61. The Be-Do-Have Framework to help you create the future you want

Vanessa 00:00
Welcome to coaching for Latina leaders, the only podcast dedicated to the advancement of Latinas at every level of life with your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, a Latina with over 20 years of leadership experience, Harvard grad physician, and mother of two.

Hey Mujeres, have you ever wondered why it's so hard to achieve a goal that you've never accomplished before? Let's say, for example, that you want to weigh 135 pounds, you currently weigh 150 pounds, but you want to weigh 135. Now, sometimes a long time ago, let's say 10 years ago, you used to weigh 140 pounds. So on your current weight loss journey, you can get yourself from 150 to 140 pounds, you can even go down to 138. But for whatever reason, you come, you keep coming back to 140, or 150. And it's hard for you to ever get to that weight goal of 135. Now, the reason why that's the case is that we don't firmly believe that it's possible for us to get to that goal of 135. And because we don't think it's possible, we don't have that core belief inside of us, we don't think it's possible. Our brains are going to keep us in what we know to be true. And what we know to be true is that we've weighed 140 before, but we definitely feel comfortable weighing 150, because that's what our brain knows.

Now, again, why it's so hard for us to achieve goals that we've never seen before, is because our subconscious brain goes back to the past for evidence. And it goes back to the past to get evidence because the past is certain, the past has already happened, we know what's happened and we can hang on to that certainty, as opposed to trying to create something in the future, where we have no evidence and that feels uncertain to the brain. And the brain hates uncertainty. And because it hates uncertainty tilts so much. It's the reason why we recreate those same relationship patterns over and over again, it's why our marriages can mirror the ones we saw growing up because we're just recreating what we know because that's what's comfortable to the brain.

Vanessa 02:26
Now, when you want to start creating your future on purpose, what you are essentially doing is changing the way you choose to think about yourself, you're changing your capacity and your ability to create something new, what you're doing is you are elevating yourself concept. Now a self-concept, that just means the thoughts, you're going to choose to think about yourself, that's your self-concept. Now I want you to think about where you currently are as a pinpoint in the middle of a circle. Now that line outlining the circle, those are all your current beliefs and your thoughts, and they're holding you inside of this circle. For you to expand outside of that circle, you need to break through this current self-concept is current beliefs and get outside of that and start thinking bigger thoughts about yourself. Now, that's not easy. And that's what I'm going to teach you to do today. So what is our self-concept? Generally, our self-concept is not something we think about consciously. It's something that's probably been told to us that we've adapted from life experiences. And it's made up of a bunch of our core beliefs.

Okay, now, it could have been from one event that happened to you as a kid or something that happened to you as a young adult, that profoundly shaped your identity. For example, Will Smith, the actor tells the story of having a self-concept of being a coward, because when he was a little kid, I think he said he was like seven years old or so he saw his father physically assault his mother, and he didn't do anything to protect his mom. Again, he's a seven-year-old kid. But in his brain, he made that mean that he must be a coward because he never stood up to his dad. And he carried on that story with him for years and years and years. Okay, that he's a coward. Now, for me, for example, I had a self-concept or this core belief that all marriages are doomed to fail. I grew up in a house where there was a lot of fighting, and eventually divorce. And so I made up a story that all marriages are doomed to fail. I also avoided intimacy and made up another story that I just happened to be bad at being vulnerable. I want you to think right now about your self-concepts, and the stories you tell yourself about yourself. Maybe it's that you're the funny one in the family, but you're not the smart one, or you're the one that's really good at math, or you're just horrible at relationships or whatever it is that you tend to tell yourself over and over again, okay, those stories that you tell yourself, that make up the current self-concept that you have.

So when you ask yourself, why do I have these relationships? Or why do I always make the same mistakes? I want you to go back and think about what you believe about yourself. Because that's usually why. Okay, so how do you change this? Now, there are two ways to think about creating the future that you want, you can do it from the outside in, or you can do it from the inside out. Now, what I mean by that is this, when we're talking about the outside in is, you are right now in that pinpoint of that struggle, that visualizes said earlier, if you want to create a new future, you can do one of two things, you can work, you can, you know, not believe it, because it's so hard to believe that you will actually ever be 135 pounds, for example.

