picture: cocoparisienne (CCO Public Domain)
On your journey towards creating an amazing life, you will most likely stumble across some limiting beliefs that restrict you in the way you are acting on your dreams.
What a limiting belief is, how to identify a limiting belief and how to overcome one will be discussed in this article.
A limiting belief is a mental attitude or fact a person believes to be true regarding an object, a situation or aspect of life that limits them in the capacity to act and create in the world. Most of the time a limiting belief comes in the form of a strong emotional reaction to something or it comes in the form of thoughts about why you can’t or why something is not possible. Generally speaking, any time you have a negotiation towards something and you feel a restriction or negative emotion as a result of that, you have a limiting belief.
Restriction is Not The Truth
Having any sort of restriction or limit in your life that makes you feel bad is always out of alignment with truth. We live in an infinite meaningless universe where literally everything is possible. Only the human mind is capable of assigning certain rules and meanings to aspects and things in the world. When a rule or meaning is strongly held and repeatedly thought it becomes a belief. While some beliefs help us navigate and understand reality, some beliefs are restricting us and are holding us back from living our lives. To understand this better, read the article on Limiting Beliefs and the Law of Attraction.
The Importance of Overcoming your Limiting Beliefs
We live in a universe where everything you think, feel and belief creates your reality (read more about the Law of Attraction here). If you believe in hard work and suffering, that’s what you get. If you believe that you cannot make a living out of your passion, that’s what you get. The problem with these beliefs is that they highly limit you in your life. Beliefs are like the invisible string that is always pulling you back whenever you try something new or whenever you want to go in the direction of what you want.
The problem is that most people take their beliefs as the absolute truth without ever questioning them. This causes a lot of suffering when these people want to create something in the world or they simply want to manifest a different life for themselves. Because any time these people try to change something, they most likely run into uncomfortable emotions and restrictive thoughts such as “I can’t because of..” or “life cannot be that easy”. These strong limits then cause them to stop the progression of their action because they feel bad and they never try to change again. They then live in this constant limited bubble where everything is the same and nothing really changes.
What these people don’t know is that it is never their own incapacity to change that they don’t change or get what they want. Also, it’s not the desire itself that makes them feel bad. It is just the normal process of desiring something and then everything that is not matching the desire coming up in form of thoughts and emotions. So the negative emotions are just signaling and pointing towards the limiting beliefs that are inside which limit the person in fulfilling their desire.
Because of this dynamic, it is really important to understand limiting beliefs more (read the article) and start a process to overcome limiting beliefs.
Feeling Bad Does Not Mean you Are Doing Something Wrong
Often times people tend to beat themselves up when they go into the direction of what they want but they are then confronted with negative thoughts and emotions. What is important to understand is that feeling bad does not mean you are doing something wrong. Having negative emotions and thoughts means that there is something inside that is contradicting the desire. And instead of using negative emotions as a sign of failure or as a sign that things not working out, you can start using negative emotions and thoughts as a sign of progress.
Because as soon as you experience a negative emotion and thought regarding your desire you are about to discover a limiting belief you hold. And that is good. You want the limiting beliefs to come to the surface so that you can deal with them and they no longer limit you.
Always try to keep that in mind when you experience some sort of negative emotion or thought.
You will now learn one process for identifying and overcoming limiting beliefs. Keep in mind that this is only one process and that it is only a guideline for you. There are many more processes out there but this one works for more people.
Identify and Overcome your Limiting Beliefs- The Process
Take yourself at least 30 minuets to 1 hours for this process. Prepare a paper to write on and follow these steps.
Step 1 Turning the Heat on
This step is the starting point for the limiting belief work. You are going to do a visualization which helps you to “turn the heat on” on your beliefs so that they are forced to the surface. This visualization sets the new bar to where you want to go. And therefore any limiting belief that is not in alignment with that new bar you set in the visualization will come to the surface after that.
To start, chose a desire you have. Don’t go too big for now but focus on something that you want to manifest or that you want to change.
Step 2 Sit with Yourself
After the visualization, sit down for about 10-15 minutes and observe all the emotions and thoughts that are coming up and just be with them. Observe what is happening and observe how your limiting beliefs are coming to the surface.
They can come in the form of thoughts like “I can’t have this because”, “What if..” or “This is not working” or in form of emotions. So pay close attention to how you feel. Don’t resist anything that is coming up, just observe and surrender.
Step 3 Ask Questions
Now it’s time to ask questions to directly bring the limiting beliefs to the surface. Take out a sheet of paper and bring up your desire again. Imagine it for a second and then feel any negative emotion that comes up and ask the following questions.
- What do I have to believe about life to be true in order to feel this way?
- What belief am I holding that makes me feel this way?
Write down all the answers that are coming up. Look at the answers and try to find a theme or one answer that stands out for you.
Step 4 Question the Belief
Use the theme or the answer that stands out from Step 3 and answer the following questions to the limiting belief on a sheet of paper:
- How is this belief serving me?
- How is this belief not serving me?
- How is this belief a limited perspective on life?
- What would a very successful person I admire think about this belief?
- What is the opposite belief?
- What examples can I find that support the opposite belief?
- Do I want to let go of this limiting belief? (Look at your answers and decide whether you want to let go of the limiting belief or not).
If the answer to the last question is yes, go to step 5.
Step 5 Let Go of your Emotional Attachment
Now that you have questioned the belief, you have to let go of the emotions underlying the belief. Most of the time limiting beliefs are highly emotional that’s why you have to consciously acknowledge and let go of the emotions that are supporting the belief. To do that, simply pay very close attention to how you feel whenever you think about your desire in your day to day life. If there is any negative emotion in response to the desire, use the letting go process described in this article to resolve the emotions.
Step 6 Repeat
Your desire will bring way more limiting beliefs to the surface then just one. So do step 4 with all the answer from step 3. Also, repeat the visualization every day for the next 14 days and do the process over and over again. This will not only help you to really manifest what you desire, also it will help you to clean all the limiting beliefs that are preventing you from getting to that desire.
You may think right now that this process for the next 14 days is way too much. But If you really want what you desire, you do what it takes.
Cleaning Yourself
Imagine this practice as a cleaning practice. You are consciously deciding to move on in your life so you have to take the steps to clean the old things that are holding you back (limiting beliefs). This is not a painful process. It can be uncomfortable because of all the emotions but it’s a very freeing and liberating practice. You will free yourself more and more as you go along because you let go of all the bullshit in your life that is limiting you so much. Imagine yourself finally being able to breath again. Deeply into your lungs, feeling the freedom and joy of life. And knowing that you can fulfill and live your dreams.
Hi Lorelle!
I totally resonate with your step 4 part of the process. It is crucial to see how and where the limiting belief is serving someone. Without that gem of information, they will not create enough energy to manifest lasting change.
I wrote a similar blog post getting into the identification aspect of belief systems and subconscious programming. The reason most people find great difficulty in shifting beliefs is because we are unconsciously being served by these beliefs; getting some sort of energetic ‘juice’ from them. They serve a deep seated identification we have that we are mostly unconscious to. When we take a deep introspective look into our beliefs and really see where they have come from, why we have them, what the core identification is, and choose to create a new conscious choices, we empower ourselves.
I do this type of work with my clients in my Spiritual Coaching practice. Here’s my recent post in case you are curious: https://www.beyondyou.coach/dare-to-free-yourself-from-limiting-beliefs/
Thank you for the opportunity to share – and best of luck to you in your work!
Best,
Liz