Identifying and Changing Your Limiting Beliefs
Your Life is Always a Mirror of What You Believe
Core beliefs are a collection of your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and attitudes in life that affect how you interpret and experience the world. They are essentially what you believe to be true. These beliefs started forming at a very young age and are a product of your upbringing/childhood experiences, culture, media, and society.
The beliefs that we hold and the stories that we’re told repeatedly may sound like truth because that’s all we hear and know. They are deeply ingrained in your subconscious mind, the part of your mind that runs on auto-pilot to allow you to direct energy towards tasks that need more attention and creativity using your conscious mind.
If you take a look at an area of your life where you haven't yet been able to achieve the results you're looking for or call something in, there is always a false belief lying below the surface. Underneath those limiting beliefs, you are able to achieve anything you set your mind to. Your life is always a direct reflection, a mirror, of what you believe.
The key is recognizing those limiting beliefs then unlearning them in the same way you learned them from a young age or a highly emotional experience so you can replace them with new beliefs that are better serving you and your goals. In neuroscience, this is known as neuroplasticity - or the ability of the brain to change itself. In psychology, this is what we refer to as personal development or self-actualization. Either way, it all follows the same principles.
See below for the 3 Steps to Changing Your Limiting Beliefs I use for both my high-level clients and my own personal expansion.
3 Steps to Changing Your Limiting Beliefs:
1. Awareness
Let's identify the mental, emotional, and behavioral patterns that are keeping you stuck and bring them to the surface.
When you feel a negative emotion arise, get curious and pause to ask yourself what thought or belief is coming up right now?
What emotional states am I entering?
What behaviors follow this thought?
Are these thoughts, emotional states and behaviors serving me?
2. Redesign
Change the story, how can you see this from a new perspective that better serves and aligns with the person you’re becoming or the thing you’re working to achieve, this creates new neural networks in the brain.
What new thought or belief can I put in place and set out to prove instead?
3. Rituals
Now that you’ve changed the story and believe you are capable of becoming and achieving this new version of yourself put the practices into place with repetition. This solidifies those new neural networks.
How does this person show up and act every day with these thoughts and beliefs? What rituals and routines has this version of you committed to?
Identity Shift
This creates an identity shift. The highest level of self-transformation. You are no longer someone who wants to start a new relationship, build a business, reclaim your health and well-being, etc. you start seeing yourself that way because you’re already showing up that way with your thoughts, beliefs, and actions.
You practice it until you literally become it.
For more support on identifying your limiting beliefs, you can visit the Identifying Limiting Beliefs Worksheet. These questions have been monumental in uncovering my own limiting beliefs and creating new supportive ones in their place.
This worksheet and dozens more to support your mindset training are available when you join The Self by Design Collective.
