How To Identify Self-Limiting Beliefs
By Lola
Fayemi
Do you find yourself making the same mistake in various guises
and repeating negative thought and behaviour patterns no matter how
hard you try?
Do you blame others about situations in your life and not take
full responsibility?
If you answered yes to both questions, there's probably a
self-limiting belief lurking around that is obstructing you from
joy.
A self-limiting belief is a belief held in your subconscious mind
that limits you getting what you really want in life, as it says on
the tin, it limits the self! So, bearing that in mind, it is
obviously of benefit to remove these beliefs in order to get what
you want in life, however before we can begin to think about losing
them we need to identify what they are.
Importance of identifying self-limiting beliefs
Self-limiting beliefs are in fact faulty or outdated programming
that obstruct or even halt your growth. The difficulty in
identifying them is that they feel as if they are a part of your
core. Their misleading nature leads you to feel that it's just you,
your luck, your genes (after all your Mum/Dad/Sister/Brother, insert
relevant relative, are like that) or something else that is out of
your control.
Another difficulty is that some limiting beliefs are cultural and
therefore embraced by society. A majority of people hold them so
they feel normal. Well it's not and my aim today is to help you wake
up!
Self limiting beliefs are dangerous to your personal growth,
identifying them will show you just how many areas of your life are
being affected. I was shocked to the core when I started becoming
aware of mine and pretty overwhelmed by the realisation that as a
self-aware person, I had no clue!
Law of Attraction
The danger with them is that they can be your default thoughts as
you have had them for a very long time, so by the law of attraction
what do you think these limiting thoughts are inviting into your
life!
When you embrace universal laws like the law of attraction, you
choose to deliberately create your life. Doing so without
identifying and releasing these limiting beliefs, it is the
equivalent of putting clean clothes on a dirty body. Your older,
deep rooted beliefs have more energy as you've held and projected
them for longer. So, identifying and releasing self-limiting beliefs
will work wonders for your manifestations as it is a massive release
of negative thought patterns and hence negative energy. Once they
are released, there's more room for the abundance to flow in.
Where do they come from?
These limiting beliefs come from upbringing, society,
experiences, coping mechanisms. Our parents probably didn't mean any
harm but they passed on their self-limits to us and gave us new ones
as a form of protection. Eg, they may stop us from aiming too high
as they don't want us to be disappointed.
Society is just a collection of people, unfortunately a majority
of people are limited which is why society can add to or reconfirm
our self-limiting beliefs. Society tells us that we are limited by
our education, class, race, age etc - just in case anyone's unsure
this is class A b*llshit!
Limiting beliefs can come from experiences and coping mechanisms
as sometimes we develop ways to protect ourselves from certain
things in life. The problem comes when we hang on to them even when
they no longer serve us. For example, a child learns not to trust
people due to being continually let down while he was growing up,
but he carries that into all his adult relationships with people he
can trust, usually pushing them away.
The self-limiting beliefs I identified within myself were
self-punishment, self-sabotage, fear of success, fear of failure and
fear of personal power. Some of those overlap, but you get the gist
of it. My negative programming manifested itself in that I allowed
myself certain levels of success (through bloody hard work!) and
then I would run out of fight and destroy everything.
Looking back the reason I didn't see the real problem was due to
my philosophies of:
no pain no gain
you must suffer for success
the absence of suffering and sacrifice leads to mediocrity
I was not aware that my thinking was faulty as the reality I had
created supported it and living in a Capitalist society, my views
were in line with that, so I was heading for success as far as I was
concerned.
By the law of attraction, all I was getting was pain, suffering,
sacrifice etc. Also, by law of attraction all of my success stories
I'd heard of were of people that had lost everything and built it up
again and generally stories that fitted my philosophy, so I believed
I was on the right track. As said earlier, these beliefs can be
clever little things that you may not notice so depending on your
level of self-awareness you may not know what's holding you back.
Here are some ways to become aware of my unwanted programming.
Ways to identify your self-limiting beliefs
Dream interpretation - Dreams can be extremely useful in
determining what's happening in my subconscious, especially
recurring dreams. A recurring dream is like your subconscious
constantly tapping on your shoulder trying to get your attention
about something. I'm no dream guru by any stretch of the
imagination, but when I realise I am having recurring dreams I set
about researching what it could mean to me and what I could do to
address it. Dreams paid a huge part in my identification of
self-punishment as a limiting belief I held.
I was constantly having the same kind of dream where I was being
attacked by the same people. I knew these people in real life and
had fallen out with them, which was the right thing to do but it was
difficult. The dreams were telling me I felt guilty and guilt always
looks for punishment, my subconscious was telling me that I had a
belief that I needed to be punished. I set about learning about
releasing this in real life and made steps, after a few months the
dream changed into me having more power in the dream and standing up
for myself. A few months after that, I was catching punches being
thrown at me with my hands and overpowering my oppressors. The
dreams ended with a final one of a conversation where we decided to
go our separate ways, made peace and apologised to each other. I
knew then that I was over that and I've never had one since. Don't
underestimate the power of your dreams.
Questions and honest answers - Grab a pen and paper and be
open and honest with yourself. List the area(s) of your life that
you are unhappy with. Deal with each one in turn and explore why you
are unhappy in those areas. Really get into why the situation makes
you unhappy, what you could do change the situation and what
situation you would be happy with. Explore what put you in that
situation in the first place, what beliefs do you hold that have led
you here. What beliefs would take you to the situation that you have
identified you would be happy with.
Really let your hands go and keep writing the answers to each of
those questions. If you are being 100% honest, you will be on your
way to identifying your self-limiting beliefs, you may even be clear
as to what they are.
Goal setting - The process of setting clear goals can help
you to identify your limiting beliefs. Particularly answering why
you haven't achieved your goals so far ,what has stopped you. Answer
fully, honestly and truthfully. Review your answers and read between
the lines, remember there are no external reasons for not achieving
them so far.
Everything in your life you have somehow created. I know this
doesn't sit well with a lot of people but unfortunately I didn't
make the rules. It is unexplainable and there is a reason for
everything so don't feel blamed. Look on the bright side, the great
thing is that this also means it is within your control to change!
When you are continuously unable to do something because of someone
else, you need to look deeper and be honest with yourself what the
real problem is, clue - it is never outside yourself.
Lola Fayemi is a spiritual and personal development specialist.
As a Freedom coach, Lola works to manifest freedom in people's lives
and assist them in creating the life of their dreams. Holistic in
her approach, Lola coaches from the inside out so clients can live
fully in the divine current and experience the peace and joy they
deserve, in line with universal laws. Lola is also a Reiki Master,
Writer and has her own spiritual and
personal
development blog Change the direction of your life immediately
and sign up for her
free goal-setting e-course
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