Are limiting beliefs holding you back?

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I can’t do that because…” - if so you might be letting your limiting beliefs hold you back from achieving your full potential.

Limiting beliefs are negative thoughts and images that have been drilled into our heads by friends, foes, loved ones, and society. Our brains are big computers, so we install them right along with positive or empowering beliefs.

Once a limiting belief has taken hold you don’t notice it often, but when it shows itself it’s power is surprisingly strong.

So how do you let limiting beliefs get installed and what can you do to uninstall them?

Many of our limiting beliefs don’t come from ourselves, they come from well meaning people who don’t realize they’re setting up a negative association. A parent who cautions a child, “If you don’t get a college education you’ll never get a good job!” is well meaning, but without follow up and support they can inadvertently install a limiting belief that there is no good job available for the person who didn’t attend college.

A friend might install a limiting belief by telling you, “You can’t make a living selling your artwork.”

A spouse might install a limiting belief by telling you, “Are you crazy? You can’t quit your job and start your own company. We can’t lose your steady paycheck!”

Pretty soon, if these statements are reinforced over and over, you’ll start to believe them whether they’re true or not!

You might even self-sabotage if you find yourself in a situation that isn’t congruent with your beliefs. If you do quit your job and start your own business, but you believe that it’s crazy because of a limiting belief, it’s possible you’ll subconsciously work against yourself so you eventually get back to a place where your situation is congruent with your beliefs.

If you do something when a limiting belief is telling you the exact opposite of what you’re doing, one of three things is going to happen:

1) You’ll self-sabotage your success and when the business fails it will reinforce your limiting belief, creating a self-sustaining feedback loop which makes the limiting belief even stronger!

2) You’ll get sick because your reality and your beliefs are not congruent. You will get yourself into a state where you’ll physically be ill and you will work to get yourself out of this state.

3) You’ll realize that your liming belief is self-imposed and not really such a limit after all. You’ll break through your belief and be successful. You might even install a new belief that says, “Working for myself is great! I don’t have to be chained to someone else’s schedule and I decide when and how I can earn money.”

Number two is the worst option above; I speak from personal experience. About three years ago I was presented with a business opportunity that looked great on the surface. It involved spending nearly 100% of the partners’ time on the phone, selling. I had done cold-calls in the past, and I wasn’t uncomfortable on sales calls; it looked like a good product and a good business idea. So I started calling, and calling, and calling.

But I had a limiting belief that said, “People don’t like to get bothered with sales calls.” I certainly didn’t like receiving sales calls, and I figured no one else would either. In this case I had a self-inflicted limiting belief.

I was uneasy the first two weeks of making calls, but I told myself that I just needed to get used to dialing and hearing, “No!” all day long - I would get better. By the fifth week I knew I was in trouble. I still wasn’t comfortable with 8 hours of rejection and I wasn’t okay with making sales calls; my reality was way out of line with my beliefs! I was physically sick to my stomach at the thought of getting out of bed and facing another day of making calls. I would sit at my desk and my hand would shake a little as I reached for the phone. It was awful. The business which looked so good on paper wasn’t working out quite like we thought it would, and I wasn’t able to mentally rectify my beliefs with my reality and it was making my ill.

My partners and I talked about it, and I told them I couldn’t do the job. They asked me to step out and I did. The moment I was “out” I felt a huge weight lift, my life was once again in balance. I no longer had to struggle with my reality out of line with my beliefs.

With this opportunity I wasn’t able to make the break through, step out of my comfort zone and realign myself to overcome my limiting beliefs. You can also see that in this case my limiting beliefs completely held me back from achieving my goals.

What limiting beliefs do you have that are keeping you from realizing your potential? I know you have some, everyone does. A better question is, how do you get rid of these limiting beliefs?

A belief is any cognitive content held as true. Beliefs can be based on fact and truth; I believe I will not fall off the Earth because I believe in gravity (which has been proven scientifically). Beliefs can also be based on conjecture and feeling; I believe in a supreme being because it makes me feel “good” inside (which cannot be proven scientifically).

So to change a belief you just have to change how you view that cognitive content; simple right? If only it were! Our brains are computers, but they’re pattern-based computers. Our brains love to find patterns in everything, numbers, shapes, beliefs. You name it and we pattern it. Our brain physically changes as these patterns get reinforced; new neural pathways are formed and our beliefs are literally hardwired into our brains! Our beliefs become habits and just like it can be difficult to change a habit; it can be difficult to change a belief.

Logic can help a little. Take for example the belief some have, “If you don’t get a college degree, you won’t get a good job.” Really? If you have this limiting belief, I can guarantee you know someone with a good job, maybe a great job who doesn’t have a college degree. So it’s not true in reality that you have to have a college degree to get a good job. Logically this belief is flawed - why not just get rid of it?

Logic isn’t nearly as powerful as emotions to humans. We tie emotions deeply to everything we do and experience. We also want to avoid pain and gain pleasure. If you have a belief you want to eliminate, logically knowing it’s false is a good start, but if you can tie emotional pain to the belief you stand a much better change of eliminating it.

You have to reach a point where you get your belief and reality so incongruent that the pain of keeping the belief is more painful than not keeping the belief. You need to use visualization and logic and experience and other, positive beliefs to build up this pain around your limiting beliefs. You really want the limiting belief to fester and boil just below the surface of your conscious, and you want to keep pressure on yourself that the belief is invalid and needs to be replaced.

And you need to be ready with a replacement belief that’s positive and uplifting! When you finally apply enough pain to keeping your limiting belief and you finally get incongruent enough your brain will just let it go. It wants to experience that relief you get - that weight lifting - and the only way to get it is to remove the belief. When this happens, you’ll have a void where your belief was and your brain will be ready to stick something into that void.

If you’re not ready with a positive and beneficial belief to fill that void, chances are you’ll end up with a new limiting belief!

You have to get clear on what you want before you get rid of what you don’t want. Your replacement belief might be, “I use my unique talents to make myself attractive and valuable to employers.”

Because beliefs are installed just like habits, you need to keep reinforcing your new belief. If you only plant the seed your new belief will probably not take root. If you spend time for at least thirty days reflecting on your new belief as you review your goals, you’ll not only plant the seed, you’ll water and fertilize it too!

Steps to remove a limiting belief:

1) Identify how the belief is flawed. It’s only a belief because you think it’s true. Figure out a way to think it’s false.

2) Tie emotional pain to keeping the belief. By nature we move away from pain as quickly as possible. Make sure that keeping the belief will trigger large amounts of emotional pain for yourself!

3) Be crystal clear on a replacement belief! Once you’ve tied enough pain to your limiting belief and your mind lets it go, it will be looking for a new belief to replace the pattern. If you’re not clear on a positive belief to fill this void you can end up with another limiting belief!

4) Constantly review your new, positive belief. Just planting a new belief isn’t enough, you need to spend time (at least a month) reviewing your new belief on a daily basis to make sure it “sticks.” A good way to do this is to write your belief on an index card and read it aloud twice a day; in the morning when you get up and in the evening before you go to bed!

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Here are some related articles you might also enjoy!

• Stop listening to negative people!
• You become what you think about.
• Raising the bar on your goals.
• You need more than measurement to reach your goals.
• Cash or conscience?

January 5th, 2006

Entry Filed under: Positive Thinking, Beliefs