4. Inner Child Work and Limiting Beliefs

How your younger self still leads

Welcome back. Now, this chapter, Chapter Four, Inner Child Work and Limiting Beliefs, might feel different from typical leadership content, but what we're about to explore has been one of the most powerful tools in my own leadership development, so I hope it will work for you too. Let's start here with a quote to set the scene. "There should be another form of the word I to signify how different we used to be, because when I look back at my younger self, I can't believe she and I are the same person." Isn't that such a powerful statement from Susie Arnett, an author and blogger? I think we can all agree we change throughout our lives.

But here's the thing: that younger version of you is still influencing how you lead today, often in ways you don't even realize. Inner child work helps uncover and update core beliefs, especially the limiting ones, so they stop driving our decisions from behind the scenes. These limiting beliefs often sound like, I'm not good enough, I have to do it all myself, if I fail, I'll be rejected. These patterns often show up in leadership as over functioning or perfectionism, avoiding visibility or risk, or needing control instead of trust. So the beliefs that shaped us in our past, that former I, still influence how we lead today.

Spotting your own leadership patterns

For this next exercise, I want you to think about your own leadership patterns. What do you tend to do when you're stressed or under pressure? Do you take on too much yourself, avoid difficult conversations, need to control every detail, doubt your own judgment, or maybe even seek excessive approval from others? Go ahead and go into your workbook, pause here, and write down one to two patterns you recognize in yourself. As you take some time to think about your leadership patterns, let me give you an example from someone I used to work with. He was incredibly successful, but absolutely exhausted.

He worked 70-hour weeks, rarely delegated, and his team was frustrated because he'd actually redo their work. After getting to know him, he shared that he grew up in a family where love was conditional based on achievement. So he learned early that good enough wasn't actually good enough. Everything had to be perfect to earn approval. Maybe something like this sounds familiar to you in your life. That belief served him really well as an individual contributor. He worked really hard and had a lot of success. But as a leader, it was killing him and really limiting his team's growth.

Tracing a belief back to its source

Here's a powerful exercise you can do to start updating these old beliefs. The first step is to recall a defining moment from childhood where you felt inadequate, rejected, or not enough. That's here in Exercise Seven. Then identify the belief that you formed from that experience. It could be something like, I'm not capable, I don't matter, I always have to prove myself. In the next step, write a new narrative. Ask, what's really going on? What did you need but didn't receive? Let's work through this together as if I was going to fill out this exercise. Take a few minutes to think of a childhood experience that still affects you today.

Maybe it could be being criticized for making a mistake, feeling overlooked or invisible, being told you were too much or too sensitive, and I've definitely heard that one, or having to be the responsible one in your family. You don't need to go too deep or traumatic. We're just looking for some formative experiences here, and that can often happen in some of the simpler lessons you have from your childhood. You might recognize this from reading Power Without Permission, but for me, my experience would be coming home with my first B plus on a school project and my parents admonishing me for not getting an A. I formed the belief that I need to achieve and be a success to be valued.

Rewriting the story with adult wisdom

My parents wanted me to always do my best. So instead of expressing this as dissatisfaction with my grade, I needed acceptance that my best isn't always going to be perfect. Go ahead, think about your own story from your life, pause the video here, and identify one experience and the belief you formed from it. This is Exercise Seven. Once you've done that, let's rewrite that story with some adult wisdom. So instead of I'm not good enough, you might realize I was a child doing my best in a difficult situation.

Or instead of I can't trust others, you could understand the adults in my life were overwhelmed and couldn't give me what I needed. But that doesn't mean everyone is untrustworthy. Moving on to Exercise Eight, let's rewrite your story. What would you tell that younger version of yourself? What do you understand now that you couldn't understand then? If we were to pick back up with my story, I would tell myself that a B plus is not just okay, it's a great grade. As long as I'm trying and working hard, the grade itself doesn't matter.

It's what I learn along the way. Now it's your turn. Go ahead, pause the video and take some time to write out your new narrative. Inner child work is not about dwelling in the past. It's about freeing yourself to show up consciously in the present. When you understand why you do what you do, you can choose different responses. In our next chapter, we're going to get practical with some daily habits and tools you can use to continue building your self-awareness every day. See you there!