Phaim (fāme) — Larry Becker’s Blog

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

Posted on 09 February 2010

Yesterday’s blog post was about limitations we either impose on ourselves or limitations we let others impose on us with misguided assessments about our abilities or lack of abilities based solely on quick, inaccurate, surface assessments of someone. Often these are based on prejudice but they can come from other places as well. Today I want to spend a little time telling you about people who have overcome self-imposed limitations or even prejudice, to achieve incredible success. Some of these stories are common knowledge among business seminar attendees, while a few others are a bit less known. The important thing here is that, I know some people are inspired by the successes of others. I know I am.

Harland Sanders had achieved a bit of recognition over the years as a cook, but nothing too earth-shattering. When he reached his early 60s, the town his restaurant was in, was being passed by the new interstate highway system and he knew his business wouldn’t survive. He sold off everything he could, paid his bills, and was forced to live off of his monthly Social Security check of $105. At that point all he owned was a popular chicken recipe, so he traveled across the country by car, cooking batches of chicken for restaurant owners and staff. If they liked the chicken, he gave them the recipe for a handshake deal promise that he would receive five cents for each chicken they sold. Between 1952 and 1964, Sanders accumulated more than 600 franchisees. That year he sold his interests to a large company and became a millionaire, while remaining as the company spokesperson for Kentucky Fried Chicken. Isn’t 65 too old to start a company that turns you into a millionaire, especially if you’ve never done it before? Apparently not.

While we’re talking about fast food, did you know that Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers, was adopted and then was a high school drop out? If you want an excuse to not succeed, no high school education is a good one. But ironically, one of the places he worked was for Kentucky Fried Chicken, and he actually met and admired Colonel Harland Sanders. He used the Col. Sanders story as the inspiration for creating the hamburger chain that made him a millionaire by the time he was 35. Thomas claimed his biggest regret was dropping out of school, so at 60 he went back to school and earned his GED in 1993. The graduating class of Coconut Creek High near Ft Lauderdale voted him the Most Likely To Succeed.

These days everybody knows about the incredible successes of Donald Trump. But did you know there was a time when he was six billion dollars in debt? He had to work with creditors and develop deals that inspired them to continue to trust him with their money. He recalls a time when, seeing a homeless man on the streets of New York, he thought to himself, ‘I’m six billion dollars poorer than he is.’ And we all know now how that turned out.

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to meet some amazingly successful people and one such person was an incredible business man who started his path to success as an air conditioning installation contractor in Jamaica. His company was a success because he believed in extraordinary service. In a place where the average lead time for installation of residential air conditioning systems was weeks, his company frequently installed systems the very same day! He set the pace, still, even the most successful air conditioning contractor in all of Jamaica wasn’t enough. He wanted to be a successful hotel owner. He had driven past a resort that had been vacant for a long time and he knew what the problem was. It was located at the end of the airport runway for the international airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica. It was an incredible problem with the constant, overwhelming noise every time a plane would take off. It stopped conversations mid sentence. It woke some guests. It was a problem and nobody thought a resort could succeed at that location. Nobody would invest so he had to go it alone and invest his own money. He was told time and again, “It can’t be done.” The air conditioner contractor and wannabe resort owner was Butch Stewart and he had an idea. He would develop the resort as an all-inclusive, couples only resort. As a part of every couple’s visit, they would have an orientation where the hosts would tell them, ‘It’s our tradition here, every time a plane takes off, we kiss our partner and then blow a kiss and wave goodbye to our friends who are on the planes leaving the island.’ And with a wink the host would explain, ‘We feel bad for them because they have to leave, but we get to stay in paradise.’ That was the gimmick that turned the biggest negative imaginable into an incredible positive and launched the Sandals and Beaches resort chains and made Butch Stewart a billionaire.

When I was in college I arranged my full time schedule to attend classes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so I had Tuesday and Thursday free. I used my non-college days to work as a substitute teacher for middle school. It was decent money and I loved it. The kids were great and I was just old enough (19) to be a grown-up to them, yet I was close enough to their age that lots of the kids related to me in one way or another. When I graduated from college, it happened to be in December, half way through the school year at public school. While I didn’t intend to be a full time teacher for my career, I was asked by the principal at a Junior High where I regularly filled in, if I would be willing to finish the year for a teacher who had to leave mid year. I accepted. The classes this teacher was responsible for, were called “basic” and “fundamental” math classes, and most of the kids had a really tough time with math. I did all kinds of creative things I came up with, and accepted coaching from fellow teachers, essentially doing all I could to reach these kids and get them interested in learning math. I remember on a number of occasions hearing from some of the kids that, “we’re the ‘basic’ kids. Nobody expects us to be able to do this stuff. We’re the dumb ones.” I was absolutely blown away and I vividly remember arguing the point with them. I’m sure I was a bit over-the-top from time to time, but I did what I could to encourage these kids in the half year I spent with them. I regularly shared my optimistic, recent college graduate beliefs that, “You can do anything you want. If you just put your mind to it.” — Three months ago my wife and I were enjoying dinner outside on the patio of our local Outback Steakhouse and a man came over to the table and asked if I was Mr Becker. When I said I was, he gave me a business card for his construction business and said to me, “You remember telling your students at LHJH that you can do anything? It’s true. I own my own business.” — I’m sure he had many more influences than just a part time sub in 9th grade math, and I’m far from being the reason he’s a success. But he remembered something I said and we share a common belief.

If you put aside the limitations, things like age, race, sex, religion, which math class you were in, if you were adopted, whether or not you dropped out of school… if you put aside your limiting beliefs, you can do anything!

One of the great side effects of overcoming a self-limiting prejudice, is that you can be an example for others so they can see how their prejudice is wrong. But you don’t need to have such lofty goals as serving as an example for others. Let that be a nice byproduct. Overcoming your self-limiting beliefs can be the basis for making your own life incredible! That alone is worth the effort.

_