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The Business Edge
The Business Edge
Back2Basics - Episode 21: Where Do Limiting Thoughts Come From?
Feliciano School of Business faculty members in the department of Information Management and Business Analytics, Dr. Mahmoud ElHussini and Dr. George Elias discuss issues and problems being faced by business professionals. On this podcast, they again discuss what your body language says about you. Dr. Moe and Dr. George breakdown issues and problems being encountered by entrepreneurs, executives, and all levels of managers.
Co-Hosts Background:
Mahmoud (Moe) Elhussini, MS, MBA, DBA, is an Instructor Specialist at Montclair State University. He is also the president and founder of The Growth Coach Allentown - Somerville. A consulting and business coaching company. Moe has worked in data & operations management for over a decade. He then switched to business consulting, helping companies build ERP and customer interface systems. After that he transitioned into international business development, helping companies manage their internal organic growth or through mergers and strategic alliances. Moe has published a couple of handbooks, one on emotional intelligence and another on servant leadership. He is currently working on a third that revolves around overcoming sales objections. Moe has a BA in Biology from Rutgers University, an MBA in Global Management, and MS in Information Management, and a DBA in Geopolitics and Strategy. At Montclair University, Moe is part of the Information Management and Business Analytics Department. He teaches Business Decision Making, Operations Management, and Statistics in Business courses.
George Elias, Ph.D., PMP is Chief Systems Engineer for Space and Airborne Systems leading initiatives in integrated spectrum management and mission avionics at L3Harris Technologies. Additionally, Dr. Elias is as an adjunct professor at Montclair State University’s department of information management & business analytics where he teaches business operations and statistics. Dr. Elias is experienced in leading the development and production of complex hardware and software system solutions including: electronic warfare systems, communication systems, and space systems. Previously, Dr. Elias served as the Director of Capture Excellence & Business Development Operations for the Electronic Warfare Sector. As an L3Harris Technologies Certified Enterprise Capture Lead, Dr. Elias was responsible for directing large, complex pursuits across the enterprise. In addition to systems engineering and business development, Dr. Elias has held roles in finance, quality assurance, operations/manufacturing, modeling and simulation, project engineering, program management, and Internal Research and Development (IRAD). Dr. Elias has a Doctorate in Systems Engineering, a Masters Certificate in Project Management, and a Masters in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology. Additionally, Dr. Elias has a Bachelors in Computer Information Systems from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey & New Jersey Institute of Technology. Finally, Dr. Elias has a Mini-MBA from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
Hello everyone and welcome back to our episode, our new episode of Back to Basics. I am Moel Husseini and I am here with my good friend, george Elias. How are you, george?
Speaker 2:How are you doing Great? Super excited to be here in an actual studio instead see what we're doing from our homes. Can you believe this is our 21st episode.
Speaker 1:Wow. So for those who don't know what George was talking about, we've done about 20 episodes or so voice podcasts, so this is our first video one. Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, first time we're face to face. Yeah, how's the summer treating you? The 100-degree weather, daily temp.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I like my summers hot and my winters cold, so I'm okay with it, but it does present challenges with trying to get outdoors and work out and whatnot I know. I know, I know. So what have you been up to?
Speaker 1:Nothing, just a couple of summer classes, and I'm doing my usual coaching.
Speaker 2:How's that been going for you?
Speaker 1:It's going well. It's going well Really, no complaints. You know one idea or one topic I was thinking about for today and tell me if you. I know we had ended with a different topic last time, so I was thinking that we can maybe talk about limiting beliefs, limiting thoughts in a business, setting right how they impact the decisions that we make, the opportunities that we take. What do you think of that as a topic? I think?
Speaker 2:it's a great topic. Should we talk about that? Sure, do you have any examples?
Speaker 1:Do you know what made me really think about it? A couple of clients that I had that I was visiting over the past couple of weeks. Right, I noticed, besides the task at the work part, right, I realized that they're assessing their activity, their opportunities, more. They're defining them more by limitations versus their potential. So they were thinking about what parameters limit me from doing this or nah, you know, I can't do this, this is too much right. Most of it, I noticed, was subjective, like they were limiting themselves from doing things, not objectively, but based upon notions and ideas that they had in their mind. That I was listening to them and I thought it's not real right, me knowing them and knowing what their potential is, I felt like they were limiting themselves in ways that is unrealistic.
