The thing about limiting beliefs is that they can be so much a part of your thinking that you often don’t know that you have them and certainly don’t ever question their authority over you. Limiting beliefs are sometimes defined as the “don’ts, can’ts, won’ts, and shouldn’ts. They keep your world small to protect you from stretching your comfort zone.
Do you realize that you think up to 70K thoughts per day. Most of your thoughts are negative or memories of the past. When a thought tries to escape the confines of your limited world, you quickly return it to its place with thoughts of can’t, won’t or shouldn’t. This too can be an unconscious process to keep you tethered to your fear.
What if the good news is that you’re wrong. If only one person in the world has successfully challenged their limiting beliefs to achieve a dream, that means that you can too!
But how, you ask…
Well, How badly do you want Your dream?
If you really don’t want it badly enough to put anything at stake, it’s probably not worth the effort to even think about– so you can stop wasting your precious thought energy on it. Perhaps it’s just a ‘should’ that you can eliminate.
Why do you want it?
What’s driving you? Is it to compensate for an inner lack or is it a passion calling to you? Get clear on what your limiting beliefs are protecting and you just might find your answers.
What are you willing to put at stake?
Your time? Your money? Your energy? Your relationships? Your life? The answer to this question will indicate how important it is to you to challenge and overcome your limiting beliefs.
Are you willing to fail?
Failure is one of your best teachers. You will learn more from failure than you will ever learn from success. If you are willing to include failure as part of the journey without letting it stop you, you have a very good chance of overcoming your limiting beliefs. Discouragement is often a partner to failure. If you can also welcome discouragement– congratulations, you’re on your way.
What’s your relationship with patience?
Celebrating baby steps–two steps forward, one step back—gives the achievement of your goal a very healthy prognosis.
In summary, your limiting beliefs protect a small world inside of your comfort zone. You can live in that box but there’s a lot more aliveness in the unknown.
Challenge yourself by changing one small thing daily. Take a different route to work. Make a new friend. Try a food that you decided long ago that you didn’t like. Learn something new by daily listening to one of YouTube’s zillion podcasts.
What about deeply seated limiting beliefs
You may need an intervention that bypasses the conscious mind to transform deeply ingrained patterns. Hypnosis and/or Emotional Freedom Technique is a therapy that accesses higher states of mind in order to reprogram deeply held limiting beliefs. Change your beliefs to change your world—one step at a time.