5 Steps To Overcome Self-Limiting Beliefs

Did you know that our self-limiting beliefs are one of the worst obstacles to moving forward in whatever we seek to achieve.  Self limiting belief is that inner thought in our head of doubting oneself and not trusting ourselves.

What are some of these self-limiting beliefs that sabotage our career, our development and our life

Could it be

• I’m no good at public speaking
• I’m no good at keeping time
• I’m no good at job interviews
• I suck at relationships
• I mess it up in organizing
• I’m ugly
• I just can’t be an entrepreneur
• There is no way I can be bold like you
• I make a mess in organizing events

Just writing some of these negative statements has had a debilitating effect on me, so can you imagine what a cascading detrimental effect you create on yourself, every time such a negative thought rests in your head.

Obviously some of the self-limiting beliefs listed above are easier to work through than others but all of them require you to start somewhere.

Life has taught me that there are many things to which we are predisposed and we refuse to try out many things that we are capable of.  We allow our negative thoughts and frustrations to deter our ability to adapt, to learn, to unlearn, relearn, and to try out new challenges.

How do we get these self-limiting beliefs?

• Fear possibly from our own nature of being unsure, or comments that people pass on us may be while growing up or at work or in our social interactions.
• Not giving ourselves a chance to try something unexplored from fear of failure or being judged by others.
• Trying to be perfect when in reality there is no perfection in this world.
• Modeling ourselves on someone who has inspired us but instead of getting our own uniqueness to it we tend to become so obsessed in copying every aspect of this role model that we lose sight of our goal and give way to many doubts in our mind.When we invoke the Negative Emotional Attractor (NEA), we focus on weaknesses, fear and realism of what went wrong in the past.  We feel anxious, depressed or pessimistic.

How do we get over these self-limiting beliefs?  Here are 5 steps

1. Have you realized that you are the owner of  your ‘self limiting’ belief’s?  However, you can choose to disown it, if you force yourself to kill that negative thought every time it creeps in.  A simple exercise could be to remind yourself about the last time you achieved something and how you succeeded in trashing every negative thought that came your way on your path to success.
2. Imagine if you are scared of heights but you made up your mind to conquer this and went on a dare to do bungee jumping. You did it, but let’s say not many know about this and one of your friends walks up to you and says, ‘there’s no way you could bungee jump,’ what would be your immediate reaction? Possibly smile and say guess what I have not only done bungee jumping but also sky diving.  So when we put a limitation on ourselves without even trying, we can set our mind to remove it.  The Positive Emotional Attractor (PEA) allows us to open ourselves to new possibilities.  PEA allows for real changes in our lives.
3. More often than not these beliefs start with ‘I don’t know how to…’ and possibly harmless if it is just a one-off random thought. But when these random thoughts start occupying a larger part of our brain, it is scary, because we start to believe them and we become slaves of these negative emotional attractor.  They hold us back from our immense capabilities to achieve our dreams.
4. We constantly hear negative comments from people in our social network or at work.  When this happens we can choose to ignore it or step back and determine if there is any truth to those statements and seek to correct it. Don’t let negative people rent space in your mind.
5. Use “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” to evaluate different options rather than as an excuse to pull yourself down.

Each of us have the power to unlock the power of our self-limiting beliefs.  The motivation to change has to come from within.  However sometimes we have caused these beliefs to become such grave deadlocks that we may need the help of a person who can be our sounding board and help us with the resolve to change.

Coaching can help you reinvent yourself, discover possibilities, and break through to confidence and maintain the new you.

 

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