have for our future. I'll see you next time.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea and would love some support, let's talk. In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself. Your own thoughts and emotions as well as your team and your money. So you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality. Go now to carozuleta. com slash consult that is C A R O Z U L E T A dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me.
See you there.
