With the forthcoming London Olympics looming large now, I was reminded today about the power, for good and for ill, of your beliefs, whatever you hold to be true.

In the first half of the 20th Century, sports “experts” announced it was impossible for the human body to carry enough energy and maintain the strength to run a mile in under 4 minutes. For years, that pronouncement seemed to be true. Athletes tried, but they never broke the “magic barrier” the experts had set up.

Then, on 6th May, 1954, a British runner, Roger Bannister, took part in a race in Oxford. He was determined to give it the very best he could and he wasn’t prepared to listen to anyone except his own belief that he could be the best.

Famously, he broke the tape and collapsed as the announcer delivered his time to the cheering crowd: 3 minutes 59.4 seconds!

The “unbreakable” record had been broken. At age 25, Roger Bannister had made world history.

What’s fascinating is that within a month, the Australian runner John Landy had broken Bannister’s record. Then, Bannister had the satisfaction of besting Landy at that summer’s British Empire Games in Vancouver. In a race billed as “The Mile of the Century”, both runners beat the four minute time but Bannister came in first at 3 minutes 58.8 seconds to Landy’s 3 minutes 59.6 seconds.

After that, the floodgates opened wide. Six more people broke the world record in the year after these amazing events. More than 300 did in the following years, and the record for running a mile now stands at 3 minutes 43.13 seconds, set by Hicham El Guerrouj in 1999.

Now here’s the thing:

Bannister refused to accept the limiting belief that other athletes and the world’s experts believed: that it was impossible to run a mile in under 4 minutes.

Once the experts had been shown that it was possible, the rest of the world followed along …

The problem with limiting beliefs, funnily enough, is they really do limit you! As Henry Ford famously said “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”

That’s why if you want to go further and do better than those around you, it’s your job to ask yourself challenging questions, push yourself harder – and if your internal dialogue says “I can’t … do this”, realise that those words are only a belief.

So if you do believe that you can be a better you, what’s stopping you from making it so? What beliefs are limiting or sabotaging you, what if you believed differently?

And if you need need some help to identify let go and embrace new ways of thinking, hypnosis is a very effective way of changing beliefs for the better. Using the latest advances in psychology and life coaching, I can help you acquire techniques and skills to set and maintain great goals and to overcome beliefs that in times gone by would have held you back.

And if you don’t believe it is possible to change beliefs or to do so easily, then please do consider the central tenet of this article again. Better still give me a call for the opportunity to prove otherwise!