Identify and Remove your Limiting Beliefs. How to upgrade your life.

 

Why do we always try to blame someone else for our mistakes or our current situation? Everything happens because of the taxes, bad economy, politicians, not being paid enough and the list could go on and on.

Did you ever stopped and ask yourself: 'What if I am the problem?'

Maybe you are not giving your 100% you only give 80, 70 or 30%.

Many of us including me and you, operate far below our full potential. Before we blame someone else let's look in our own 'garden' first and see what 'weeds' we can remove and what kind of good 'seeds' we can plant. If we don't try working on ourselves first how can we be sure all our problems are external?

Before we start diving into the subject at hand I would like first to discuss what is limiting beliefs and how it was created.

This post uses as a resource the book: Upgrade Yourself: Simple Strategies to Transform Your Mindset, Improve Your Habits and Change Your Life by Thibaut Meurisse

How belief systems are formed.

Our belief systems were created based on the information we have received since we were children to adulthood. Most people have already a belief system by the time they reach adulthood. 

This information might have been received from parents, teachers, siblings, media or other influential parties involved in your life. As children, we accept this information as true on the subconscious level because we are not in the position to challenge, choose or reject this information.

Another way of belief system forming might be the information that you formed due to emotional experiences such as childhood trauma.

   Now think of your belief system as a program that runs in the background of your mind without your knowledge. This program will determine what is possible for you. We all live our lives according to our belief system.

The program will lead you to have specific thoughts; thoughts will generate emotions, and these feelings will urge you to take specific actions. The belief you have will determine the results you get in life.

Do not worry, fortunately for us, we all can identify and change our belief systems. Everyone has the power to change their beliefs and eliminate the ones that have become irrelevant. There might be limiting ideas that had to hold you back on the subjects like money, relationships, spirituality or even discovering yourself. Make your life about eliminating your limiting beliefs and replacing them with good and positive ones that will help you become a better person.

Look at your belief system as a costume you were, if you don't like you can always change it for a better one.

What is your story?

We all have personal stories depends who we choose to be in this story. Does your personal story have a negative impact or positive impact on your life? Do you visualize yourself as a hero/heroine that concurs with the world and achieve their dream or are you a victim that is powerless and is everyone else fault?

Take action and rewrite your story, nobody is there to stop you. Commit to coming up with a better story that suits your goals, also don't listen to what people have to say unless they tell you something positive.

What is holding you from achieving your goals?

Did you ever ask yourself why you haven't achieved your goals yet? Is anything that holds you back?

To discover your limiting beliefs, have look at some areas of your life and ask yourself why you are not where you want to be.

Have a look at these examples:

Why I didn't achieve my financial goals?

• I am not educated enough
• I have no time to create a second income
• Money doesn't bring happiness

Why I am not with the partner of my dreams?

• I am not attractive
• I am not worthy
• I am shy
• I don't have time to go out

These are just two examples of life areas and how to identify if you have any limiting beliefs. Please assess your life and see why you are not where you dream to be.

Overcome limiting beliefs in 7 steps process.

1)Challenge your limiting beliefs

The reason you believe in something is that you stopped questioning and it became convinced that is true. Challenging what you believe will be the first step to overcoming them.

After you have identified your life, pick the most prominent one and challenge it. 

Take this for example you might be frustrated when people promise to do a task for you, but instead, they let you down. Your belief for this might be:

• People should do what they promise
• People should be fully committed to helping me
• The level of importance for them should be the same as mine
• Should be 100% reliable and make mistakes if they are promised.

Now we should ask ourselves if these assumptions are correct or are interpreted wrong. The assumptions you made might be wrong and you can identify this by looking at your beliefs.

Maybe it wasn't a real commitment to them, or they didn't think so serious of the task you asked, or maybe they just forgot. Now your beliefs are different and shouldn't see everything through our lens and also see through other people's perspectives.

2) Changing roles.

Another way of challenging is to ask this question yourself and see what would you do in similar situations. For example:

1. Is important to keep my promises- Yes, however it might not mean that I am 100% reliable, I wish I was, but that is not the case

3) Search for counter examples

The next step in the process is to look for a specific time when you didn't follow through with your promises. Personally, I can find a ton of situations where I was unreliable or I break promises.

4) What consequences does your belief have?

Your limiting beliefs always have consequences, and often when you are sick and tired of believing something is the moment we are making changes in our system. When we have strong negative emotions will help us drive to create empowering beliefs and get rid of the old ones.

5) How your life will look without the limiting beliefs.

If you could be blessed with the power to eliminate one of your strong limiting beliefs, how would you feel after? What kind of person will you become? If you imagine a new thriving person maybe is the time to eliminate that belief and replace it. Keep in mind that these beliefs are like costumes, you can always swap them for new ones.

6) Creating new empowering beliefs.

Limiting beliefs are like the bad habits that die hard, and they never just disappear, they need to be replaced with something better. Once you have identified your limiting beliefs you must replace them with an empowering ones.

For example:

'I don't have time to work on my side business.> I will always find and make time for whatever goal I want to achieve.

7) Validating your new empowering beliefs.

The strengthening of your new beliefs can be done by choosing models of people that succeeded and with a similar story to you.

For example, you want to create a side business and you have created the belief mentioned above:' I will always find and make time for whatever goal I want to achieve. Try to look for some story where the person had succeeded despite the hectic work and life schedule. This will empower you even more.

For more in-depth on the subject please read the book below:

Upgrade Yourself: Simple Strategies to Transform Your Mindset, Improve Your Habits and Change Your Life by Thibaut Meurisse