Limiting Beliefs: Where They Come From & How To Overcome Them

How do we overcome limiting beliefs? Why do we even have limiting beliefs? Where do they come from? Well, most people inherit them from their environment at a very young age. For example, maybe your maternal grandfather tried to start a business when your mother was a child, only to have it fail. Maybe they fell on hard times and you grandfather was forced to become an employee. You mother’s childhood trauma may have stuck with her all this time.

So instead of encouraging you to become an entrepreneur, she stressed the importance of getting an education and a good job. While that path is ok for some, it doesn’t work for everybody. So by growing up in an environment where entrepreneurship was not encouraged, on a subconscious level, you don’t believe you have what it takes. Or maybe that having your own business is some foolish dream that is for other people and not you. Well the truth is, if you really want to do it and you’re willing to do the work, you can do most anything you believe.

This post will discuss the 4 steps to overcome your limiting beliefs. Those are identification, rewriting, reprogramming and action. Here we go!

Identify Limiting Beliefs to Overcome

The first step in solving any problem is realizing there is one in the first place. Ask yourself, “Are you living the life that you want to?” If you are not at least on your way, ask yourself, “What do you want out of life? After you’ve decided that, ask yourself “What’s holding you back?” Once you’ve reach this stage you can see more clearly whatever it is that is holding you back. Once you see it clearly you can discern… “Is it a real obstacle or just a limiting belief that you need to get over?” Most likely, it is just a limiting belief.

If you were a paraplegic and your dream was to walk again, that would be a real obstacle. But even in that situation you could move toward that goal. Depending on your condition, you could train to use artificial legs or make other efforts to help research that would solve this hypothetical condition. The point is that whatever the obstacle is, there is always a positive step forward. Unfortunately, most of us are crippled mentally from fulfilling our potentials because we are either unconscious or too afraid or too lazy to overcome our limiting beliefs. I know this seems like a lot of work but this is what is required to discover & overcome the limiting beliefs that hold us back.

Rewrite It

After you’ve identified a limiting belief, you need to turn it on its head. For example, if your limiting belief is that you feel that because you are short you can’t date the type of woman that you want to, whenever you have such a thought in your head, you should think the opposite instead. That is, whenever you think to yourself that you are too short for attractive women, tell yourself that attractive women love short men. “I’m a short man, therefore attractive women will be attracted to me.” Now, while this sounds crazy… the truth is some attractive women will instantly find you more attractive because you said this to yourself.

The reason why is you will be more confident. Will all attractive women find you more attractive because you start saying this to yourself? Probably not, but the more you really believe the stronger it will be. You will begin to talk and behave differently and that will make it even stronger. So strong that you will completely forget that you ever had a limiting belief in the first place.

Reprogram to Overcome Limiting Beliefs

After you have turned your limiting belief on its head, you need to bolster its replacement’s strength with affirmations & visualizations. For more details on using Affirmations read Autosuggestion: What It Is & 4 Steps On How To Start Using It or Visualization read How to Practice Visualization & Find Your Signal in the Noise. When visualizing you simply use your imagination, with eyes closed, to see yourself living the action of your new belief. Experience its manifestations as clearly as possible. Use all your senses in your visualization. Make it as real as you can. You also want to incorporate affirmations to make your new belief stronger. Recite the affirmation to yourself before bed at night and when you wake. Affirmations and visualizations used in conjunction will be a very powerful tool in solidifying your new belief while simultaneously changing your behavior.

Live It

“Talk the talk and walk the walk.” The most powerful tool you can have to completely destroy a limiting belief and replace it with a new more positive belief is to live it. As they say, “Don’t talk about it, be about it.” It’s a saying for a reason and that reason is because it’s true. Once you start living your new belief, you will become a positivity monster and you will become capable of anything that you believe you can do. Get 9 Tips on How to Make Your New Habits Stick.

Conclusion

While changing your behavior may seem like the hardest part of change, ironically, it is not. Once you do the groundwork of properly identifying negative beliefs. Subsequently, replacing those beliefs with new more positive beliefs. When you sincerely do the affirmations and visualizations, it will just happen. And it will be easy. It’s like they say, “The fight is won in the gym.” Your biological imperative will fight through your cognitive dissonance and make you act out your autosuggestions. We have to chose to believe something. Choose the unlimited.



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