6 Powerful Ways to Stop Holding Yourself Back

I have a magic question.

When I ask this question, it opens up a portal into your true desires.

Here it is.

If you could do anything, and you would be guaranteed success, financial freedom, and total support from your community, what would you do?

When asked this, people will often pause with slight discomfort, start smiling quietly, and then beam as they confess a deep-rooted desire for their life.

The confession of desire is beautiful to witness.

And then, often without even taking a breath, they dive into their “buts.”

“I would be an artist and own a gallery!

BUT I never received formal training.

BUT it’s too late for me now.

BUT I have no idea how to start a business.

BUT I can’t earn real money from that.

BUT I don’t even know where I would begin.

BUT my family doesn’t think art is a real career path.

BUT people would judge me.”

And on and on and on it goes.

These “buts” are the self-limiting beliefs holding us back from creating the life we truly want for ourselves.

Occasionally there are buts outside of our control that can’t be navigated as well as others.

However, more often than not, we can overcome them and unblock the path towards our dreams.

The source of self-limiting beliefs

First things first, I ask you to get on board with something that may feel uncomfortable.

At least for the time you spend reading this article, I ask that you release the belief that all of your thoughts are true.

We tend to treat the mind as if it is the only decision-making compass in life while ignoring the other parts of ourselves that have just as much to say. These parts include our bodies, hearts, and intuition.

But here’s the thing. Our mind compasses were largely built by other people.

Let’s imagine our brains as hardware. And this hardware processes the software that is our thoughts.

When we are born, we appear to come with some software pre-installed. Then, throughout our life, the rest is developed and uploaded by our experiences. Much of our subconscious programming developed in the formative years of our childhood.

This means that many of our subconscious thoughts, beliefs, patterns, triggers, and patterns were imprinted on us by our parents, childhood friends, culture, community, and experiences.

So, if our parents struggled to get by no matter how hard they worked, we may have developed a belief that money is scarce and hard to come by no matter what we do.

If we were bullied as a child, we may believe that vulnerability and being ourselves leads to harsh social consequences.

If we witnessed an uncle fall into despair after a failed business, we may believe that staying employed is the only way to stay safe.

These are our self-limiting beliefs. When left unaddressed, they define our future.

Keep in mind that this subconscious programming goes the positive route, too.

If we witness our parents in a beautiful and loving relationship, we may believe that it’s possible for us, too.

If we’re told repeatedly how smart we are, we probably grow up to have a strong sense of intellectual self.

So, what do we do about the beliefs we developed that aren’t serving us?

Identifying self-limiting beliefs

Let’s imagine we’ve just put on our comfiest pyjamas and settled into bed for a long night of sleep. Then we hear a sound.

It’s a rumbling noise coming from the closet, and it’s getting louder and louder.

Let’s say that instead of getting up and seeing what’s going on, we pull the covers up over our heads, hide from the noise, and try to sleep.

But sleep doesn’t come. Because even though we’re trying our best to avoid it, the noise is still there. We feel scared and anxious because we have no idea what it is, and our mind is filling the void with all kinds of stories of ghosts, robbers, and gremlins.

We don’t sleep a wink, and by the time morning comes, we’ve worked ourselves up into a truly awful state, certain that what’s rumbling in our closet is the worst of the worst.

Now, let’s say we take a different route. Upon hearing the rumbling, we immediately get up, walk across the room and pull back the closet door.

And there, on our closet floor, is our dog in a game of tug-of-war with a sweater.

When we face things head-on and identify them, we give ourselves the power of understanding. We can then move forward with less worry.

Avoidance is a more difficult path than facing our fears and discomfort. It takes more energy to pull up the covers and fret for an entire sleepless night than it does to get up and open the closet door.

Here are six powerful steps I’ve identified that help us face and navigate our fears and self-limiting beliefs.

1) Name Them

This is getting out of bed and pulling back the closet door.

When our thoughts are left to their own devices, they can bounce around in our minds like tennis balls, creating a sensation of discomfort, fear, overwhelm, or anxiety.

Naming them is grabbing the tennis ball, observing it, and identifying what’s causing the associated sensation.

In doing so we stop the chaotic bouncing and give ourselves the opportunity to examine the thought more closely.

For example:

“I’m nervous about this public talk because I don’t think I’m confident enough to deliver it.”

2) Double-Click

Now we get as specific as we can on defining what we’ve named.

Double-clicking is like hovering over a word and drilling down deeper to identify what it truly means.