Speaker 1:And I'll give you an example. You were just asking about an example, a very simple example. A sales manager was talking to me and he was telling me we're talking about how they can revise their customer acquisition strategy. What do you guys use? I'll just call him joe. What do you guys use, joe? Well, we do abc and d. Do you do any phone calls? No, we can't make any phone calls. We can't cold call prospects. It doesn't work for us and he wouldn't even discuss it right. And I was thinking about well, maybe cold calling prospects doesn't work. But what if you define prospects as people that you've met at a networking event, people that know you, and you try to call them right? The fact that you've called somebody once and they didn't pick up their phone, maybe because they're busy out of town, doesn't shut down the idea that maybe you can call them again or that you can try it with someone else. That's the most recent example I can think of. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:No well. So you know it's interesting that you're bringing this up in the context. You're bringing it up because you know a lot of times in business, you know, our thoughts and our beliefs and our mindset really cause us to be biased.
Speaker 1:I agree.
Speaker 2:And it actually limits us from maybe considering possible solutions or alternatives, and it will also cause us sometimes to pick the wrong alternative just because we may believe or have some sort of thought that we can't do it that way.
Speaker 1:Or we can't do it at all.
Speaker 2:Or we can't do it at all.
Speaker 1:I agree with you.
Speaker 2:Or who says that you tried it before, but did you try it in the right way? So these beliefs and thoughts, they tend to be reinforcing on themselves. So you know, once you have this belief or thought or mindset in your head, that you can't do something or you're not good at something or something's not achievable. The fact that you never try means that you're right. Yeah, you actually became.
Speaker 1:I agree with you.
Speaker 2:You actually become correct in your assessment, right.
Speaker 1:Take it from the first step, because I agree 100% that it starts as like an organic virus that will keep growing. As time goes by, you're reinforcing it over and over and over and it becomes its own entity, pushing you down that belief, entity, pushing you down that right, that belief but take it from the first step.
Speaker 2:What do you think causes that limiting belief? Yeah, so, so, like, what creates belief? I, I think that there's a, there's a lot of causes. Yeah, you know, you know my instant thoughts are what causes belief. I go to childhood, right, and I think about parents and how they talk to their children, or teachers or something of that nature. And you know, to give you an example, let's say some kid tries to play basketball for the first time, comes home and just is distraught because they didn't do so. Well, right, the other kids on on the on the court were better, and the mom or the dad or you know a friend that says that's okay, basketball is not your thing. Yeah, right, that's a limiting idea, that's a limiting thought, right, and to me, that sort of seeds that kid with a thought well, basketball's not my thing. And they may actually believe it.
Speaker 2:And to me there's even levels of belief. Right, there's maybe top-level service beliefs, but then there's certain beliefs that may become very deep in your conscious. And let's say that basketball example. Well, maybe that spawns into I'm just not athletic, right, and then you just stop athletics in general.
Speaker 2:Well, because now you don't work out, now you don't try, you're right. At that point you become unathletic. Yes, right. So you know. These sorts of things come up and sometimes they're well-intentioned, right, like, you know, this adult or this mentor or was saying in a way to try to comfort this child, right? But because of that impression it spawns and the same thing happens in business- yeah right.
Speaker 2:Somebody tells you you can't do that or we've tried that, we've been there. It can become a service belief or it can be coming deeply held belief. The deeper that belief is held, the harder it is to change or affect.
Speaker 1:To break out of it.
Speaker 2:And those beliefs start affecting your mindset. So if you have limiting beliefs, you may start having things like a negative mindset, right, and then that mindset creates thoughts and actions and actually changes your entire reality, because you actually perceive everything through that mindset, right?
Speaker 2:so it's a conviction that you get, that you're so that the sad part is that example you brought up in your consulting. Yeah well, I can't cold call, I can't do this, I can't do that. Well, at some point that person has just boxed themselves in, right, I can't do anything. I am now stuck in this situation and they're calling the consultant to tell them how they can succeed inside that box.
