Limiting beliefs are false beliefs that prevent us from pursuing our goals and desires.
Our beliefs put boundaries and limitations on what we perceive to be reasonable behavior. Limiting beliefs unnecessarily hold us back from who we want to become.
A limiting belief is a thought, opinion, state of mind, or conviction you believe to be absolutely true, but that belief holds you back in some way. In essence, a limiting belief is a story you tell yourself to keep you in your comfort zone, and it prevents you from becoming who you are meant to be.
The limiting beliefs you have about yourself, the world, or life are often subconscious. They can also be defense mechanisms, psychological coping strategies your mind subconsciously uses to protect you from stress and dealing with difficult feelings. (It’s scary to think you CAN do it.)
These beliefs have a negative impact on your life, because limiting beliefs stop or prevent you from:
Reaching your full potential
Growing personally and/or professionally
Taking risks
Going after new opportunities
Achieving your goals
Moving forward
Making good choices
Where do they come from?
Your inherent biases
An inability to have an open mind
Your family beliefs
Your education – what you learn at school and college, and what you learn from family, friends, colleagues, mentors, etc.
Your experiences, especially those that ended negatively
Most of your limiting beliefs originate in your childhood, and they become an essential part of your identity.
You think your limiting beliefs keep you safe, that if you don’t put yourself out there and try, you don’t have to worry about facing humiliation or rejection. The reality is that by believing these beliefs that limit you, you never try or grow.
How to Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs
It’s hard enough to spot your limiting beliefs. It’s even harder to overcome them. But it can be done. Here are some simple steps to help you get started.
1. Ask Yourself, “What If I’m Wrong?”
Generally, limiting beliefs lose their power as soon as we consider that they may not be true. Can’t date because of your height? What if you’re wrong? Can’t get a promotion because of your gender? What if you’re wrong?
2. Ask Yourself, “How Is This Belief Serving Me?”
We like to imagine ourselves to be the victims of our own limiting beliefs, but the truth is that we adopt these beliefs because they serve us in some way. The elephant believes she can’t pull away from the fence post because that belief served her at one time—it prevented the strain and struggle of failure. Generally, we hold onto limiting beliefs for the same reasons—to protect ourselves from struggle and failure. Also, we often hold onto limiting beliefs because they make us feel special, self-righteous or that we deserve special attention. It’s not fair that I can’t change careers because I’m too old—look at me! Pity me! Beliefs only stick if they serve us in some way, figure out how your belief is serving you and ask yourself if it’s really worth it or not.
3. Create Alternative Beliefs
Now it’s time to get creative.Come up with ways in which you may be wrong. Now obviously, it’s not as simple as choosing a belief and then you just…believe it. No, what you’re doing is getting in the habit of questioning your beliefs (steps 1 and 2 above) and trying out new ones. Sometimes it even helps to write these down. Write down your assumption, and then come up with 4-5 possible alternatives to that assumption. This forces you to see that not only do you harbor some limiting beliefs, but that you have options. You are choosing what to believe, in each and every moment, even if you don’t realize it. With repeated practice in noticing your limiting beliefs and imagining new ideas to replace them, you’ll start to notice the thousands of tiny little decisions you make based on your limiting beliefs without even realizing it. You’ll start to notice that the same limiting beliefs that keep you from looking for a new job are the ones that keep you from ordering the sandwich you actually want to eat or wearing the clothes you want to wear—and you’ll see how ridiculous it all is.And that’s when you’ll have more control over what you choose to believe.
4. Test Those Alternative Beliefs to See If They Might Be True
The final step is to treat these alternative beliefs as though they’re hypotheses in an experiment. Now you’ve gotta go try them out and see if they “work.” Treat it like trying on a new pair of jeans. Adding a new ingredient to a recipe. Taking a new car for a test drive. Enter your favorite cheesy metaphor here. Until we’re willing to actually see if these alternative beliefs play out in the real world, we can’t be certain of what is true and what is not. And most of the time, we will find that we were actually wrong about what we initially believed. It simply takes the self-awareness to consider that we may have been wrong and have the courage to go out into the world and see if we were wrong. In many ways, we can be our own worst enemies. We are confined by our own perceptions, constrained by our understanding of true and false. Challenge your own understanding. Test new ideas. You are never at the full expansion of yourself. There is always room for growth. Just make sure you aren’t the only one stopping it from happening.
Exercise
What are some limiting beliefs you put on yourself? E.g. Am I enough? / Indecisiveness / Self Critical / Self Doubt
How can you change these to more beneficial beliefs?
Exercise 1:
When you are next faced with something that you are immediately convincing yourself you can’t do, identify what it is exactly you believe about yourself that is stopping you from achieving the things you want.
Next, ask yourself why you believe this to be true about yourself.
Does your reason for the belief sound convincing to you?
Ask yourself what if you did it anyway? What would be the best thing and worst thing that could happen?
In our minds, many situations are amplified beyond truth and reason. Same goes for our beliefs too. We justify the hell out of not doing something, what if we justified our reasons for taking action? We may feel the same fear but at the same time be assured that perhaps the worst that could happen may not be so bad and on the flip side, the best that could happen may be much better than we had initially hoped for.
Exercise 2:
Recall the last time you felt completely confident in your action.
What was the situation and what did you do?
Why do you think you felt confident at the time?
Would you be able to borrow this same sense of confidence and carry it over to your current situation?
All of us have past experiences that tested our courage, our confidence, our capabilities and sometimes simply reminding ourselves that we had accessed the same courage before and can do it again can help us conquer our limiting self-belief.
Exercise 3:
If you had a friend who held the same self-limiting belief as you in a similar situation, what would you say to your friend?
Could you say the same to yourself?
Most of us are quite capable of seeing qualities and capabilities in another person but fail to see the same in ourselves. This exercise will help you see that in fact you can be as encouraging to yourself as you are to your friends.