How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs | The Better Than Rich Show Ep. 18
How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs
Sometimes the thing that is holding us back isn’t the how or the business strategies. Often it originates much sooner within our belief systems or how we are wired psychologically.
Self Awareness
A great starting place for self-awareness is to begin and analyze one’s thoughts. Too often we neglect ourselves by letting our thoughts run wild without analysis or control because we aren’t paying attention. If we aren’t paying attention to our thoughts most likely the best version of ourselves isn’t at the wheel.
To begin understanding our limiting beliefs we can start by understanding the significance of the different ‘voices’ or perspectives in our heads when we are having conversations with ourselves. We have a voice that will protect us. Sometimes this voice is protecting our ego and other times protecting us from physical harm. This voice is very distinctive because it’s built into our wiring as a human characteristic. Then we have the voice that is the best version of us.
Once we understand the voices we can begin to question the voices themselves and the beliefs behind those voices.
We are not the voices or thoughts that we have in our head, we are observing them so therefore we must be something else. This is important to remember and becomes more clear as we continue to become more self-aware and analyze our thoughts. We need to get more comfortable with our empty consciousness state, this state is the most observant. Then we can analyze limiting beliefs and uncover where they came from. These thoughts aren’t happening all the time and can be monitored and controlled.
We get to decide what facts we want to look at, we can find evidence for any belief that we create. Focusing on the gifts of life and the positive to help transform and reconstruct limiting beliefs.
Where Did This Limiting Belief Come From?
A lot of our belief systems and trauma come from our early years of childhood. It can be extremely beneficial to look into our childhoods and find memories that we still hold onto. Often we are holding onto that memory and feeling that comes along with it, which continues that feeling of trauma and creates a limiting belief.
If a memory that is older than 18 months and is still triggering us means that we haven’t integrated or fully learned the lesson that the situation is attempting to teach us.
A few beliefs to look into are our beliefs about ourselves, our beliefs of others, circumstances, money or finances, career, friends, family, and how the world runs.
How did our parents speak about money? What kind of relationships did I view as a child?
Who helped set our views on ourselves?
A good exercise to help find positive beliefs and realize which need to be reconstructed is the “I Am” exercise. Write “I Am…” and anything and everything that comes to mind.
I Am Reliable
I Am Honest
I Am A Procrastinator
Once we have the list we can reconstruct the negative ones to be positive. For example, “I Am A Procrastinator”, “I Am On top Of My Work When I Feel Energized”. Language often triggers beliefs.
Interpretation
We can only approach situations with the level of maturity that we have at that moment. If our maturity is lower than needed to truly understand the situation then we might simplify it into something that isn’t true.
A good example of this is when parents separate and they have a young child. The child doesn’t understand the entirety of their parents’ relationship, so to find a solution to the problem that makes sense to them they might blame it on themselves. This isn’t true, but their maturity level only allows for such an explanation.
If we have beliefs that serve us that’s great, we should keep them up! But, if we have beliefs that don’t, we need to switch them up! Why keep something that is limiting you that more than likely isn’t true in the first place.