Speaker 1:Yep, right within their limitations.
Speaker 2:And you're saying who built that wall? You did right, they limited them themselves. Yeah, right. So the the interesting part about this is, as a manager, as a leader, you can limit yourself and have these limited mindsets. You can actually create your team to limit themselves. It cascades down to your team Absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know the same thing with families.
Speaker 2:Families just end up having deeply held beliefs. We're just an unathletic family. I'm just using the same example. We're just an unathletic family. I'm just using the same example. We're an unathletic family. Well, because they never try, they never work at it. They're right right Now. Imagine if they could figure out how to get out of that belief, out of that mindset, and actually work out and try to become athletic. Chances are they would be then right. And the same thing with business if you perceive there's barriers that you can't overcome and you convince yourself you won't overcome, them right?
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree well said from my humble experiences, the origin of it that I noticed that and we talked about this. I, I think in one of our first episodes. I see it when I'm talking to you and I'm not saying you, but when I'm talking to one of my clients, a friend, a person, someone else, what formulates their limitations or how they think of themselves and their potential is I would think of it maybe something they're born with, genetics, right, may, I'm not tall enough. I can't do anything about it. I can't play basketball, for example, or so. It's something like hereditary, something that you get from a role model, somebody that you know what you're growing up, when you're still in your teens, and you look at somebody wow, this person, that's who I want to be on. I'll be like mike right, like mike jordan remember when we were in college, that was a commercial that came out.
Speaker 1:And the third one your experiences that you start developing as you grow right, I usually think those three areas is what defines how we will limit ourselves. Now there's the whole idea, too, that do I even believe in limitations? I know you take a lot of I don't want to say risks, calculated risks in your athletic life and you always. We talk about it a lot and it's very impressive. Right, you do believe in pushing that limit, but some people a they're just destined to be this.
Speaker 1:These are my limitations. This is my comfort zone. I'm going to live in it, right, and within that, they set their standards based upon what they're born with, what their family like you're talking about, the experiences they get from their families or the role models, right, and they define everything that they do and they take it to work. They follow the same mentality at work that they do at home. Do you see what I mean? So I think it marries intersects with what you're talking about, but that was my starting point of how I started thinking about it. What is it that leads people to say that's my, my limit? Right, this is what I can do. I'm a risk taker, I'm not a risk taker, and so on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so some of that I agree with you may have to do with some nature right and some of it may have to do with learned responses, learned responses or an observation. I think, well, first let me just take this approach and then we'll get back here. Limitations knowing your limits isn't necessarily a terrible thing. Altogether right when they're realistic. Right, understanding something that's dangerous and my limit is to not hurt myself or do something that's just, you know, going to really Break things right, no, no calls home to cause harm.
Speaker 2:No, knowing your limits, that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about limits that are self-imposed, right like they agree like that's that's you know, and you're right. I do test those beliefs and those limits and in in various ways, whether it's Running or doing obstacle course races or trying martial arts and things like that and I do it because I want to get better and be better tomorrow. So part of that is more of a you know I'll introduce this a growth mindset.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That's a growth mindset. So you know, one of the things that was introduced to me was this idea of in order to be an expert at something, it takes about 10,000 hours, right. So if you want to be a pianist, it's about 10,000 hours. You want to be really an expert at the guitar or running, you have to put 10,000 hours into it. That means eight hours a day, five years, right? So that's the type of effort. So it takes a long time to get into that, that period of learning and growing.
Speaker 2:That can be hard yeah especially if it's athletics or trying to play the piano. If you try to put me on the piano at first, I'm not gonna be that. Good, yeah, it's gonna take years before I can play something that I'm gonna be happy with. Right, good, yeah, it's going to take years before I can play something that I'm going to be happy with.
Speaker 1:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:And. I think that period is hard. I think it's the same thing with business. It takes a long time to know your way and your limits and what you need to do in business. Right, that's 10,000 hours. Now, if you've gone through that 10,000 hours and you're like man, I'm still not good, that's not my thing. Maybe that's a limit that's justified, right, but to me that's the litmus test, right, because until you've put the effort into it, maybe that could be your thing if you tried.
