You must have heard the phrase “Faith moves mountains” thousands of times and examples of how it became concrete. Having faith involves believing and mobilizing capacities to make what is expected happen. This is how “the mountains” move.
We also live with the fact that, despite many efforts, there are people who don't seem to move, were not made for success, are unlucky and so many other comments. Why does it happen? Do they have no faith, do they not believe in their own abilities? The answer is no. They can have faith and believe in their ability. However, they also allow limiting beliefs to influence their lives.
Read on and learn more about this subject. Analyze your life in the course of the text and identify if the same happens to you!
What are limiting beliefs?
Limiting beliefs are messages, ideas, thoughts and opinions that we receive throughout life through experience, coexistence and accept or believe as true, even if we do not have the perception of what they represent.
They have a negative effect on our lives, because they block, inhibit, restrain or paralyze an action, as they establish patterns of personal and professional behavior and also form our mental model. They limit us and gradually become absolute truths, creating paradigms that are difficult to break and making success impossible, because they work like magnets – everything we believe in is what we attract. Beliefs form in our mind unconsciously, since we are very young.
Here are some examples:
1 – The father tells the son that he is incapable of performing a task, that the brother is stronger or more intelligent and can do it;
2 – Money is dirty, it does not bring happiness, it is difficult to obtain;
3 – Girls are very sensitive, they cry about anything, so they should look for less audacious professions.
Each of these sentences contains the same types of limiting content: a denial, impotence, devaluation.
Limiting beliefs can be hereditary, coming from everything we receive from the family, for example: "you don't do anything right". They can be personal, resulting from life experiences, for example: “Medicine is not for me, it's already the third year that I try the entrance exam and I don't pass”. They can also be social, when society, with support from the media, sends messages like: “Tall and thin men are more successful in life”.
Most limiting beliefs are related to people, abilities, identity, learning, money, life, time, and opportunities. They have the strength of repetition and the fact that they are common and find social support (there is always someone to exemplify a limiting belief, even if it is not fact). People start not to do what they really want and make them legitimate.
How to identify limiting beliefs?
Limiting beliefs are everywhere in our daily life and join others in the various social circles we live in. That's why it's essential to identify them. They need to be neutralized, after all they are not facts, but they produce behaviors that generate facts. They make us stay in our comfort and safety zone, but they end up making our development and our motivation to challenge ourselves unfeasible.
Every time limiting thoughts, ideas or phrases arise, immediately, it is necessary to think the opposite and transform them into something positive, so that they are overcome. For example: “I don't have time” – change to “It will be a priority from now on”.
There are many techniques to identify limiting beliefs. Among them is the questioning in all the times that one wanted to do something that was not done. When investigating the whys, if there is not a very plausible answer, it is possible to come across one of these beliefs.
Counting on professional support in a self-knowledge or therapeutic process is a very useful way to identify limiting beliefs, for example, in a coaching process, in a neurolinguistic programming course, in psychotherapy sessions, or in alternative self-knowledge therapies.
The identification of limiting beliefs will lead each person to a very important next step, which is resignification, so that they do not self-sabotage.
How to eliminate limiting beliefs?
Once the limiting beliefs have been identified, the work of resignifying, transforming or eliminating them begins, which are often long-standing and have already caused some difficulties and disbelief, including in relation to therapeutic or self-knowledge processes.
There are increasingly sophisticated resources available in the market to produce self-knowledge and allow achieving goals, realizing dreams, succeeding and feeling happiness in life. Among them we have:
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), methodology that has techniques and tools that, through assertive questions, lead people to develop skills to identify their beliefs, values, mental models, in order to know themselves and develop emotional intelligence . With it, it is possible to mentally reprogram yourself, leave negative beliefs in the past and act according to the new meanings.
Access Bars, alternative consciousness access bars therapy, which stimulate 32 points of the head, related to various aspects of life such as power, sadness, dreams, beliefs, etc. It acts energetically to clean the blocking mental records, reprogramming our brain.
ThetaHealing, transformation therapy through connection with Universal Energy, accessed in a deep meditation exercise, in which beliefs, feelings, patterns, trauma and unwanted energy connections are released, under a total state of peace of the assisted.
Coaching, a process that encourages the coachee (as the person assisted in this process is called) to find their qualities and their favorable points, even in an adverse situation and eliminate their limiting beliefs, in a work of resignification and focus on possibilities.
You may also like
- Study how we create limiting beliefs
- Decipher how beliefs affect your prosperity
- Learn a technique to free yourself from limiting beliefs
As we have seen, we are all subject to limiting beliefs, which are numerous and last throughout life. A conscious work of identifying these beliefs, which can transform the life story of many, must be carried out so that each one can make the most of their potential, develop, realize their dreams and goals and have a challenging life. Is that you? Is your self-knowledge enough to break your limiting beliefs? Be careful what answer you give yourself! Accept the challenge of discovering yourself without limits!
