Do you know your limiting beliefs?

Throughout life, we develop ideas and perceptions about ourselves through contact with people, places, certain groups, and information that cross our path. All these created perceptions will develop some beliefs, which can be seen as good or bad, known as limiting.

For many people, these beliefs are so strong that they end up becoming an absolute truth. However, when it comes to limiting beliefs, many times, this belief only ends up being real in the person's own mind, ending up distorting reality.

By reading this article, you will take an important step to start dealing better with these beliefs that limit many people's lives. Read the whole thing and understand!

Understanding about limiting beliefs

Limiting beliefs appear through our influences throughout life. If you stop to reflect, when a person is born, they are like a blank page that, as they relate to the world, they acquire new experiences. Thus, they end up acquiring their talents and also their limiting beliefs. Check out what these beliefs are!

What are limiting beliefs?

To better understand about limiting beliefs, it is very important to keep in mind what a belief is. The meaning of the word belief has nothing to do with religion. Belief is nothing more than an interpretation or a convinced thought that you accept as being an absolute truth, even though it is not.

Having understood what a belief is, we can say that limiting beliefs are imposing thoughts created, usually, in childhood and developed throughout life. These thoughts end up becoming our own truths and, many times, limiting the development in various aspects of life, that is, they are mental barriers that we build during our own life journey.

Difference between limiting beliefs and empowering beliefs

Limiting beliefs are beliefs that end up limiting a person's life. They usually tend to be accompanied by negative feelings and thoughts, such as mental confusion, criticism, guilt, etc. These beliefs can be recognized as subjective and unreliable, and tend to put you down, changing your self-esteem and perception of reality.

Empowering beliefs are the opposite of limiting beliefs. They are able to give you more strength and motivation in the course of your life. They can help you realize dreams, overcome a fear, or achieve things. So these beliefs are a set of positive ideas that empower you throughout your life.

Examples of limiting beliefs

If, starting today, you make a commitment to pay more attention to your own speech and that of the people around you, you will realize that we are surrounded by more limiting beliefs than we realize. They often appear as normal or unnoticeable.

Beliefs such as "I'll never be able to make money", "I'm not old enough", "I can only achieve success if I'm perfect", "I'm incapable or insufficient to do anything", "I can't make any mistakes", or "I don't have time/money for anything" are some examples of thoughts that may have crossed your path throughout your life.

Cycle of limiting beliefs

People who feed more and more limiting beliefs into their lives end up experiencing a limiting cycle, which ends up hindering personal development. This cycle consists of three stages: start doing, finish before you start, regret and try again, or give up for good.

It can be said that the most present feelings generated by limiting beliefs are fear and insecurity, making the person unable to face challenges, experiencing a cycle of giving up and regret throughout life, without realizing it.

The danger of limiting beliefs

Wanting to progress in life is a common desire of all human beings, whether in their personal or professional lives. Therefore, it is very important to do everything possible to avoid carrying your own limiting beliefs throughout your life, because they are one of the aspects that contribute to your not developing. Check in the next topics how they can harm you!

How can limiting beliefs harm you?

Beliefs can limit a person simply because they define how they act in the world, making them feel various things. That is, they end up limiting your authenticity, your courageous side, your curiosity, and your willingness to face various obstacles that life presents. You end up, more and more, accumulating feelings that distance you from a happier life.

All these aspects contribute to bad mental health and a very troubled relationship of your life with the world. This is not healthy, and we can consider it very dangerous, because these beliefs tend to contribute to the person stopping natural or beneficial behaviors for mental health.

How do limiting beliefs arise?

The emergence of limiting beliefs is found in the childhood period. It is in this phase that children are beginning to develop their critical sense and their ideas. In the environment in which they live, people have a lot of interference in the construction of limiting beliefs, because the adult, when raising a child, already has many beliefs and ends up transferring, often unknowingly, to the child.

However, there are two basic ways in which these beliefs arise. The first is through emotional impact, that is, when we suffer a great emotional impact or trauma, especially in the childhood phase, because we do not yet have a developed emotional maturity.

The other way is through repetition, that is, when we hear or feel something that stirs our emotions in a negative way. This is repeated in the same or similar ways throughout our lives.

Types of limiting beliefs

The world is littered with various types of limiting beliefs, capable of being developed over the course of our lives. Many beliefs, when they arise in a person, come from their parents' perception of how they see the world and aspects that work for them. Limiting belief beliefs have to do with a person's view of not feeling enough to accomplish certain things.

Other examples of limiting beliefs are also those connected to the world and our surroundings, such as the relationship with money, views on relationships, and the behavior of other people or a certain social group.

All this happens because human beings feed on these convictions in a robotic way, either by living with people or by consuming information in the media.

Hereditary

Hereditary limiting beliefs are developed through living with parents and the family environment in which a person is raised. Phrases like: "men are all the same" or "money is something very dirty" end up being marked in the subconscious, generating a certainty about these aspects.

The relationship between the father and mother, and whether physical violence and arguments are present are other examples of what ends up shaping a person's world view and behavior.

Therefore, it is very important, when having a child, to be aware of what is said to him, so as not to generate a negative reaction. Being considerate in words and behaviors reduces the appearance of some limiting beliefs in the child.

Social

Social beliefs are assimilated no longer within the home, through parents and family members, but through contact with the outside world. Contact with other people, whether in the professional environment or simply in your journey at school or university, contains stimuli capable of acquiring new limiting beliefs.