Speaker 1:Let me ask you something, because I don't know if I agree or disagree with you, but I want to ask the question first. So you're saying the limiting belief is something and me and a task situation limiting myself is something else.
Speaker 2:I.
Speaker 1:I think that the you don't think they're connected.
Speaker 2:I think the limiting thought yes comes. Comes about sometimes either from other people who prompt you with it right, or, I think, there's times where you self-limit yourself because things are hard.
Speaker 1:But don't you think that leads into whether or not you test your limits within a task?
Speaker 2:So it depends on your personality, right? So, me, I'm a type of person where I think something's hard and I get excited over the challenge, right? So there's something in me that says I like this challenge. It's a challenge, it's a puzzle, it's something that I need to do. Well, that's because I enjoy that piece of it.
Speaker 1:You enjoy taking the challenge because of your personality. I enjoy it.
Speaker 2:Not everybody enjoys that, true, and I'm just pointing out that if you, if you, want to be good at something, typically it takes effort. Most people don't walk into something and just be good, yeah Right. And if you look at the people that are good at things, maybe there's an ounce of natural talent, maybe there's an ounce, but they practice that all the time. You know I was thinking so. You know I'm, you know my day job, I'm an engineer. I think to myself from when I grew up, I played Legos, I took things apart.
Speaker 1:I took my phone apart. You know I did that right.
Speaker 2:I tinker and I like to know how things work. I've been doing that since I was like two years old, right. I put in more than 40 years of thinking about how the world works and things work. It's hard to compete with somebody who's younger than if somebody who's?
Speaker 2:younger than me doesn't have as much experience and didn't put that much effort into it. How do they know how everything works then? Right, they just don't have the experience. Right, it's the same thing with soccer, Same thing with business, Right? If you have parents that are entrepreneurs and business people and every day at the dinner table they talk about business, what are the kids learning? They're learning about business. They're learning about relationships. They naturally, even in childhood, start getting good at it.
Speaker 1:Think about it, at it, think about us. Let's think about, because you said, yeah, 10 000 hours.
Speaker 2:I agree let's keep it. Yeah, I know, yeah, yeah let's keep it simple.
Speaker 1:We, in the same manner. Formulating a habit or breaking a habit takes two to three weeks, right to break a habit. Usually, on average, that's what it takes to to change it. So to change a habit in the same logic, right, if I believe that I can't stop smoking, that my father used to drink, so now I have to drink and I can't break out of that cycle. I'm using some just general, like the first example that comes to my mind, but my, my dad was athletic.
Speaker 1:He used to run every day in the morning. I can or I cannot right Making those decisions. That also falls under the limiting belief.
Speaker 2:Completely, completely. And again, I think we naturally come up with these limiting beliefs, and some are not terrible, right. Some are not terrible. Some could be good and life-saving even.
Speaker 2:But in the case of I can't stop smoking or I can't lose weight or I can't do do things like that, the fact of the matter is, if you actually believe you can't that, then it becomes true yes, but if that's what I meant, but if you were able to catch yourself in that mindset and say, hey, that's a limiting mindset, and say, how can I change right, maybe you'd have a chance and we can talk some other time about that I was going to say this how do we counter it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll talk about that in the next episode, but we're on the same page. We're on the same page with what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, but we're on the same page with what you're talking about. What was go ahead? But just one more thing I think the limiting beliefs are sometimes a self-defense mechanism. Yeah Right, you're afraid that if you were to try and put yourself out there on it, you might find out that you fail Right, and that's hard.
Speaker 1:Right. So your defensive mechanism is to just say that.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm not going to do it. Okay, I'm processing what you're saying. But, yeah, no, I agree with you. I agree with you. And here's now, if we take it the next step, right, I am a manager, I am a VP, I have my team of 80 people.
