4 Steps to overcome your limiting beliefs

So they’ll never have a hold on you again.

Throughout life, limiting beliefs hold us back, but in mid-career, it’s worse! Here are some tips on how to overcome all your objections to achieving what is essential to you.

What is a limiting belief?

Limiting beliefs are beliefs, whether you are aware of them or not, which limits your ability to fully live your projects in the light of experience accumulated beyond 40 years. So act quickly to avoid wasting time.

What is called a “limiting belief” in the jargon of personal development, these are irrational fears that keep us from acting according to our desires and from progressing through useful experiences.

These “limiting beliefs” manifest themselves whenever they tell us, “you are not …” (“you are not competent enough”; “you are not important enough for …”; “you do not count …”; “This is not what we should do…”).

So whenever a thought or a person makes you feel this way, you REACT!

React, because if we are not responsible for the thoughts of others, we are, on the other hand, responsible for ours, and in particular, for our emotions.

Now we can act on our emotions. We can reason with ourselves, take a step back, give ourselves time and gentleness to understand specific mechanisms…

We all have limiting beliefs.

They were first formed in our childhood because we received codes of conduct to be loved and encouraged by our community (our family in the first place). This is how we grow! There is nothing wrong with anyone.

Most of my friends tell me that one of their limiting beliefs is that we are not talking about money! They suddenly find it hard to negotiate their first contracts when they decide to finally embark on their dream of entrepreneurship (not to mention that this has always been a complicated request for an increase in business! ).

Why don’t we easily give in to these “limiting beliefs”?

“Examine your beliefs and break free.” ― Maria Erving

Some may be so deeply rooted in our past that we never put them into perspective until the day when we feel real pain.

Others are so common to the society in which we live (or the era in which we live) that it takes courage to speak out. Today, for example, women object to the idea that “they are less ambitious than men”. Men, for their part, oppose the plan “that they would be less able to raise their children while working”…

But how many centuries has it taken and collective revolutions? !!!

The time when…

We realize that we have slowed down for many years to conquer what we want internally, the slap is certainly masterful, but it also brings about its procession of bitterness and regrets.

And it all takes time (sometimes a long time) to raise our heads and understand that we are responsible for…. Our emotions as our limiting thoughts !!!

What happens most often is that we then take responsibility for external causes:

• The market
• The employer
• The spouse
• The crisis, the economy, politics, foreigners (…)
• Bad luck …

Indeed, there are external causes! Of course and almost always! But even behind external reasons, there is WE, that is to say, how we perceive an event according to our emotions and our prohibitions.

It’s not about being “positive”!

It is much longer and much more complicated than that. It is first and foremost about realizing with a will that we are the creator of our reality in positive as negative.

From there, our state of mind can change, and we will get in motion, which will help us to progress and therefore achieve what we want (sooner or later).

By modifying our convictions and, consequently, our actions, we can create the right conditions (decisions, training, risk-taking, forgiveness, meetings …) to obtain what we are looking for.

So how do you do it?

To demonstrate the method, I just take an example: “you are convinced that after 50 years, your professional life will only decline,” but start from another situation that you feel deep inside you as limiting for your power to act.

Step 1: First recognize your limiting beliefs

The first step to working on a limiting belief is to accept it, and it is not always easy. Let’s take our previous example and see how to approach this:

You are probably convinced that at 50, you start to decline slowly, physically, intellectually and perhaps in other areas of your life. From this belief, you will begin to capitalize on your achievements, thinking that security will bring you more comfortable and tolerable ageing.

As a result, you freeze in a security reflex, which itself reinforces not only your fear of the unknown but also freezes your desire to take risks, etc.

The first question to ask yourself here is: “Who said that people decline from the age of 50 and that the environment announces the end of something?”

“You will find lots of objective reasons to reassure your certainties, but the path will be in your conscience too, and you will ask yourself more often than before about the fact that perhaps, 50 years is only a new age with these challenges but also its strengths.

And you will soon discover that at 50 years old, you can do things that you could not allow yourself at 20 years. And by doing so, you will come to understand that you limit yourself to thinking according to a conception that is as false as it is inaccurate.

Step 2: Give yourself a challenge

Once you see your limiting beliefs, you can spend time recognizing them for what they are, a belief — it’s not real. So one of the first things to do is to start asking yourself what could be the worst-case scenario for going against your false beliefs.

“Courage is your natural setting. You do not need to become courageous, but rather peel back the layers of self-protective, limiting beliefs that keep you small.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

In the case of my example, this would give:

“from the age of 50, I will start to lose my strength. It will be seen and the next generation will gradually overtake me. So I’m going to lose my job before retirement. Suddenly, I will not be able to enjoy life as I dream of it, and that will create a severe illness, which at the bottom will be my entire release towards my limit… and all will be finished….

I am sure that by reading this paragraph, you are laughing! Because things don’t happen that way for everyone but do the exercise! Have fun dramatizing the worst-case scenario in relation to your limiting beliefs … because you will end up realizing that it is indeed a “belief” and not “real”.

Then you will be able to ask yourself and think about a real challenge for you.

For example: “Since I am now 50 years old, a little more experience and I have nothing to prove professionally, what can I achieve in the future, of which I have secretly dreamed for a long time and which would be a sufficient challenge to have the feeling of progressing every day for years?

Step 3: Adopt Zero Limit Beliefs

This step does not mean saying anything! This step means, searching within yourself for what gives you both joy, the impression of continually improving, and which is something that you want to achieve. Thanks to this cocktail, you are sure not to see the time spent in the future, whether you reach your 55, 60, 70 or 80 years.

The magic phrase is to replace a limiting belief with continually: “I may not be able to do today what seems to be a limiting belief, but I like the idea that I can progress and overcome it by doing such and such a thing at first, then I will constantly progress afterwards.”

The word “magic” is: “I like the idea that it’s not just a belief but that I can continuously exceed it because I am open and unique.

Step 4: Put faith in the unknown

Do not think that you are going to get rid of a limiting belief that has accompanied you for so long in your life! It will continue to appear until you have proven otherwise. Also, do not rely on your willpower to keep up whatever the cost over time. Willpower is just capital, which means you can’t tap into it endlessly.

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” ― Corrie ten Boom

It is one thing to understand a belief that makes sense, and it is another to believe it. New habits must accompany your new beliefs. Our brain needs to be reconditioned, and it takes time, application and conviction. Most of the time, you have to walk in the dark for a long time because the novelty is never revealed suddenly.

So you must move forward in uncertainty and be aware at the same time about:

• your thoughts (watch what you think and what you say!),
• your feelings (develop a power to visualize the goal sought with your new belief and feel what the result will be once you reach it!)
• your actions (organize yourself, step by step, with a strategy and tactics)

The good news is that if it is long and challenging to get rid of limiting beliefs at the beginning, with training, it becomes much more comfortable. So start by taking a small notebook and listing everything that prevents you from deploying to another level today, because you are over 50 or for any other question.

Originally published at https://www.thebrilliance.org on March 23, 2020.