How To Identify & Overcome Limiting Beliefs

Light and Love

What are limiting beliefs - A limiting belief is something you believe to be true that limits you in some way. They can be about you, other people and the world.

• When you age a list of rules that you should and shouldn’t do begin to be placed on you by your family, school, society. We begin to adopt these Brules (Bullshit rules) in order to simplify our understanding of the world) from the book Being Extraordinary is A Choice by Vishen Lakhiani CEO of Mind Valley
  
• The rules that are placed on us turn into Limiting Beliefs and hold us back from our full potential.
  

Causes of Limiting Beliefs - Family Beliefs, Education, Experiences

• Family Beliefs - Just like us our family members have values and morals and from a young age they instill them in us. They begin to tell you how both you and the world should be based on their own beliefs, education and experience. It’s important to remember that most of what others believe to be true is due to experience and those experiences have emotions attached to them, which automatically make the experience bias.
  
• Education - because they’re in a position of authority and are constantly sharing information, ideas and beliefs about how the world works we are inclined to trust and believe that what they tell us is true.
  
• Experience - Every time we experience something we draw our own conclusion about what happened as well as an emotion that is tied to it. We especially remember and cling to negative experiences. I did x and y happened, so z must be true.
  

How to Identify Limiting Beliefs - Time to assess yourself and use your self awareness to dig deep.

• Identify Your Beliefs - before you find your limiting beliefs you need to figure out what your general beliefs are in the following categories, finances, family, relationships and health
  
• Assess Your Behavior - If you look back on your toxic behaviors, you might find that the underlying cause is limiting beliefs.
  
• Example: I find this happens a lot in relationships. If you’re always going through the other person's phone, you possess the limiting belief that no one can be trusted.
  
• Write Down Areas Where You Feel Challenged - If you notice recurring challenges in a certain area of your life this could indicate a limiting belief. As you go through each challenge you have to make a note of which of your beliefs pertain to that challenge. If you’re always struggling to make enough money, uncover what you think about money and how accessible it is to you.

How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs - Challenge your beliefs by becoming the best version of you. Below are ways to help your process.

Change Your Habits - it’s not enough to just identify the limiting beliefs, you have to identify which habits keep you in that place/belief about yourself. If you change your habits, you proactively take yourself out of the belief.

Explore More - limiting beliefs keep you closed minded. In order to break that you have to get out, do and see more. Talk to people you wouldn’t normally, travel and experience different types of beliefs from around the world or from friends who come from different backgrounds.

Personal Development - Just like positive affirmations, you need to hear others speak in a positive light. You need to follow, read, listen to people who you aspire to become because it is possible you just have to put it in your radar by taking inspiration from others.

The following patterns are indicators of limiting beliefs Perfectionism, Procrastination, Escapism, Scarcity, Self Doubt, Fear of Failure