Speaker 1:Now, imagine you go into a job with that mentality. What kind of culture that creates for your team? Right, that's one extreme. On the other hand, if I walk out of this building and I look at it and you tell me, mo, let's push this building one block down, I know we can't do it right back here, crazy, georgie, we can't do that. I figured out. But you know what I mean, though, right, like you wouldn't be able to do it. But if you ask me to take on a project right, because I'm trying to take it to show, like, where the limit is that you mentioned before you ask me, mo, take on this project that I've never done before, I also need to know when to say yes to something and when to say no. I don't want to take a bigger bite than I can chew, because I see it work in both ways in businesses, right? Sometimes, yes, I'm too scared to take the risk, but sometimes some people take on things that's too big for them and it backfires.
Speaker 2:So that's true, but some level of risk is important to be able to take in business.
Speaker 1:And that's the question what is that? How far?
Speaker 2:So I would say in that case, like in the example of I've never done something like this before, you know, I think my advice to that individual would be something like be honest with that person who's tasking you. Say, hey, I've never done something like this before. I might need some extra guidance.
Speaker 1:But that's the thing. What if you don't even know? That's my point. Like, imagine this, I don't mean to interrupt you, but to take it so you can properly analyze it. You're my boss. You tell me, mo, we need somebody to manage our new sales team in Japan. We me, mo, we need somebody to manage the new, our new sales team in Japan. We're putting you there. Can you handle it? Yes, sir, I can.
Speaker 1:I've never been out of Jersey or Pennsylvania right, I've never been out, I, so I don't know for me to come and tell you right what questions to ask or what even to talk about, because I delusionally think that I can do it.
Speaker 2:So I would say, if I tasked you with something like that, I would maybe have a problem as a supervisor. Right there you go. That's my point.
Speaker 1:That should be on the manager to actually be able to read the person.
Speaker 2:That's true. But let's say I tasked you with something like that and let's just switch it up a little bit. Let's say you had the belief that I've never been out to Japan. I don't know how they do sales. I, you know you have that limiting mindset. It should be my job to explain to you why you're a good fit for that and to objectively lay it out. Hey, you have these other good qualities. I understand that's a stretch for you. We're going to get you help in that aspect so you can learn. Here's a book to read. Here's how they look at it. Here's some background information, and it should be my job as supervisor to help you through that.
Speaker 1:And I agree and my point is that sometimes, because we talk about limiting beliefs and it being a toxic and negative culture right, we talked about that. And cascading down to your team, if I'm the kind of person that always limits myself versus challenging myself, but, on the other hand, right, if I do have an individual that I'm assigning him or her to do something, I have to realize if they are that kind of pessimistic, very cautious, whatever you want to call it kind of person, or if they're one type of person that always puts themselves, challenges themselves, with risks, without properly assessing it. So as a manager, I have to be able to read both types of individuals.
Speaker 2:So I completely agree. So I was working on a proposal response right for in business. This is actually a true story and one of the main engineers on the program came to our stand-up meetings we have quick 15-minute stand-up meetings to talk about how it goes and every word that came out of his mouth was negative. Every reason why we can't get there, we can't do this, we can't do that, we can't do this right. He just listed he had a whole dozen of them, right and I said stop, stop. I said I don't wanna hear any more about why we can't do it, I only wanna hear reasons why we can. And the whole room changed. The whole room changed and everybody started explaining the background. We had this and that and the timeline. You know that we won that. We actually won that Nice Right, and it was because the whole team stopped having the pictures in their heads of failure and the whole team started thinking about how they're going to win.
Speaker 1:Visualizing the success.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I agree, one individual coming with negative thoughts. They're infectious, right, and it can affect not just them as an individual, it can affect the team, it can affect the company, it can affect the nation, it can affect humanity in itself. I know one of the examples that I had told you about was about flight. So I've recently read a book on the Wright Brothers. What I find amazing is, prior to the Wright Brothers' first flight in that Wright Flyer, there was a belief mankind-wide, like worldwide belief, that lighter-than-air flight for human beings was impossible. There were scientific papers published saying that is impossible. Scientists were going around saying you can't fly people, they're not meant to, they can't too much weight. You know it'll never happen. Once the Wright brothers did it and it got out, it's like 50 years later there was commercial aircrafts. I mean the speed at which it went. So somehow Leonardo da Vinci was doing drawings of flying machines. I think he believed that it was going to be one day possible.