For example, what does it mean to not be “confident enough” to deliver the talk?

Perhaps it’s,

“I’m afraid I might mess up.”

Now, let’s double click on “Mess up.” What does that mean?

Accidentally skipping a point in your talk? Stumbling on our words?

3) Go down the rabbit hole

Now we take the clarity we’ve gathered from naming and double-clicking, and we take it down the rabbit hole.

This means we take that fear or belief to the worst thing that could pan out if it came true.

So what if we did miss a point in your talk? The worst-case scenario could be that people notice we messed up and judge us for not being perfect. Or perhaps the point we missed could be really important, so they don’t understand the rest of the talk.

What if we stumbled on our words? The worst-case scenario is that people might notice and might criticize us or think poorly of us for it. It’s also possible we would get embarrassed and turn bright red.

4) Balance fear with fact

In this step, we introduce your power. Our power to prevent, plan for, mitigate, navigate and move on from the worst-case scenarios outlined above.

So, let’s go with the rabbit hole of stumbling on our words. Let’s say that people notice us stumbling on our words and judge us for it.

Let’s ask ourselves these questions:

How can I prevent this outcome?

What would I do to mitigate this if it did happen?

How would this really impact me?

What can I influence?

The answers to these questions help us realize that, while it might be uncomfortable to believe people in the audience are judging us, nothing of substance would result.

Balancing our fear with fact disarms a portion of our self-limiting belief.

Some people might judge us, and then there are no further consequences. It doesn’t matter outside of a brief and manageable wave of discomfort.

And what if we forget an important point in our talk? By answering the questions above we might realize we can completely forget this by carrying note cards or having bullet points on the stage prompters. So, even if we do temporarily forget, all we have to do is look down to find our place and avoid the worst-case scenario outcome.

Many of the outcomes of our fears and limiting beliefs are preventable, manageable, or do not impact us as much as we think they do.

5. Reframe

We tend to view the world through the lens of our beliefs and subconscious programming.

When we reframe a situation, it’s like we’re taking off our usual lens glasses and trying on a new pair, seeing the same scenario differently.

Reframes most often come from books, friends, loved ones, therapists, coaches, mentors, and others who share new lenses with us.

Let’s say we believe we’re not confident enough and that we will mess up our talk, stumble on our words, and be judged by the audience as a failure.

I now offer this reframe: what if the audience wants us to succeed no matter what?

Audiences hate to be uncomfortable, and they’re made to feel uncomfortable when the person on stage isn’t doing well. So they’re naturally inclined to want you to do well, to be forgiving and generous with their assessment of your talk, even if you stumble.

And suddenly, we realize the odds of being judged suddenly feel a lot less overwhelming. The audience is on our side!

Whether a reframe is “true” or not is up to each individual to decide. But allow me to offer that a reframed lens is often no more or less true than the lens we’re using that’s making us fearful.

6. Find Expanders

For some situations, we’ll want to take things further with expanders.

Expanders are people who have achieved what we want to achieve, done what we want to do, have what we want, or who show up in the world in a way that we would like to.

They help us see that our dreams are achievable because they have achieved them already. And they may have experience with the same self-limiting beliefs and fears that we have.

Here’s an expander for the public speaking fear.

There is a motivational speaker who came to talk at an event I was coordinating several years ago.

He got on the stage and started his talk with confidence and conviction.

Five minutes in, he stopped. He stumbled on his words. He started crying on the stage.

And then he walked off.

No one knew what to do.

A half an hour later, he came back onto the stage as if nothing had happened, delivered his talk with compelling force, and bowed off the stage with roaring applause.

This person speaks with confidence, has speaking fears, and experienced a worst-case scenario of getting on stage, but then came out on the other side a success.

It is possible.

In conclusion

Our self-limiting beliefs and fears hold us back from pursuing the life we want. Our “buts” keep us from giving ourselves a chance.

The steps above help us take our power back from subconscious thoughts, and bring us into our conscious and more rational mind.

By practising these six steps, we can unblock ourselves and clear the path forward.

We may successfully neutralize some of these fears and beliefs, taking away all of their power.

And for those that we don’t neutralize, I offer this:

Do it scared.

Our future self will thank us.

Geri Paige Butner is a business firestarter, coach, and speaker. Current and aspiring business owners start and grow their businesses with The Business Firestarter framework, offered as a self-guided online course or a 12-week group coaching program. Gain access to valuable firestarters for business and life by joining our email list.