And instead, what you do is you have this, like masculine energy, brute force, where you're going to work every day, to lose the weight, lose the weight, lose the weight, and you're not going to believe that it's possible for you until you actually achieve that 135 pounds. You know, cognitively that it's possible, you see people out there that have lost weight, you've seen people that have been as heavy as you, that's lost weight. So you believe cognitively like in your brain, you're like, yeah, it's kind of possible, but you don't feel it inside of your body. You don't, it's not one of your core beliefs. And I like to think about this as the difference between knowing something and feeling something because you can know a lot of things cognitively to be true, but you don't feel it in your bones until you firmly believe it. And it's one of your own beliefs.

Now, that's the difference when you do it from the outside in, because you can definitely create a new identity and create a new self-concept from the outside in. For me, for example, that used to be how I created all of my goals, I didn't firmly believe they were possible until I had achieved them. And so I was all about pushing myself to the limit and working harder, harder, harder, until I achieved what I set out to achieve. And I couldn't rest until I had done that, because I had also tied worthiness to that goal. And so if I didn't achieve it, then there was a self-worth conversation I would have in my head, 

Vanessa 07:23
it would definitely get me to my goal. But it was kind of a hard way to get there, it wasn't a super kind way to get there. And there was no room for self-compassion on that journey. Now, let me introduce you to another way to do that. And that's from the inside out, that's when you achieve a goal from the inside out.

And to do that, I want to introduce you to this framework, the Be-do-have framework. Now the basis of this framework comes from cognitive behavioral psychology. If you recall, the cognitive thought model that I've explained before, your thoughts in life will create a feeling in your body. That feeling is what drives all your actions. When you're feeling happy and excited, you take specific actions. But if you're feeling depressed and sad, you probably don't take the same actions you curl up in a blanket, you stay inside. And those actions are what create your results in life or your reality. So again, your thoughts cause a feeling which drives an action that creates your results in life or your reality. So if I was going to extrapolate, I would say that all of your results in life come from what you were thinking first, comes from a thought first. So when you think about the Be-do-have framework, what I'm essentially asking you to do is you create that belief first, create that belief first. And then you take an action from that belief. And once you take an action from that belief, and then you do those things, then you have the future that you want.

Okay, so let's talk about this in a little bit more detail. And then I'm going to give you an example of how I use this. So if I was going to give you a little example, I would say this for me, again, I shared with you that I grew up believing that all marriages were doomed to fail. That was a core belief. As I got older in my young adult age and much older after that, I saw marriages that were succeeding. So cognitively I thought, okay, so some marriages could succeed. But I didn't feel it for me, I didn't think it'd be possible for me. So my thought was, that some marriages could succeed. But not my marriage, my marriage wouldn't succeed. And so for a long time, I avoided intimacy, and I didn't want to have a serious relationship. And I thought marriage was a huge waste of time because it would just fail. What's the point of marriage if it would just ends up in divorce? That was a core belief I had before. Fast forward many years I fell in love with an incredible guy who's now my husband and So when we decided to get married, I thought, Okay, well, I need to challenge this thought I have because I'm going to go all in on marriage, I don't want to end in divorce. And I don't want to just have a marriage that doesn't end in divorce, I want to have a marriage that thrives. So I applied to this Be-do-have framework, and I first set up my vision. So that's what you do when you first use this framework, you set up your vision for whatever goal you're trying to achieve. My vision for my marriage, for example, is to create a legacy of love, partnership, and passion.

Vanessa 10:34
Then once you have your vision, you ask yourself, Okay, who do I have to be to create this? Who do I have to be to create this goal? Who do I have to be to create this vision? Or a different way to ask it is, if I had already achieved this vision? Who am I now? Like, now? Now what kind of person am I? What kind of person achieves this? Okay? And then you want to get really clear with your answer. So you want to ask yourself, what are the qualities and characteristics of someone who already has this goal? How do they approach arguments? How do they approach disagreements? How do they spend time 

together? How do they celebrate? How do they create space when the other person is having a hard time? Those are the types of things you want to answer.

