What are Your Limiting Beliefs?

As I ponder life and the situation I am in now I wonder how it is I have come to be in such a challenging place. I am creating so many positive and vibrant thoughts through out the day that I am confident things will turn around and my life will once again feel wonderful. Then I realized that I have a bunch of limiting beliefs that seem to be keeping me in this place.

What are limiting beliefs? They are false beliefs that keep us from reaching our potential, from realizing our dreams and keeping us living below our potential.

The wonderful thoughts are on the surface are all well and good but then we listen to the fleeting little thoughts that keep nudging us. You know the ones that pass through your mind at lightening speed, so much so that we often are not even aware of them.

Here’s how I see it. We have goals and dreams for all kinds of wonderful things and we can dream and visualize these ideas and make them as real as we want. Then they bubble up to the surface so we can begin to act on them. On the way to the surface these dreams and goals have to go through our negative filters which then attach to our judgments. 90% of the time these are negative beliefs we picked up in our childhood. Now our beautiful dreams are clouded by negativity and the pollution of our false beliefs.

Let’s talk more about where these limiting beliefs come from. As I mentioned they primarily come from our past and start as a small comment, thought or observation you picked up from someone else.  For instance you may have heard one of your parents comment about how overweight someone is in a derogatory voice. This happened over and over again as you were growing up and you came to believe that the ‘fat’ person was less than because they were fat. Although you had no real proof that there was anything wrong with them it was a judgment you carried from your past. As a result you would not associate with overweight people because of this limiting belief.

Over time the pounds crept onto your body and before you knew it you were 20 pounds overweight. Your parent never made a comment about your size but you knew inside what their beliefs were and knew that these were your beliefs as well.  Now in your size 16 clothes you feel worthless, incompetent and your self-esteem has plummeted. To top all of that off you also came to believe that losing weight was extremely difficult and could only be accomplished through starvation and deprivation.

The well-intentioned child picked up the limiting belief and shaped what was to become an adult living a life of feeling less than and not living up to their potential because of a limiting belief.

Of course awareness is key to changing the limiting beliefs so begin to observe those secondary thoughts that follow any dream or goal and recognize them as your own limits. Then we can clean out our filters and with accurate beliefs such as I am good enough, I can do this and I am lovable!

We are just like an Internet search engine!

The way our thoughts and feeling operates is very much like an Internet search engine. Think about it, when we type in a word to Google (for example) and press enter we get a search of loads of entries that match up with that word. Now when we have a thought or feeling about something we go back through our history in milliseconds to come up with all the past events or activites that connect with that thought or feeling. Of course the one that is most recent or has the biggest impact will suface first and show up as number one or two in our personal search. Again just like the Internet search that brings up number one or two in the search.

Each thought or feeling has a tag that connects all other similar tags on the Internet or our own internal search engine.

Just as each tag on the internet has a website to describe that particular tag all of our tags has a story or two which describes why it has a specific tag. We each have stories with our own special tags that keeps us having that same feeling whenever it comes up. By looking at our issues, or our own tags, we can make the shifts in our feelings which in turn will make a shift in the tags.

If we change the tag or the thought that we are searching then we will connect with different events or activites in our past. We do not have to have huge shifts to make a change in perception just a minor tweak can make a huge difference. Much like what we type into a search engine can make a big difference with a change of just one letter.

So if we have a thought that creates fear, for example a snake which creates a physical response because we tag it with danger or poison and we fear our personal safety is in jeopardy. If we can change the tags for snake to beautiful patterns or soft and smooth then when we think of or see a snake our tags will be different and we will have a different reaction to it, preferably one that does not include fear.

It is said that we can not change our past but we can change how we react to it. We can change our tags associated, it might not have to be a huge change but just a small tweak so the association if different and then the reaction to the event is different too. So you see it is really about our perception and how thoughts or feelings are connected to our tags. Change the perception and we can change the tag, change the tag and we change how we percieve a thought or feeling.

I don't know about you but I want my Internet searches to bring up current websites with the most up to date information. What I know about my internal search engine is that it is always bringing up data from my past. Often the infomation is old and outdated but because I am so accustomed to having that information I do not look for current information. For instance, I was writing a paper for a class I was taking and I was struggling to write the paper. I reflected on why I was having so much difficulty and realized the tag I have for 'paper writing' incuded phrases like 'stupid' and 'bad writer'. Next I came to understand that those tags were old and outdated from a long ago past. Once I was able to realize those thoughts (or tags) were no longer valid I was able to write the paper with ease.

So you see we are just like the Internet searches with our own internal search engine, so next time an issue comes up ask yourself what is the tag and is it up to date and accurate for who you are today.

If you need help with this please feel free to contact me hthorg@gmail.com