Healing That Feeling © 2010
Limiting Beliefs - What Are They and Do You Have Them?
Everyone has limiting beliefs hidden deep inside them. Successful people overcome their limiting beliefs and achieve their goals.
These are the most common limiting beliefs - could you be harbouring one of them?
The 21 most common limiting beliefs;
1. I'm not good enough
2. I don't deserve (love/money etc)
3. I am not worthy
4. I am bad (eg I'm a bad parent)
5. I will never....
6. It's too late for me to.... (change my career etc)
7. I always disappoint people
8. I can't change
9. I'm too selfish/loud/shy
10. I am not pretty/slim/clever enough
11. My father was an alcoholic (or had cancer) and that means so will I
12. I will never find love
13. All men cheat/ all women are bitches
14. I will always be fat
15. I have a slow metabolism
16. I hate exercise
17. Money is evil
18. I will never be rich
19. There is never enough money (or money doesn't grow on trees)
20. Money makes you unhappy
21. My dream will never come true
And a bonus one for good measure;
"I can't do it!"
If you have negative thoughts or feelings going on inside you on a regular basis, or any patterns in your life that you can't seem to figure out (bad relationships or continuous problems with money for example) it is VERY likely that you have a hidden limiting belief.
Try a truth statement.
Choose a subject that you feel may be a problem for you or an area of your life that you are not happy with (ie money, love, family illness etc) and then pick one of the above phrases and say it out loud to yourself.
How true did it feel on a scale of 0-10? 10 being definitely true and 0 being completely false.
If you are more than a 5, you really need to work on this area of your personal development as your limiting beliefs will cause you problems in that area of your life and stop you from living the life that you desire AND the life that you truly deserve.
To find out some (easy) ways to work on your limiting beliefs, please visit the Healing That Feeling website.
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Limiting beliefs; Belief does NOT mean FACT.
Ok lets be very clear about this, a ‘belief’ doesn’t mean it’s a fact – it’s actually only your perception of the truth and this can be changed, with some work.
One great example of this is our pre-programmed beliefs about money – most of us have inherited negative beliefs or bad vibes about money and this really sticks with us, even if we don’t fully know where these thoughts or feelings originally came from.
The main problem with erasing Limiting Beliefs is actually getting to the bottom of them! The subconscious mind is very tricky to delve into as it doesn’t ‘think’ like our conscious mind does – ie we cannot hear it.
However, it can be done and my suggestion is that you work on one subject at a time.
Try this;
Think of an area of your life that you are not fully happy with – for example if you always seem to be short of money or in debt.
Get an A4 sheet of paper and write ‘money’ in the centre. Think about how you honestly feel about money – how much you earn, how much you WANT to earn, how much you believe you are capable of earning are a few things that you could start with. Take a few minutes to think about your financial situation and write down every single thought that comes up around the subject of money. However silly it seems, write it down.
Now go back to your childhood…think about what your life was like back then, especially connected to money situations. Did you grow up with a lack of money, did your parents argue about money, did you ever get the impression that money was bad or only ‘rich’ people ever had enough money. Write it all down.
Now go either go into your wallet and take out some cash (not plastic, it has to be actual cash).
Alternatively, you could get a picture of a pile of cash from the internet.
Look at the cash (or at the photo) and just take a few minutes to really think about how it makes you feel. Do you feel good or does it make you feel weird, bad or unhappy etc.
My story; I always had suspicions that I had limiting beliefs about money, but it was a real eye opener when I did this exercise and realised that I actually had some very negative vibes about money – which actually related to things in my childhood such as my parents arguing about the LACK of money, but my childhood brain just picked up that money = arguing and therefore money must be bad. Go figure!
Once I found out what my limiting beliefs were, I could then start working on retraining my brain.
There are numerous ways to do this including EFT, PSTec, subliminal messages or even affirmations (for example Vision Boards are a fantastic way to get positive messages into the subconscious mind).
Just because you cannot hear your limiting beliefs, doesn’t mean they are not causing you problems. Don’t ignore them any long, find out how to erase them and retrain your brain and finally get to live the life that you truly want.
# # #Limiting Beliefs; Can we eliminate them?
Our belief system is started from birth to six years old. Everything we see, hear, feel and experience during these formative years will affect our lives as adults. Most children that have an average childhood or even a happy childhood will have lots of good beliefs about themselves and about others, but even they will have the odd limiting belief – it is so easy for a child to be traumatised by things that happen to them in their early years that a simple look of disapproval from someone we love, can cause us to have a negative belief.
So the question is, what can we do about it?
Lots of things can help you to overcome your negative beliefs. For example, simply building your confidence will help to cancel out those early childhood memories. When you get a promotion at work and the boss tells you that he really believes you are the man/woman for the job – this will help you
But really getting to the core beliefs in your subconscious takes time and effort. Especially if you grew up in a negative environment or around people who spoke negatively.
For overcoming limiting beliefs the best formula for changing your subconscious mind is by using a mixture of techniques. I truly believe (after years of experience and set backs) that there is not one method that helps with everything.
For example, Reiki has helped me enormously over the years to relieve stress and help me to rebalance my energy when I am run down or overworked. It helps me to calm down and also helps me to sleep, but it does NOT help with resolving phobias or even severe trauma. EFT has helped me greatly with a number of issues and is now being recognised all over the world as a fantastic self help aid for many ailments - even physical illness. But it does not work on everything for everybody.
I've been involved in the Self Development world for many years now and I can guarantee that if you are willing to work through a number of different methods for your different problem issues, you will have fantastic success.
Limiting beliefs can be worked on with EFT, but I've also used PStec and subliminal messages for my really deep routed limiting beliefs, with great success.
Don't dismiss a method for everything just because it didn't work on one of your issues, it could be fantastic for one of your other problem issues. All of these methods will help you to cut down the many trees in your forest of limiting beliefs – why don’t you try one of them today?
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Limiting Beliefs; Are you lucky or unlucky?
It has been scientifically proven that people who think of themselves as 'lucky' are actually no luckier than people who think that they are unlucky.
However, the positive and optimistic outlook of those that believe they have luck is proven to make them more successful - which is a different thing altogether but even better than luck, because it means that they are controlling their good fortune.
In other words, it's NOT luck or chance at all; it is their positive mindset that helps them to achieve all of the things in life that lead them to believe that they are 'lucky'.
This ends up going in a circle because the more 'luck' they feel that they have, the more it reinforces to their brain that they are 'lucky' and so the process continues.
Unfortunately it also works the other way too. People who tend to think 'I always have bad luck' or 'nothing good ever happens to me' have a negative and pessimistic mindset and they are less successful at getting what they want. Mainly because they give up if it doesn't happen for them first time.
This negativity seeps into ALL areas of your life, and the more negative you are, the more negativity you will attract to you and so the cycle continues.
So...what are you?
Lucky or unlucky? Positive or negative?
The good news is if you are negative you can change.
Unfortunately, it is not as easy as just 'positive thinking' as the part of the brain that you consciously think with is only a very small part of the puzzle - but by taking a few simple steps, it CAN be done.
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