That's how you get super clear on being the Be who do you have to be to achieve that vision or goal that you want to achieve? Okay, so you get super clear on the beam, and then you have answers like, what are the qualities of someone who already has this goal, that person feels safe, that person feels heard, that person feels loved, that person has an increased capacity to love, that person creates a lot of patience when their partner is having a hard time, that person creates space for disagreements, that person does not believe that divorce is ever a solution Or it's even an option. You know, they've taken that off the table completely? How do they spend time together, they're joyful, they're happy, they laugh together, you know. So that's how you start thinking about your being, once you have you're being really clear, then you get to go on to what do you have to do? Now for many of us, we want to start with the doing because the doing feels natural. Listen, I'm an Enneagram tree, I have a lot of masculine energy. And I'm very action-oriented.

Vanessa 12:27
So it's easy for me to jump into the doing and it probably is for a lot of you too. The problem is that when you jump to the doing first, you don't have a clear direction as to why it could just feel very mechanical, you're just checking things off boxes. And can you, if you can imagine combining that masculine energy of being action-oriented with the feminine energy of really being in a flow state of that being energy, that's the Be-do-have framework in practice. It's a combination of both masculine and feminine energy, and it feels awesome. So once you're super clear on your being, then you're doing feels more purposeful, and your actions feel more purposeful. So I just start by asking myself, okay, so if I'm choosing to create space, you know, when we're going to have arguments, what's going to get in the way of that, for me, what's going to get in the way is if I'm exhausted, if I'm overcommitted, if I'm not present, if I'm overworking if I don't thoughtfully plan out my work schedule, then I just don't have the patience or the compassion, or I'm just not around. So then I say, Okay, so who do I get to be? I'm, what do I get to do? I'm sorry, when you say what do you get to do, I get to make sure that I plan my schedule accordingly that I'm present, that I'm really patient that if I do get triggered, I take a second to check in with myself first, I do self-regulation exercise, check in with my body, make sure I'm not being reactive, but instead thoughtfully responsive.

And I do whole action items off my to-do's. Where do I get to be? And then what do I get to do? And then once you're clear on that, guess what? When you do those things, and they're aligned with your being and your bigger vision, you get to create the vision that you want, you have the vision that you want. And that's essentially what I did to sort of support my marriage, but I use this framework for everything. So when I set up my goals at the beginning of the year, I use the be-do-have framework for my goals. I create my vision. And then I asked myself, who do I get to be to achieve this? And then I'm super clear, I go through it in detail. What do I have to think? What do I have to feel? How do I show up? What's my presence? I answered those questions in detail. And then from there, I do my to-do's. A lot of us create a goal and we go exactly to our actions of what we have to do to achieve that goal. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. The biggest difference is that when you use the Be-do-have framework, you get to blend both the masculine and the feminine energy, which feels really healing. The other thing quickly about trying to do this from the outside in, where you don't firmly believe it's possible for you yet, but you are trying to do the work to make it happen. Like, let's say, let's use the example of my marriage, for example, let's say I didn't do the Be-do-have framework and I was just trying to create it from the outside in, what would I do, I would make appointments to go to therapy, I would make set date nights, I would try to be present.

So there were things that I would still do. However, the difference is that if I'm not firmly in the belief that it's possible for me yet, then when something triggers an old thought pattern because again, your self-concept is just patterned thoughts that you have about yourself that you've been believing forever, okay, so a pattern thought is a neuron, a neuronal connection in your brain. So you have neurons in your brain, which are the cells in your brain, and those things fire together, they were together, and they create the thoughts that you have about yourself. And they the, depending on how long you've been thinking something so for me, from the age of probably like five to probably about like 30, I was believing practicing the belief of all marriages fail and divorce, which means that thought in my brain was a strong one, the neuronal connection, the myelin sheath around it, you know, the myelin sheath is like, you can think of like them,

