What are Limiting Beliefs?
Any belief that questions your self-worth and makes you accept that as the ultimate truth is a Limiting Belief. We tend to use all our potential towards what we believe in. But, when we have limiting beliefs, it works in reverse. We won’t dare to try anything that we assume is not going to work out.
“The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.”
– Tony Robbins
These limiting beliefs create a negative impact on your life
- By stopping you from doing what you love.
- By continuously questioning your abilities.
- By fighting with your confidence and defeating it.
- By pushing you towards procrastination, anxiety, overthinking, and many more negative reactions.
- And at last, By blocking your growth
Beliefs are created mostly based on our experiences. Our environment, culture, family structure, and many more such factors have their contribution too. And, studies say that most of our beliefs are formed during your childhood i.e., 0-7 yrs. Though we cannot return and alter anything, we still do have ways to get rid of our self-limiting beliefs.
Ways to get rid of Limiting Beliefs:
- Identify Your Limiting Beliefs
- Acknowledge Your Limiting Beliefs
- Become Immune to your limiting beliefs
- Try this Exercise.
- Meditate & Practise Affirmation
Lets see each one in detail
Identify Your Limiting Beliefs:
There are numerous little voices pop-up when you think of each aspect of your life. It can be about health, career, finances, relationship, personal growth, and parenting (I can’t help but add it being a parent myself :)).
Pay attention to every detail of that inner voice and observe what exactly it conveys. Identify those limiting beliefs. This way you now have much clarity on where exactly do you stand. Only when you know where you are, you can proceed to seek direction for where you wannabe (Wow!)
Acknowledge Your Limiting Beliefs:
Accept that you do have limiting beliefs. There is no need to suppress these thoughts. So, don’t be shy to simply accept the fact and listen, you’re not alone. Proceed by taking action on it.
Forgive yourself for holding them this long. And, forgive others who made you feel insecure. You need to let it go, if not it’s going to daunt you very soon again. It’d be tempting to travel back to that past experience and play it all over in your head again. But, don’t do that. It’s only getting to feed your insecurities more and keep you playing small.
Gently acknowledge and let go of all your limiting beliefs. After all, they’re just beliefs and not facts.
Become Immune to your Limiting Beliefs:
A personal story here. Recently, when I visited my baby’s Pead for a regular check-up, I asked him to prescribe some immunity boosters. Yes, it had been due to the fear of COVID.
He, being a super-experienced physician, told me “There is only one way to become immune and that is by getting exposed to the disease itself. Sadly, there is no medicine to develop immunity.”
How True? Isn’t it? This is precisely the same way to become immune to our limiting beliefs, fears, and any other insecurities.
Say, if you have fear of speaking in public, expose yourself more towards that kinda situation. Yes, the first few times you may tremble. And, after 4-5 times, you’ve already become immune to the fear of public speaking.
Try this Exercise
This exercise helped me get rid of my limiting beliefs. Try this and let me know if it helped you too.
- Take a paper.
- Write down 3 of your limiting belief.
- Strike it out.
- Write a counter positive sentence beside it.
- Repeat this for a week.
- Check if you could feel some changes in your thought pattern.
- If yes, start working on your next limiting beliefs.
- If not, give it some more time as we developed these beliefs and are living with them for decades.
Meditate and Practise Affirmations:
I can’t stress this enough. Anything and everything can be solved with clarity in mind. That’s what I believe in. And, you cannot ask for anything more than meditation to declutter your mind.
Affirmations are simple, positive, and powerful sentences. When you repeat it yourself daily, you can see the change in your perspective.
Make a list of affirmations that can succeed your limiting beliefs and start repeating them daily. First few days, you may feel as if you’re lying to yourself as it’s the total opposite of what you believe in. But gradually, you can overwrite your limiting beliefs with confidence.
Bonus Tip: Read the life of successful people:
No matter who we are and what we do, we always have some celebrity picture to look up to. They inspire us to follow the dreams in our life. We admire them for their success.
Just because they’re successful, it doesn’t mean they never had any insecurities. In fact, these successful people are those who had dramatic traumas and innumerable failures and still managed to pursue their dream. It’s because they stomped on their limiting beliefs to reach heights.
So, Only looking up to their success would not be of any benefit. Peep into their fears, insecurities, and failures. Books, especially Auto-Biographies are the best way to know how they managed to come out of their limiting beliefs. Get to know their life in any way possible and you will understand how every single act of them defeated their insecurities.
Final Thoughts:
Everyone has to go thru these suppressing voices in their head and some are successful because they built their confidence stronger than their limiting beliefs. It’s just a voice that stays in your head and shouts “you can’t.” And you were living, sorry, surviving with it for ages. Now’s the time to look back and shut it off.
Can you believe it is the exact same voice that is preventing you from achieving your desired life? It isn’t about big dreams. Even our everyday goals face the threat.
If you want to see some positive changes in your life, start the change from within. Whenever you limit yourself just for the beliefs that you developed years ago, question it. Become mindful and seek answers. That’s the first thing you can do towards getting rid of limiting beliefs.
Grab your worksheet and start working on them.
Also, if you use this worksheet and find it useful, don’t forget to tag me in instagram @srividyakannigesvaran