Shattering Limiting Beliefs

Summary by Staff writer

We’re all brought up with a certain pattern of thinking. We are programmed with messages from our parents, our teachers and individuals that we’ve interacted with throughout our lives and we take these messages as our truth. Even when the messages are negative, we replay them over and over again in our minds until they start to block us from moving ahead because we really believe them.

These messages don’t have to be true, they might not be, but we rarely take the time to do an inventory about our thoughts so they hang around doing damage. I really want to encourage you to take that time to make an inventory of your thoughts. Examine what thoughts you have and what you are replaying every day in your mind. Are they empowering thoughts or disempowering? Do these thoughts make you feel motivated?

Maybe you had a parent that embedded the belief that you could do anything you set out to do or maybe you had a teacher that said you’re really smart. Those are motivating and empowering messages that you can run with. Make these messages part of the recording that you play over and over again.

However, you should also delete those messages that are disempowering thoughts. Get rid of those limiting beliefs that affected you. Take those and say “This is a disempowering thought. This is not going to serve me. I’m going to do away with this and I’m going to replace it with something more empowering”.

The way we talk to ourselves and our self-talk comes from what our parents have told us or what our teachers have told us. They could be true but they could be completely false and we put ourselves in this little cage made of these messages. You have the key to set yourself free though. Your thoughts are the key in order to get yourself free from that prison of negativity.

This has been a topic in a recent Mindful Hearts Academy lecture. We talked all about your limiting beliefs and how these limiting beliefs create a glass ceiling that you can’t move past. One tip for breaking through the glass ceiling is recognizing that, after you do an inventory, you can do away with the disempowering thoughts and add empowering thoughts in their place. This is going to make a huge difference.

Another step you can take towards positivity is letting go of mistakes and overreacting to them. For example, maybe you had a speaking engagement that didn’t go well. You file away that experience and make it part of your identity. You define yourself from that one experience and think “This is who I am”.

I suggest that you rewrite what happened. Instead of solidifying that image of yourself, visualize how you would have wanted to it to go, who you wanted to have been. That will do away with the corrupt file that is not going to serve you and replace it with an image that is actually going to empower you and make you so much more effective. Fill your filing cabinet with useful information that is going to give you strength, motivation and positivity.