Vanessa 16:39
just like a big, thick, kind of like wrapping around the neuron. The thicker that is, the more it's protected, the faster those thoughts fire. So the more you believe that to be true, okay. So the more you've been believing these thoughts, and practicing these thoughts in your brain, the more your brain will believe it to be true. So when you're trying to create your future, from, you know, the old school way of thinking, what you can just brute force your way to it, when something triggers an old belief, like, for me, something that used to trigger me is any conversations about money, because I grew up hearing a lot of arguments about money. And so linked to my thought that all marriages failed was any argument about money was gonna lead to divorce. So it was a trigger for me. So if I had only tried to achieve my goal with the old school way of doing it, then when anything would trigger that thought error, or that limiting belief, that old thought pattern, that would just get re-triggered again, it would trigger me it would upset me, and I wouldn't have the vision to hang on to, I wouldn't have those old, those ways of being that were super clear in my head to say, Okay, well, when I get triggered, this is what I'm going to do instead. That's the difference. The other differences, when you come from the Be-do-have and you're creating space, to say like, if I get triggered, I will do this, instead, it actually creates a space for healing, because what you're doing essentially is you're witnessing when you get triggered, and just the process of witnessing is so healing itself.

Alright, two more notes on this. One is, again, I love the Be-do-have framework because it lets you blend the max of the masculine and the feminine energy, which my sense is a lot of you have because a lot of us are doers, which is why we're such high achievers. But when you blend it with that feminine energy of being in your flow state and trusting and surrendering, it's just a place to achieve a goal from a place of self-compassion and self-love. And it just feels easier. You can surrender. It's not like brute force. It's not like that hustle energy. And the other thing is, that, again, when you're creating a goal that you've never seen before, it's hard for your brain to latch on to something because it feels uncertain. So my recommendation is to put reminders around you. So I actually have a vision board. And on my vision board, one corner of my vision board is my vision for my marriage. And so there's a picture there of an old couple together, doing what I want to do with my husband when we're older. And there are a bunch of other images there that remind me of my vision for my marriage. And it's very clear in big bold letters, it says, My vision for my marriage, it's to create that marriage of love legacy partnership, it says that on there very clearly. Because when you create those visual reminders, then your brain has something to latch on to.

The more you create your vision board that is super clear with the vision that you're trying to create, the easier it'll be for your brain to latch on to something that's certain in the future. So the reason why I keep, for example, I have a little index card here on my desk with the thoughts that I'm practicing to believe for my new self-concept. It's the same exact thing. Keep them around you as reminders of who you are. rolling into who you are, who you are becoming. Okay, so we talked about the two ways to achieve a new self-concept, which is for you to expand and grow outside of the current thoughts you believe about yourself to create the future, you want to believe about yourself. We talked about why it's difficult because it's hard for your brain to latch onto something that's uncertain because you've never created that future before. And your brain will always go back to the past for evidence because that's certain that it's easier for your brain to go back to that because your brain likes certainty. And then we talked about the two ways to achieve your future, doing it from the outside in. So again, think about the onion and the outer layers of the onion first, and then slowly, you start to believe it when you start to become it.

And that takes a lot of brute force, a lot of energy, and doesn't leave a ton of room for self-compassion or doing it from the inside out. Where you use the framework B do have, you work on becoming that person, living into those beliefs of that person, being that person creating those visions all around you of what that person has and does. And then you go to create all your actions. And that's how you create the future that you want. That's based on cognitive behavioral psychology and the cognitive thought model. And it allows a blending of energy of masculine and feminine energy and space for self-compassion when you're creating your new future. Okay, go on fourth, and I hope you're able to use this framework to create a new self-concept. Hasta la proxima.

Vanessa 21:44
Hey, if you love what you're learning, then you've got to check out my free Ultimate Guide to stop people pleasing, where I teach you a simple five-step process to stop saying yes, when you really want to say No, you'll be so glad that you did. There's a link to the guide in the show notes. I'll see you next time.