These beliefs are nothing more than the suggestions we have from various perceptions about the world, how a person should behave and what is right or wrong.

Personal

In the case of personal limiting beliefs, they have more to do with our own beliefs about ourselves. It is developed through the various experiences we have throughout life. This type of belief has both social and hereditary influences, but is adjusted according to our personality and temperament.

Those who grew up hearing a lot of criticism will find it very difficult to believe that they are capable of developing some things, that is, they end up becoming a very insecure person because they have a belief based on the criticism they have suffered.

How to identify your limiting beliefs?

Being aware that a limiting belief can paralyze you in various aspects of your life is already a big step towards being able to identify them. Knowing that these beliefs often have their origin at home, in a family environment, is very important for you to be able to analyze them in the best possible way.

A closer look at your self-knowledge process is paramount to being able to discover what beliefs you have carried throughout your life. Questions such as "Have you realized your dreams and goals?", "What has been holding you back?" and "Does your self-charging make you suffer?" can help you identify some of these beliefs.

Usually, they appear in a repetition and disguised as some behaviors that disqualify you as a person, that is, discrediting your ability.

How to transform limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs

Knowing what limiting beliefs are and what they are capable of doing to you is already a big step towards being able to better deal with these thoughts that imprison us. In the next topics, you will learn how to transform them into beliefs that will help you give your life a boost. Check it out!

Understand what limiting beliefs prevent you from reaching further

Being aware that a limiting belief can cause you to stop in time and stop moving forward in pursuit of your own dreams is an important initial step in being able to resignify them. The idea of knowing that you can leave behind much of what you want to achieve or what you want to change can be great fuel for your change.

However, try to do a mental exercise in which you can visualize a life of yours without achieving your goals, your dreams, and your greatest desires, whether material, personal, or sentimental. Remember that a life without evolution and movement is a lukewarm life, and a life lived in a lukewarm way tends to bring more unhappiness and dissatisfaction.

Recognize that beliefs are not facts

The beliefs you have been accumulating throughout your life should never define your reality. When it comes to limiting beliefs, remember that they are entirely beliefs and certainties created only in your own head. Recognize that the beliefs do not match the reality of the facts themselves.

So, by having this recognition, you gain more strength to be able to redefine limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs. Always try to question if the facts that present themselves within your beliefs make sense and define who you are and the power you have to transform anything.

Listen to your inner voice

Having a more attentive and loving look inside yourself will help you connect more and more with your essence. By having contact with your own essence, it will be easier to be able to separate a limiting thought from a thought that brings its own inner strength.

Doing this exercise of listening carefully to your inner voice will help you focus on your qualities, your fears overcome, and your power to react. In addition, you will be able to connect with your inner flame, which makes you motivated to live and always evolve.

Write down the limiting beliefs that pop into your head

By writing down and visualizing on paper what your beliefs are, your conscious will more easily memorize and understand that that type of thinking is limiting something in you or in your life.

So try to answer questions like, "What was it that stuck you in the past in other experiences?", "What have you come to use as excuses for not acting?", "What patterns have you noticed that you tend to fall into?". Delegate some time for yourself to devote and write down all the thoughts that come to you when you are asking these questions.

Replace a limiting belief with an empowering belief

By being able to identify your own beliefs and being aware of which aspects of your life are limiting you, a very important step is for you to transform these limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs.

Some beliefs, like believing that you are capable of building whatever you want, that you can be very happy, that hard times are part of it, are good to serve as strengthens that for you to start using to replace your limiting beliefs.

Remember what you are capable of

When you take a closer look at the experiences of your life, you will notice the enormous number of challenges you have had to face, be it in the personal or professional area. These challenges, at first, are seen as something that gives us a lot of insecurity and fear, but when you manage to overcome them, you automatically fill yourself with your own resources capable of dealing with the obstacles.

You are capable of doing many things you can't imagine, but to be sure of that, you need to be open to trying. Allow yourself to take risks, and you will discover your inner strength.

View an alternative result

When you are immersed in limiting beliefs, the tendency is that your vision and perception about things and the world becomes more and more limited. Because they are beliefs that are with you for a long time, they end up bringing you a very strong sense of truth, causing you to become stagnant and afraid to move forward and evolve.

When faced with such a situation, and knowing that it is a limiting belief, instead of listening to these feelings that limit you, always try to ask yourself if there is an alternative way to proceed. By visualizing an alternative outcome, you help your mind to not easily accept these beliefs and to get answers that you often could not imagine.

Look for new opportunities to act

Limiting beliefs tend to leave you with a limited world view, but if you think about the size of the world and the infinite possibilities that exist in it, you will realize that this limitation is only created in your own mind.

Therefore, look for new opportunities to take action. Accepting these beliefs as truth will only make you lose your inner flame and discredit everyone and the world. Remember: there are infinite possibilities waiting for you, just look inside and realize that you are capable of producing any result you want. So always look for new opportunities.

Understand, recognize, and transform your limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs!

The quest to transform limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs may not be a very simple task, but living a life with them is much more difficult, because they end up limiting all your human capacity for development and generate a lot of suffering and low self-esteem.

Now, as you go about your daily life, try to recognize which beliefs are most present in your life and which bother you the most.

By having this knowledge, you will be able to resignify them and be able to change from your own internal strengths and convictions. Believe me, it is possible to resignify everything, you just need the courage to take the first step!