Self-Limiting Beliefs

Self-Limiting Beliefs

What You Tell Yourself Matters More Than You Think

That nagging little voice in your head. You can’t shake it. It’s like the house guest that has long since worn out their welcome but still won’t go. They sit in your chair, take your remote over and invade your life. You want them to leave, desperately, but you just don’t know how to make them go. You’re stuck.

“You could never do that”, You’re not smart enough”, “Success and happiness are for other people”, “You’ll always be out of shape”, “You can’t run a business, what are you thinking?  And the list goes on and on in a never-ending loop of torment. 

I’ve battled these thoughts most of my life. I guess I’m no different than anyone else as I assume we all struggle with this. These thoughts have plagued me and followed me around since a very young age. My problem though, was I never slowed down and realized exactly what was happening. It’s a form of self-sabotage like none other but a trap we all fall into. Being an avid reader, I’ve read stuff that talked about this from time to time. However, for whatever reason, the light bulb never clicked for me. You see, this inner self-talk, it holds you back in life. It absolutely cripples you. It makes you a prisoner of fear and self-doubt.

I’ve always been an inquisitive person. A do-it-yourselfer if you will. I’ll mess with things until I get it to work. I’ll read, watch, learn, attempt, fail, keep trying and eventually get it. But why hadn’t I tried this approach to my life? It really is a good question and one that eluded me for so long. Eventually though, when you are backed into a corner and don’t feel like you have options in life, it makes you forge ahead despite your fears and take risks. I’ve since learned that comfort can be my biggest enemy to forward progress. It makes you timid and afraid to take chances. It makes you a captive audience to your own self-limiting beliefs. We all have them.

In 2010 I read a book, actually, several books that gave me an epiphany. It got me to slow down and realize in the moment when I was giving that inner-voice in my head the power over my life to make my decisions. It was an ah-hah moment. The power of the sub-conscious mind is extremely powerful. Dangerously powerful.

Like Henry Ford once said “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”

Just as when you have a diet of nothing but fast food and sweets, you’re going to gain weight, be unhealthy and unhappy. You reap what you sow in every aspect of your life. When you make a choice to become healthy, eat healthy, go to the gym, overtime your body changes. Your health changes. You get stronger, fitter and life becomes better. This is common sense for the most part. What people don’t realize though is your brain is exactly the same way. It’s incredibly malleable. It’s really quite remarkable. Just like with anything, when you first start doing something you feel weird, awkward and out of place. However, over time, you get better. If you’re not a reader and you start reading, you’ll be slow and your comprehension will be low. But over time your brain adjust to the increased level of activity and you get better.

In his book, “The Power of Positive Thinking”, Norman Vincent Peale list 10 things at the end of the first chapter you can immediately start doing to increase your self-confidence. The first item has made a huge difference for me personally. It says: “Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop this picture. Never think of yourself as failing. Never doubt the reality of the mental image. That is most dangerous, for the mind always tries to complete what it pictures. So always picture “success” no matter how badly tings seem to be going at the moment.”

I contemplated this for a long time; “for the mind always tries to complete what it pictures.” You see, I’ve since learned that the subconscious mind does not actually discern the difference between reality from that of what you feed it. If you constantly think of yourself as “terribly unlucky”, “unsuccessful”, “nothing ever works out for you”, “that’s just my luck”, type of thoughts, your subconscious mind believes you.

To be frank, I don’t believe in luck. I believe a man or woman makes their own luck. What matters is if they think they are lucky or unlucky and that in of itself will create the pathway for the realization of that belief.

Napolean Hill, in his book, “Think and Grow Rich” calls this Autosuggestion – The Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind. He states, “The dominating thoughts which one permits to remain in the conscious mind (whether these thoughts be negative or positive is immaterial) will reach and influence the subconscious mind, through the Law of Autosuggestion.” Hill is known for his quote, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” You see once you start feeding your mind with a healthy diet of positive affirmations and seeing yourself in your minds eye achieving a certain goal, not knowing the difference, the subconscious mind starts charting a course towards the realization of that goal.

Hal Elrod also writes about this in his book, “The Miracle Morning”, arguably the book that single handedly made the biggest impact in my life many years ago. Hal says, “Your self-talk has dramatic influence on your level of success in every aspect of your life – confidence, health, happiness, wealth, relationships, etc. Your affirmations are either working for or against you, depending on how you are using them.”  He later says, “Your affirmations go to work to transform the way you think and feel so you can overcome your limiting beliefs and behaviors and replace them with those you need to succeed.”

I have personally made huge strides with eliminating my self-limiting beliefs and replacing them with positive affirmations of the life that Linda and I have charted out for ourselves. We are actively working to create the life we always wanted rather then just letting life happen to us.

My sincerest hope would be for you to experience the same.