How to Smash Your Limiting Beliefs: Clear Them All, Even Ones You Don’t Know About
Does this sound familiar?
You’re enjoying a fabulous time with your family or significant other, feeling closer than you’ve ever been. Then out of nowhere, a huge fight blows up, ruining the moment.
At work, you’ve been given a huge opportunity to give a crucial presentation. If it goes well, you’ll get a promotion. Suddenly, you get sick, and someone else gives the presentation and gets the promotion.
Relaxing in the evening, you smile as you think about what you accomplished today. But then your smile fades as you think about everything you need to do tomorrow, which leads to worry about other things you’ve left undone.
These are all examples of self-limiting personal beliefs at work. Whenever things get “too good”, these beliefs snap you back like releasing a stretched rubber band. And like a rubber band, you’re snapped back not just to the happiness and success you had before, but past that point to end up unhappier and less successful.
What are limiting beliefs?
There are two types of limiting beliefs.
The first is like a comfort set-point. Think of a thermostat. You set what temperature you find comfortable for your house. If it gets too hot, the thermostat turns on your air conditioner. If it gets too cold, the thermostat turns on your furnace.
Set-point limiting beliefs do the same thing for the levels of love, success, and happiness you find comfortable.
The second type of limiting beliefs are generally societal rules and standards of behavior that you’ve internalized. Often, you’re not even aware that you’ve done so.
When your life disagrees with these invisible rules, you feel an internal disquiet until something happens to reaffirm the rules.
Some examples of these types of beliefs are:
- A man should make more money than his wife.
- Children shouldn’t be more successful than their parents.
- The eldest child should get married first.
It’s easy to spot the second type of beliefs because they usually contain the word “should” in them.
How do limiting beliefs affect you?
It’s obvious to see a limiting belief’s effects when they follow on good news of some sort. You got “too much” love, success, or happiness, and now you have significantly less than you started with.
There’s a more insidious effect of limiting beliefs, though. They can self-sabotage you into chronic pain or illness. They can destroy your relationships. They can lead to early death from heart attacks, ulcers, diabetes, or cancer.
If you can get rid of them, however, you can spend more time every day feeling good. Your life can be easier, with more things going right than going wrong.
You can dramatically increase your creativity, financial abundance, health, and career success. You can experience more and greater love and happiness.
Everyone has limiting beliefs
You might think that only unsuccessful people are plagued with limiting beliefs. That’s not true. Extremely successful people also have them. They just kick in at a different level.
Can you even count the number of celebrities who finally achieve the fame and fortune they’ve worked their whole lives for, only to flame out spectacularly over drug addiction, alcohol-induced rants, or public fights?
In the business world, it’s common to see successful professionals whose personal lives are a mess of multiple divorces and families that no longer speak to them. Or “successful” professionals who go home to an empty apartment — when they can tear themselves away from their desk — because they’ve internalized the belief that they have to choose between work and a home life.
Gradually shifting your limiting beliefs is key
The key to shifting your limiting beliefs is to do so gradually.
If you’re comfortable with your current level of financial and relationship success, any large amounts of additional money, love, or happiness you receive will trigger your limiting beliefs. You’ll go right back to where you’re comfortable — if not below that level.
But if you slowly shift your limiting beliefs, you gradually increase your levels of love, happiness, and abundance. Each increase is small enough that it pushes you up against the edge of your comfort zone. However, it doesn’t knock you out of it.
Even the absolute statements, such as “a man should earn more than his wife” can be gently rephrased as “most men earn more than their wives.” That will cause less blow-back from your subconscious than trying to go immediately to “salary levels are irrelevant to married couples.”
Four fundamental beliefs cause most set-point limiting beliefs
There are thousands of different societal limiting beliefs that may be causing you problems. However, there are only four fundamental beliefs that cause set-point limiting beliefs.
Best of all, you picked up any of these beliefs you had in early childhood. Most times, simply being able to view the beliefs with adult understanding is sufficient to help dissolve them.
It’s easy to tell which of the four you have. Go through the list, and if you think, “I can see how someone might think that” you probably have it. If you think, “Why would anyone ever think that?” you probably don’t.
The benefits of recognizing set-point limiting beliefs
By recognizing which set-point limiting beliefs you have, you can dissolve them.
That raises your comfort level, so that you can experience more happiness, more love, more health, more creativity, and more financial abundance.
The four fundamental limiting beliefs
According to Gay Hendricks, in his book The Big Leap, these are the four fundamental limiting beliefs.
- You’re a bad person. Variations of this include you have done something wrong for which you need to be punished, and you are a fundamentally flawed person. The reason this is a limiting belief, rather than deep-seated guilt over some childhood infraction, is that you have no idea what the actual flaw or bad thing was.
- Disloyalty, betrayal, or abandonment. Whatever the exact wording, you have a sense that you betrayed your family or heritage to achieve your life. You may also feel that if you continue to do so, all the people you care about will abandon you, and you will be left all alone.
- You are a burden. Whether you feel that you were a burden on your family, or on the world in general, you have a sense that the more you accomplish, the more of a burden you become.
- You must not make other people look or feel bad by your success. Often, this was early conditioning of gifted or precocious children to not stand out or excel.
