2 Ways to Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs

How to Overcome A Limiting Belief — How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs

The conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg. A belief is something that you hold to be true. Beliefs are either conscious or subconscious.

A limiting belief is any belief that holds you back.

Limiting beliefs are beliefs usually held in the subconscious mind, which are caused by stressors.

Over time, the stressors of negativity and suppressing behaviour, from those in your life and from yourself, lead to self-limiting beliefs. Change your focus to positive beliefs and an attitude of positivity in general, to overcome limiting beliefs.

Method One

Identify your limiting beliefs and create positive belief statements.

A Helpful and un-limiting Belief Statement (HBS) must be stated in the present tense (apply to the present time) and address just one cohesive idea.

If you think “I will never leave work”, examples of beliefs overcoming this are “I am working toward resigning from work” or “One day I will leave work” or specifically, “I am building up money and support so I can resign from work.”

But make sure you look for any associated limiting beliefs. Is there something behind your apparent negative belief?

There are two important challenges when overcoming limiting beliefs.

(1) You need to find your foundational self-limiting beliefs.

For example, “I never get anywhere” may be based upon “People don’t like what I do” or “Nobody cares about me.” You can use the “more beautiful question” technique to dig out all of your beliefs, however many or few they are.

If you ask yourself why do I feel / think I don’t get far fast, there will be answers. Keep asking yourself questions. The bottom or last answer, after you keep digging, is the foundation of all your beliefs around the initial belief that presented itself.

Example:

You: I never get anywhere

Question: Why do you say that?

Answer: Well, I work as hard as anyone else, but I’m still paying of my mortgage at age 55

Question: Why are you still doing that?

Answer: Probably because I have had so many challenges that I was too scared to find and accept a better paying job, so my income isn’t what it could be.

Question: What challenges did you have?

Answer: I could never please my parents, and they made me feel like I couldn’t do much, so I didn’t.

Question: How does that make you feel?

Answer: It makes me feel that nobody cares about me much.

The foundational limiting belief is: “Nobody cares about me”.

Change this to: “A lot of people care about me, I’m a wonderful and worthy person.”

Beliefs abound, and if you have any negative or limiting beliefs, it is best to address all the layers of beliefs and transform or transmute each one to a helpful unlimiting belief.

(2) You need to remember that we are human.

Every human being has challenges. We all have freewill to choose our responses and actions, within context. Move toward choosing to learn about yourself and to grow by working on your limiting beliefs.

Regarding anger, aim to get even.

Getting “even” does not mean shout or throw things at people who upset you. It means balance what is holding you back with what you need to put yourself on a positive trajectory.

Resentment and grudges and firing angry shots at the world will only keep you resonating at dense lower frequencies.

This will make it harder for you to create your positive belief statements, because your focus will be on lack, not on the potential and actuality that’s inherent in your helpful Belief Statements.

Your beliefs around issues that caused or cause you grief may include limiting beliefs arising from anger

For example, if you think or believe “Life is easy for [ insert name ], this belief may be untrue and could be based upon “Why is so-and-so happy as Larry, when she/he is a horrible person, why not me?”

If you ask yourself the question “Why am I so concerned over Larry’s great life?” you may answer, “My life is not as great” and this is a self-limiting belief.

You can’t progress easily toward a great life if your subconscious mind is telling you “my life is crappy”. The subconscious doesn’t care what it thinks about, but it will follow the orders that the thoughts in it program it to follow.

Be aware of your own personality and tendencies and characteristic feelings, as you traverse your highways of beliefs. For example, you may tend toward perfectionism, so if you unravel a negative thought, don’t beat yourself up over it. Nobody is perfect, so don’t expect yourself to be.

Whatever your style, you are a human being, charting challenges and learning new things all the time. It’s important to be kind to yourself as you delve into sorting out your limiting beliefs.

Society impresses upon us so many “don’ts” and “do’s” that we start to compress our energy or put up walls blocking our creative forward-moving positive thoughts and beliefs.

When you feel yourself dipping into a “downer” pick yourself up by focusing on something interesting to occupy you, or on something enjoyable to do or to look at, to pull yourself away from the negativity.

Use as many positive Belief Statements (HBS) as you want, as often as you want. Accept where you are, even if you don’t like aspects of it, because you are a part of humankind.

Show appreciation for what you have by being positive!

Know that the Universe doesn’t singularly “pick on you”. Being human is hard for everyone.

When your SUB-CONSCIOUS BELIEFS are not in alignment with your conscious beliefs, you sabotage yourself or de-rail parts of your life.

