Limiting Beliefs: Release Negativity About Love, Happiness And Success
Have you ever made a statement like “I’m not good at public speaking” or “I could never make that much money”? These are examples of beliefs that limit your potential and impact.
What are limiting beliefs?
A limiting belief is a state of mind, conviction or belief that you think to be true that limits you in some way. This limiting belief could be about you, your interactions with other people, or with the world and how it works.
Life Hacks
Limiting beliefs negatively affect you.
They keep you from growing, believing in new things, taking new opportunities, or reaching your goals.
Limiting beliefs are perceptions created out of fear that hold us back from happiness, health, love and success.
Ultimately, limiting beliefs keep you from feeling confident and creating your dream life.
Why do we limit our beliefs?
Experience
From a young age, our actions are met with reactions and this is how we learn about our environment.
We quickly learn we will get burned if something is hot.
In the same way we also learn more subtle things like how to people please, not speak our truth and that if we take chances we will fail.
These are harmful beliefs, nonetheless we believe them because of conclusions we came to regarding one event, a long time ago.
Education
Learning by example is another way we form our beliefs.
We take on the beliefs of our parents, teachers, and older siblings as our own in order to survive and navigate the world successfully.
But this turns out to be a catch 22 when we realize our parents and teachers may have been ill informed or had outdated ideas and perceptions in an everchanging world.
Faulty logic
In life we are motivated by cost vs risk thinking.
We take chances and hope for the best and when that risk returns with failure, we subconsciously overtime decide that risk is equal to failure and thus stop taking chances.
Eventually, the beliefs that failure is bad and therefore must be avoided at all costs becomes a core feeling.
All our decisions are then made out of fear and we begin to overgeneralize.
Experiencing new things, taking risks, and growing all become dangerous and foolish ideas.
We over rationalize everything and pretend to know the outcomes of any given event.
Inevitably, we say “x will always lead to y because I have been through a similar circumstance.”
This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy because what we believe we receive, and we stay shackled to our limiting beliefs until we overcome them.
Excuses
One reason we use faulty logic and form limiting beliefs is to make excuses for ourselves and what we perceive to be our failures.
When we do something and it does not work, we often justify our failures by making logical excuses for them that make us feel like we are not responsible.
- “I can’t make money because the economy is bad.”
- “There are no good men left and that’s why I’m single.”
- “I don’t have friends because no one is real.”
By doing this, we do not learn and may increasingly put ourselves into a corner, limiting what we will think and do in the future.
Fear
Limiting beliefs are fear driven. Fear is created by our egos as a survival mechanism. It serves us well, until we overuse it.
Fear lives in all of us for survival, but when fear is the driving force in our lives and behind every decision we make, it wreaks havoc and keeps us playing small.
There is often a strong enough sense of fear that we avoid takings risks, trying something new or behaving differently because the thought of criticism, ridicule or rejection by others is enough to powerfully inhibit us.
Knowing the difference between limiting and helpful beliefs
There is also the question of whether limiting beliefs are good for us and whether they keep us from harm.
In practice some beliefs, that limit us, are valid beliefs which are worth keeping. The problem is telling the difference.
Common limiting beliefs to look out for:
• I do/don’t
• I can’t
• I must/mustn’t
• I am/am not
• Others are/will
• Beliefs on how the world works
Statements and thoughts with this structure are often the source of limiting beliefs.
This isn’t always the case though.
For instance:
- I don’t like chocolate
- I am a female
- I must look both ways before crossing
- I am not safe in that neighborhood
These are not limiting beliefs.
Now let’s examine this statement:
“I am tired of trying to get through to him.”
See how different this statement feels than the previous ones?
We can all relate to feeling unheard.
There are probably emotional charges of frustration, irritation, and confusion behind this.
The difference is the emotional charge behind these types of statements.
Non-limiting beliefs will feel neutral or certain.
Whereas limiting beliefs will feel negative and confusing.
Alexis- Life Coach
This is what differentiates a limiting belief from just a belief. Limiting beliefs have negative feelings attached to them.
When we are feeling very fearful to things that are not scary or when we feel so confused that we become lost, its likely we are clinging to limiting belief(s) and exhausted the belief and ourselves doing so.
Healthy beliefs do not cause us fear or uncertainty. They don’t need to be defended, proved, or justified.
They are simply beliefs.
HOW TO CHANGE YOUR BELIEFS AND BELIEVE SOMETHING NEW
Are you ready to believe something new?
First you need to notice your thoughts. Then, examine them. Next, you create new thoughts, and last you practice those thoughts until you believe them!
Here’s how!
This is the 4-step method I teach in my 1:1 coaching sessions to change your beliefs. Click to learn more.
Also, in my New World Program I teach you how to become aware of limiting beliefs and reboot your mindset to help you manifest and change your life fast! Sign up below to get on the waitlist!
4 Steps to Overcome your limiting beliefs:
Step One: Awareness
You are not your thoughts.
Becoming aware of your thoughts means accepting you have a choice and deciding you want to feel better.
Figure out what thoughts feel good and which ones don’t. Likewise decide which thoughts are bringing you closer to your highest self and which ones are keeping you from her.
You have a choice in what you choose to think.
So, if you don’t like who you are, your environment or your relationships, you need to know it is by no fault but your own.
You have either created or allowed these things into your life through limiting beliefs.
You may not be responsible for the creation of your limiting belief, but you are responsible for changing it.
Step Two: Accept
Once you have become aware of your limiting belief you need to accept the point you are at in life that it has brought you to.
Accept exactly where you are so that you can move forward.
Just like before you clean, you must look around at the damage and fully assess it in order to know where to start.
You cant get the dirty dishes out of the sink until the dishwasher is unloaded and you cant vacuum until everything is picked up off the floor.
The same goes for your thoughts.
Step Three: New thought
Now for the fun part! Choose a new and better thought.
Realize your limiting belief is no longer serving you and commit to a new thought.
Decide what the best version of yourself is like.
Create small and large goals for how your dream self wants to live, think, and act.
Then do what you need to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
For example, looking back 3 years ago my highest self didn’t drink. She would rather spend that time being productive or doing something purposeful.
I can drink if I want to, but I prefer not to and always remember who my future self is when deciding whether to have a drink. If it conflicts, and usually it does, I don’t drink.
Today my future self is a woman who is very balanced and has her priorities at the forefront. This wouldn’t be possible if I was still a drinker.
Step Four: Practice
Step three is to practice believing your new thought.
The only way to get better is to practice!
Be aware that your limiting belief may creep back in that’s ok, you are prepared for this!
This is where reminding yourself of the new and better thought comes in and then practice, practice, practice!
Final thought:
Becoming aware of your limiting beliefs is hard that’s why everyone needs a life coach!
Even I have one!
It’s so much easier for a skilled life coach to help you see your own limiting beliefs, than it is to try to find and work through them without the skills and knowledge!
In my 1:1 life coaching program I not only identify you limiting beliefs and help you overcome them, you learn the skills to become more aware and coach yourself!
Resources:
5 Day Life Coaching Course (Free Training)
6 Steps To Healing Yourself In 6 Minutes (Blog Post)
1:1 Life Coaching (Program)