Speaker 2:Somewhere along the way there was some limiting belief that became infectious across humanity and then, once it was realized you could do it. Bam, and it happens all the time the four-minute mile. People believe it was physically impossible for a human being to run a mile in four minutes. One person did it. Next year everybody was doing sub-four-minute miles. Does that mean that they couldn't before? I would say no, they could before, but this limiting belief, even across worldwide, stops people from breaking through something right. So I actually believe that there's a lot of limiting beliefs us as human beings have that limit humanity in general, and I think that the folks listening to this podcast if you're a human being and you're listening, you're amazing and you should believe that you're amazing and you should believe that you can achieve even more than you think. So if you put your mind to it and you work hard, that's achievable.
Speaker 1:I mean, I always knew that I was amazing.
Speaker 2:You are, but in all seriousness think about this.
Speaker 1:So the point is that we're trying to make that that negative state of mind could be, as a starting point, a mental block in our mind that stops us from doing this, doing this, doing this, doing this, doing this. So the idea is, as a concept, before we even get into different examples, right, as a concept, people should, as a starting point, believe that there's no such thing as a negative state of mind. There is something being there, is being of mind, there is something being there is being cautious, there is something being calculating and the risks that you're taking. But we should not kind of like the example you talk about, because I see this all the time you sit in a meeting.
Speaker 1:People hate change. We know that in the business world people and that's why we have like change managers people hate change, right? They don't want to go from one thing and I've seen this all the time when we used to build customer master databases. People don't want to go from one thing and I've seen this all the time when we used to build customer master databases People don't want to go from the old school way to the new way, and it's probably going to be faced a lot with AI. So we know people hate change. But where was I going with this? But the idea is that it's one thing to properly calculate that change and see where it's going to assess it, versus from the beginning saying ah no, I'm not going to do this, I don't even want to try this. Right, people have to understand that there's to look at the potential in something and not the limitation in it.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so I mean I again I don't want to get too far into like the countermeasure for the limiting beliefs, but they're infectious, they make you biased. They, those limiting thoughts become, change your whole mindset. So you look through the world through this mindset of limitation. It can grow beliefs. Those beliefs can get deep rooted and reinforce your thoughts generations to come it can, right, it can.
Speaker 2:So I don't want to get into the countermeasures so much, but truthfully, just identifying that limits, limiting ideas and limiting beliefs and limiting mindsets exists, mm-hmm, is a good thing, right? So folks should be asking themselves am I limiting myself? Right and I'm biased and I'm limiting myself for, for some unknown reason, yeah, or is this a true limit? Right, exactly? Is this a true physical world limit that you know is just not practically overcome, you know? Does that make?
Speaker 1:sense and actually I think that is the best way to conclude this episode, which is the one takeaway I would give people watching or listening is to ask themselves, when they do see something as a challenge or something that they used to say no to, to think about, why are they thinking it's impossible or difficult or whatever the word is right, why are they saying that To look at it objectively versus subjectively, based upon their past, based upon a perception, based upon, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I know we're almost out of time, right, do you? Are you okay with the next episode we have if we start breaking I know we talked about a couple examples, but we start breaking this down and look at ways, how people can kind of take baby steps, tread carefully, to try to start chipping away at this block.
Speaker 2:I think that would be good to talk about. I'll bring up one of the terms now. So opposite of a limiting mindset would be a growth mindset, right, so we can talk about how you shift your perspective and your thoughts and your beliefs from limitations to growth, and I think that would be good to figure out what that looks like.
Speaker 1:Agreed, good discussion, good discussion. We'll take it there. We'll take it to that next. That looks like Agreed, good discussion, good discussion. We'll take it there. We'll take it to that next step, next time.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, thank you, mo, for coming down.
Speaker 1:You are very welcome.
Speaker 2:And thank you to everyone that helped put this podcast together. Yes, thank you, your amazing team, thank you. Appreciate it so we can wrap it up. Yes, sir, so let wrap it up. Yes, sir, so let me just read this out thank you all for listening to this episode of back to basics on the business edge, brought to you by Feliciano School of Business at Montclair State University. We hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you have any feedback or ideas for future podcasts for us, we're all ears, thank you.
Speaker 1:thank you, george see you next time. Take care, awesome, thank you.