But the good news is that with time and effort == and willpower == you can take charge of yourself and direct your life the way you want it to go, through positive conscious thoughts and feelings, and awareness.

Work on your limiting beliefs and transform them to helpful un-limiting beliefs, with the understanding that you cannot create what you want if your sub-conscious mind is telling you something different to what your conscious mind is telling you.

Method Two

Use visual, auditory, and kinesthetic words (employing the five senses) to create and focus on visions of what you want. Ditch your negative or limiting beliefs by choosing to create positive beliefs through sensations. Then tune into them when you need to.

Visual: What does it look like?

Examples: use LOOK or SEE

I look at my bank balance and there’s $100,000 or more.

I look happy and relaxed and healthy

I see my stories on Medium reaching thousands of views per month

I see my earnings of $100 or more per month, from Medium

Auditory: What would you hear? From clients / friends / family / yourself / others

Examples: I hear or say — -

We’re so happy and grateful that we can pay our bills.

Your guidelines on Medium are excellent.

You are a great help.

I’m so happy for you [ from your friends / family ]

Kinesthetic: What would it feel like if what you want was true? ( tune into the sensation )

Examples:

I feel blissful

I feel happy and grateful

I feel that I am wanted

I feel satisfied

An example of putting these together is the belief that one day, “I look at my bank balance and see $100,000 which makes me feel so thrilled because I can now leave my mainstream job. I hear my partner saying to me well done and congratulations now that you can resign after 38 years of good work in the government.”

A powerful technique is when you’re in bed at night, if you wake up, pick or choose just one thing that you really want. Imagine it or fantasize about it in detail through visuals / auditory / kinesthetic sensations !

This is not wishful thinking if it is carefully considered (i.e. possible or realistic).

This is not childish, if it’s based upon your belief that “everyone, including you, deserves happiness and satisfaction.”

Desires

A desire is something that you want or would really love. A desire may be “I really want to leave work and be fully in charge of my energy, while being supported.” If your belief around this desire is “I am able to support myself” the desire and the belief are congruent or matching.

You can put the 2 together to create “I really want to leave work to be completely in charge of my energy, with grace and ease, and I believe that I will be supported when I do.”

But if you have a hidden limiting belief such as “Money is scarce” or “I don’t make enough money” then this belief will hold you back from fully embracing the concept or the “desire with belief” that you will finish working for someone else and be materially supported.

You will know that a thought is a positive belief if the thought makes you feel good.

Be careful with wishes.

When you think wistfully “I wish I had a million dollars”, is underlying this, a belief in lack? Is your subconscious serving up a dose of the limiting belief “I will never have a million dollars?” ( I’ll never have a million dollars, but I wish that I did. )

To manifest your desires, you need to have deeply-felt intentions (expressed feelingly as “I would love…..” or “I want….” or “I would really like…..” ) aligned with positive conscious thoughts and love and appreciation.

There must be no hijacking subconscious thoughts. The word “wish” can imply forever wishing, thus perpetually generating the condition of wishing.

“Wish implies “something that may not be likely to occur, or something that is not likely to be within one’s control” ← — source: Cambridge Dictionary

“I really want a million dollars and there are definitely ways in which I may get it.”

This is a desire with a belief that you can work toward fulfilling. 😄

A word about affirmations

Affirmations work when you realise that they are helpful or positive un-limiting beliefs that replace limiting beliefs.

You have to work with “affirmations” or beliefs that are uniquely personal and relevant to you. Patience and honesty are needed to reveal your foundational beliefs.

This will require you identifying and writing out or recording your limiting beliefs and converting them to positive beliefs.

Affirmations as positive belief statements should be used when you need them. So, if you are feeling “down” or negative about something, identify the core or foundational limiting belief, and delete it from your conscious mind so that it stops feeding into your subconscious mind.

Then overcome your limiting beliefs by replacing them and adding beautiful and supportive positive unlimiting beliefs.

You are allowed to distract yourself from a “downer” or from a sneaky or fleeting limiting belief by being funny or by watching a kid’s cartoon — — or doing whatever you find satisfaction or neutrality with, as a distraction.

“It’s okay to distract yourself from unhappy thoughts” within the framework of the teaching in this article.

In summary, overcome your limiting beliefs through the following two actions.

Identify your limiting beliefs and create positive belief statements. Use visual, auditory, and kinesthetic words to create and focus on visions of what you want.

Thanks for reading! You may be interested in the following article.