Do you suffer from a pattern of recurrent challenges or negative thinking in one area of your life? Then you may be suffering from limiting beliefs. What is a limiting belief? This is a belief that keeps you from reaching your highest potential and can affect any area of your life including your health, your relationships, your finances, your career or any other area of your life.
Examples of patterns of recurrent challenges can be ongoing financial debt, multiple failed romantic relationships and chronic health issues to name a few. These are just a few of the ways that limiting beliefs can manifest, but what is the origin of limiting beliefs? These usually arise from early childhood adverse experiences, which can program limiting beliefs into our subconscious mind.
The fact is that most of our behaviour is subconscious and programmed before the age of 7. Unfortunately, we have little control over the forces that influence us at this age. These include our parents, extended family, the education system, religious teachings, mass media, social media, advertising and marketing to name a few. Most of these influences, which will not be a surprise to most people, are negative and this is where our negative subconscious programming and limiting beliefs arise.
It seems as though the deck is stacked against us and limiting beliefs seem inevitable for most people. However, they can be overcome. How, you may ask? The first thing you have to do is to recognize that you have a limiting belief. You can do this through identifying a recurrent pattern of challenges or negative thinking in some area of your life. For example, if you have always in debt and can never pay your bills at the end of the month, you may have a limiting belief around finances. You may have grown up with struggling parents who could barely make ends meet. You may have been told by your parents that the things you want they cannot afford. You may have grown up in a scarcity mentality, which has led to your limiting belief around finances that you never have enough and you never will have enough.
Once you have identified a limiting belief, you then ask yourself if it holds any validity and find evidence for this. Using the above example of never having enough money, identify a time when you were able to pay off your debts, pay your bills or afford something that you want. This will nullify the validity of your limiting belief.
The next step is to find an alternate meaning to your limiting belief. Using the example of always being in debt and never being able to get financially ahead, this limiting belief may be a sign that there is something about financial freedom and wealth that you have to learn. This means that it is up to you to discover where you lack knowledge in this area and do something about it.
The next step is to reframe your limiting belief into an empowering belief. For example, for the limiting belief, ‘I cannot get ahead financially,’ you could reframe this into the empowering belief, ‘I can and am getting out of debt, quickly and effortlessly.’ For any limiting belief you have you can always reframe it into an empowering belief.
Once you have reframed your limiting belief into an empowering belief, the final step is to take action on the empowering belief. In the example we have been using, you may decide to start saving a percentage of your salary or use it to pay down your debt, take an investment course, research starting multiple streams of income, find a business mentor, upgrade your marketing and sales skills or charge more for the services you offer, to name a few of the ways to take action on your finances.
In summary, the path to overcoming limiting beliefs is:
1) Identify your limiting beliefs through a recurrent pattern of challenges or negative thinking.
2) Ask yourself if your limiting belief has any validity and find evidence that this is true.
3) Find an alternate meaning to your limiting belief.
4) Reframe your limiting belief into an empowering belief.
5) Take action on your empowering belief.
This is the path to extinguishing any limiting beliefs that you may have and empowering all the different areas of your life. This is the path to liberation and success and it all starts with identifying your limiting beliefs. We all have limiting beliefs in one or more areas of our lives so take the first step discovering the truth about yourself and true freedom.
Dr. Nauman Naeem