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!