As you may or may not know, a limiting belief is any belief of yourself where you believe you cannot do or achieve something.
For example:
I can’t do well at at this project because of my boss hating me.
I can never start a successful business because my family has always failed at starting their own business.
I won’t go to the gym, because I’ll look like an fat old slob and people will laugh at me.
You get the point. Most, if not, all of us have had these beliefs before.
And the annoying thing about them is that they simply hold us back from something we secretly want to do, sometimes even dream of doing, and always sort make us suppress our desires. Terrible.
So what can you do about them?
I’ll give you two pieces of advice. Two pieces that have helped me breakthrough limiting beliefs.
#1 Stop overthinking
Most limiting beliefs begin to manifest themselves after overthinking something. With overthinking comes doubt, and with doubt comes an inhibition to take action.
So start asking yourself some thought-provoking questions like ‘How is this belief absolutely ridiculous?’ or ‘Was the person I learned the belief from worth modeling in this area?’ or ‘What will it ultimately cost me emotionally/financially if I don’t let go of this belief?’.
#2 Manage your past
I know, whatever happened can’t be changed. Unfortunately though, the origins of 90% of the limiting beliefs we have, come from events that occurred in our past.
In this respect, the trick is to start accepting that your past does not equal your future. This may be tough to manage as our psyche tends to categorize new experiences into so-called ‘schemas’. These are pre-determined categories that have formed from past experiences. Ever met someone new and caught yourself thinking ‘Oh yeah, he’s just like one of my other friends!’ I’m sure you have. So all you do is categorize that new person you met into an existing ‘file’ or ‘schema’ in your head. In psychology, this is referred to as a ‘cognitive short-cut’, simply because our brain is too lazy to create a new ‘file’ for the new person we met. Even though our psyche may find it difficult to accept, you need to start working on incorporating the fact that your past doesn’t equal your future.
It doesn’t! And never will! Get that thought into your head!
What are your limiting beliefs? Do you make efforts to overcome them?
Let me know 🙂
Good day,
Amazing!!👌👌
It can be helpful to many people around, and I guess It will help me too..
Glad it did 🙂 thanks!
My pleasure ☺
Great advice! I have a tendency to overthink things. Thanks for the reminder!
Welcome 🙂
Very true! I have/have had so many limiting beliefs over my life. So many I’m struggling to pinpoint some to share. I’ll come back with some!
I agree. I tell my 7 yr old that I don’t want to hear the word “I can’t”. I tell him that is a bad word. 😀
Great! 🙂
This is a great explanation of how the brain reacts to new information. Our brains are lazy and do exactly as you said. But we can change gears with constant reminders of the two solutions you mentioned. Really helpful read.
Absolutely as you say 🙂
Reblogged this on Chronic Pain with a Higher Perspective and commented:
This is a great explanation of how the brain reacts to new information. Our brains are lazy, but we can change gears with constant reminders of the two solutions he mentions. Really helpful read.
Thanks 🙂
Beautifully explained the most common problem of sticking to one’s past and limiting believes. it so happens to me often but now i’m trying to overcome them….
I am definitely an overthinker! I overthink things regularly, to the point where hour by hour, it’s mood altering. As you stated, a lot stems from past experiences/relationships, but I do realize that this kind of behavior has been an obstacle in any forward movement for me. All I can say right now, is that I’m working that out through therapy. I have goals and dreams that I think my self in and out of several times a day, everyday. I am optimistic that it won’t always be that way. I look forward to “living”. That will be a new experience for me. Thank you for this blog!
Great post! Overthinking is definitely what I allow to make me second guess.
See the past is something we can’t ignore but some people hold on to it while others are more easy with it but surely one does progress but some pasts are what that make you a better person
True!
💔
I find myself quite often falling into black and white thinking.
One of my limiting beliefs is “what if it doesn’t work out?” Thank you for sharing tip number one. Very often we get so caught up in overthinking and miss out on actually carrying out the actions. This was really encouraging.
Glad I could help 🙂
I’m glad you like it! Even though it might not work out, from an emotional point of view, it’s better to try and fail than not to try at all. Here is my post with some scientific data in it about this matter -> https://pointlessoverthinking.com/2018/06/10/the-regret-of-doing-things-vs-the-regret-of-not-doing-things/
Thank you