How Limiting Beliefs Hold You Back

What are limiting beliefs? Essentially, limiting beliefs are false ideas, opinions, or feelings that one strongly feels is the truth. They usually have a very negative effect on one’s life and preventing them from progressing on both a personal and social level. Limiting beliefs can literally “lock” a person into their current circumstances, and preventing them from ever moving forward or making improvements in their life. If you’re suffering from this, it’s time to learn how to break free of these limiting beliefs.

One of the most common limiting beliefs is that we must stick with our past decisions, or else we’ll be sorry. This is a horrible feeling, because it basically says that we are worthless and incapable of doing anything productive in the future. This also prevents us from moving on from a past mistake and allows us to feel even worse about making future mistakes. By not learning from our past mistakes, we’re basically setting ourselves up for failure in the future.

Another common limiting belief is that we must feel guilty for the things in our lives. This usually begins as childhood beliefs, which are perpetuated through adulthood. Once you believe that you’re bad and must live by this rule, it’s very unlikely that you’ll ever be able to accomplish anything. You will instead be blocking your own progress and adding fuel to the fire that’s causing you to stagnate.

The final of these limiting beliefs is that our emotions are superior to logic. Our emotions allow us to make faulty decisions based on false premises. When our emotions guide our actions instead of logic, we are effectively wasting our precious time and failing to reach our goals. To remove these false thoughts from your life, you must first recognize your emotions so that you can change them into logical ones.

Limiting beliefs can also be strengthened if you have a lot of them. This means that if you tend to believe in many of the negative beliefs above, you may need to work on changing them one at a time. You can’t just throw away your entire belief system in the process. You have to take action to eliminate each one individually until you reach a point where you no longer believe any of the limiting beliefs that you were taught as a child.

While you can strengthen limiting beliefs without much effort, you may want to consider using the assistance of a professional coach or mentor. There are many ways to help yourself focus on the here and now. Practicing mindfulness while working on your own can help, as can join a meditation group. Learning to identify the emotions and thoughts that keep you stuck in the rut can be difficult, but with enough determination and help, you can make progress. Overcoming the mind’s procrastination habits that have held you back for many years can be the best investment in improving your life.

While many people use their religion or a specific personality trait as a basis for their limiting beliefs, it can be more useful to examine your own behaviors. If you tend to hold back from taking risks or pushing yourself to do things you may not feel capable of doing, these may be signs that your limiting belief is simply you. Changing this kind of self-defeating behavior will not only help you grow into your true potential, but it will also give you a valuable framework for your new beliefs to grow out of.

It can be difficult to find ways to replace old limiting beliefs with new ones. You may need to spend time exploring your mind and learning more about your personality. This may require that you begin to examine your thoughts and question the assumptions you have developed over many years. Once you have done this, you’ll have developed a better understanding of how to deal with issues facing you on a daily basis. This can help you empower yourself with the tools you need to make good decisions rather than just react to every thought without thinking first.