Recognizing a limiting belief goes most of the way to dissolving it
When you recognize which of the four fundamental beliefs apply to you, you will also probably recall the early childhood experience that led to that belief. Merely recognizing it and being able to see it from an adult point of view, will often be enough to start dissolving it.
For example, I resonated very much with the first belief. Given my personal history, it’s easy to see why.
I was born very premature and had to spend my early life in an incubator at the hospital. I was then placed with a foster family. Finally, I was adopted by my real family. All of this happened in the first four months of my life.
From a baby’s perspective, there were care givers, and they went away. Since babies are the center of their own world, it means there was something wrong with me, that they didn’t want me anymore.
As an adult, I can look at that and realize how ridiculous that is. I didn’t chase my nurses away — they finished their shift and took their time off. The foster family didn’t reject me because I was flawed — they had a job to do, of caring for a baby until adoptive parents could be found for her.
If you’re not sure which belief applies to you, or what might have caused it, that’s okay. In the next section, I’ll show you how to get rid of limiting beliefs, even if you don’t know what they are.
How to get rid of any limiting beliefs
You may not know what limiting belief you have. That’s okay. According to Mike Dooley, there’s a way to get rid of any limiting belief, even if you don’t know what it is.
Why getting rid of limiting beliefs matters
As I discussed at the beginning of this article, getting rid of limiting beliefs can help you dramatically increase your creativity, financial abundance, health, and career success. You can experience more and greater love and happiness.
Your life will also be smoother and easier, if you can stop the rubber band effect of moving forward, then getting snapped back by your limiting belief.
How to get rid of unknown limiting beliefs
In order to get rid of unknown limiting beliefs, you only have to recognize where in your life you’re not as successful as you want to be. Picture someone who has the kind of success that you dream of.
If you’re single and seem to sabotage every relationship you’re in, picture someone who has been happily married for decades, and is more in love now than on their wedding day. If you struggle with finances, picture someone who has abundant wealth, and seems to make money almost without trying.
You can imagine this person out of whole cloth. Characters in books or movies are also fair game. You can even picture a real person.
Now, take out a piece of paper, and write down twenty empowering beliefs you think this person has.
The happily married person might believe, “I deserve to love and be loved.” The abundantly wealthy person might believe, “Money allows me to do good in the world.”
Once you have your list of twenty empowering beliefs, read them out loud, applying them to yourself.
Any statement that you find yourself doubting or questioning is bumping up against one of your limiting beliefs. Focus on those beliefs and keep repeating them (over many days) with conviction, until they finally seem to be real.
Potential pitfalls and how to overcome them
You may not resonate with any of the four fundamental causes of set-point limiting beliefs. If you don’t, that’s okay. Use the Mike Dooley process to remove your limiting beliefs, even if you don’t know what they are.
It may be difficult for you to think of a person who embodies the kind of success you want. If you can’t find an external role model, imagine what you would be like if you achieved that kind of success. How would you be different from how you are now? Then find twenty empowering beliefs the new you believes that the current you does not.
You may have trouble coming up with twenty empowering beliefs. After all, say you’ve chosen Warren Buffett as your example of someone who has financial abundance, and has been happily married for decades. How do you know what Warren Buffet believes?
One way would be to do research on the internet and read interviews with Mr. Buffett, hoping to find mention of his beliefs. But you don’t need to do that. The point is not to accurately write down your role model’s real beliefs. You’re just trying to make a list of things you think such a person might believe.
You can dissolve any limiting belief
By repeating the new beliefs with conviction, you gradually overpower the limiting belief. The two beliefs contradict each other. Giving the new beliefs focused energy helps your mind pick that belief as the true one instead of your old limiting belief.
Key takeaways
Limiting beliefs prevent you from having the life you dream of. Whenever you accomplish “too much” of a good thing, they’ll snap you back to a more comfortable level.
Limiting beliefs have four fundamental causes. You may have one or more of them. Generally, these beliefs were formed when you were a very young child.
Other limiting beliefs come from society. These invisible rules and standards of behavior can prevent you from succeeding, without your knowing.
To remove one of the fundamental limiting beliefs, it is generally enough to recognize the situation that caused them from an adult point of view.
Other limiting beliefs can be dissolved by replacing them with contradictory, empowering beliefs. You can do this even if you don’t know exactly what your limiting beliefs are.
Where can you go from here?
You’ve learned what the four fundamental limiting beliefs are. You recognized which of them may be relevant for your life.
Looking at your childhood through adult eyes, you can reinterpret situations that may have caused limiting beliefs to form. Those beliefs will dissolve naturally.
You’ve also learned how to dissolve limiting beliefs, even if you don’t know exactly what they are. You only need to know what area of your life you would like to improve.
Pick an area of your life to focus on. Find a role model of someone who is successful in that area and make your list of that person’s empowering beliefs. Then repeat those beliefs with conviction until you can convince yourself that they are true.
Watch your life improve, as your limiting beliefs dissolve and fall away!
Ready to have a better tomorrow?
I’ve created a cheat sheet to help you gain control of your life, increase your confidence, and become optimistic about the future. If you follow this daily, you will change your life very quickly!