Change My Career, Change My Life

What are Limiting Beliefs? Limiting Beliefs are limiting beliefs, thoughts that one considers to be absolutely the truth. In most instances, limiting beliefs are unconsciously positive thoughts that act as a defense mechanism against potential lower or negative vibrating feelings (e.g., sadness, frustration, anger). Although most of us have these beliefs, they may be holding us back from reaching our full potential, becoming the best that we can be, living our lives in the way that we really want to live them, and attaining the things that make life worth living.

If you are working on limiting beliefs, you need to start with yourself. You must become aware of your own limiting beliefs so that you can change them. First of all, examine yourself for which beliefs you may be self-defeating, i.e., beliefs that are holding you back from living the life that you truly want to live. After you know what your self-limiting beliefs are, then you need to work on replacing them with positive beliefs.

One of the easiest ways to replace a limiting belief is to acknowledge the belief out loud to yourself. “I am believing that my limiting beliefs about…” When you hear your limiting belief spoken aloud, immediately acknowledge it with: “I completely agree that my belief about…” Once you’ve replaced the limiting belief with a positive belief, then you are on your way. It’s as simple as that. I know it may seem like a simplistic solution, but that’s actually how many self-defenders deal with their own self-limiting beliefs.

Another way to help yourself out of limiting beliefs is to get the message out that you can change careers if you choose to do so. This isn’t as simple as saying, “I’m changing my career,” but it’s a message that gets across. If you want to change careers, then you have to believe that you can change careers. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but that’s the point – if you don’t believe that you can change careers, then you won’t be able to change your limiting beliefs about changing careers.

Another way to help yourself out of limiting beliefs is to spend many years doing what you hate. In other words, if you’re holding a limiting belief about: being a stay-at-home parent, spend many years in the workforce! You’ll find out soon enough that once you graduate from staying at home, that you don’t really regret your decision. In fact, you’ll begin to see that your stay-at-home parenting days are over and that you’re now capable of bringing up a family.

By changing our beliefs about: being a stay-at-home parent, becoming a nurse, becoming an architect, getting a college education, and so forth, we empower ourselves. But that doesn’t mean that we’ve transformed into someone else, or worse, that we haven’t changed at all. We simply moved our limiting beliefs around to match our new empowering beliefs. We move from: “I can’t become a stay-at-home mom because I’ll be a failure,” to: “I can become a stay-at-home mom by becoming a nurse and teaching my daughter how to learn to love herself.”