Nearly every single day, I work with limiting beliefs. Sometimes, they’re my own. Sometimes, they’re those of my clients. Sometimes, they’re those of complete strangers. You might be familiar too.
When I say limiting beliefs, I’m talking in broad terms about the stuff that’s keeping you stuck. A lot of times, that plays out in the thoughts you put on repeat in your head that really don’t do anything for you and could definitely be described as negative. Limiting beliefs are usually things that, if you ever said out loud to anyone else, they’d immediately shut you down and tell you that was flat out untrue.
Limiting beliefs hold us back, and there’s no argument about that.
And they can apply everywhere in our lives. For instance, I’ve talked about my limiting beliefs when it comes to friendship – “I’m not good at making friends,” “People don’t like me,” etc. I’ve talked about it as it applies to thought leadership – “Who am I to say this?” “It’s all been said before,” etc. I’m sure you can think of about 64 other places or times in your life where you’ve thought to yourself something that either directly or indirectly limits your potential. Certainly, you wouldn’t be the only one.
If you sit with this for a minute and let your mind wander through it, it starts to feel a little uncomfortable. You might begin to see your most prevalent limiting beliefs bubble up. When you engage your awareness, they might start to reveal themselves more readily. And sometimes, that’s sticky. Maybe embarrassing. Maybe it feels silly. Maybe just surprising.
The one thing we can probably agree on, though, is how truly unproductive it really is to let our limiting beliefs shape our lives.
And yet – we do it. Probably more often than we’d like to admit. Because it’s easy. It’s human nature. And we want to protect ourselves from hurt and pain and failure. Like I said, I do it sometimes too. But at a certain point, letting your limiting beliefs control so much of your behavior becomes too much. It wedges us in, boxes us up, and affects us – personally and professionally – in very real ways.
What I’ve noticed is that we often do this thing where we might tell someone about the limiting belief, and we laugh it off, like, “I KNOW this is ridiculous!” but we still cannot seem to go beyond that. Even the thought of addressing it clams us up. It’s too big or difficult to tackle, and even though it’s killing us inside, we decide we’re fine enough where we are.
But damn. We are not fine.
What I’m experiencing in working with my clients, and just in general in talking with a ton of other women right now, is that we’re 100% not fine. We want more. We might be able to live within our current limits, but we’re ready to push beyond them, even as they’re big or difficult to tackle.
The thing that I think a lot of people aren’t realizing is that it doesn’t have to start big or difficult. Breaking down those barriers and pushing our limits can be set in motion with the tiniest exercise. And over time, the results of a whole bunch of tiny exercises in releasing limiting beliefs and cultivating more freeing beliefs will compound. Pretty soon, the thoughts on repeat in your head will be completely different.
One of the best ways to get started on dismantling your limiting beliefs is to write them out, and then respond to them.
That might sound simple, but often, the most effective exercises are totally uncomplicated. So, you write down your limiting belief, like so:
I’m not making enough money.
OK, great. Now, you write your response to it. Think about this as if it were your best friend or your spouse, or maybe a client if that’s your thing, saying this to you. What would you say?
What is enough? What does that mean to you? There is always more money to be made, and it’s not the only value of your worth and work. This is scarcity talking, and you are a person who does not live in scarcity, but abundance!
Oh-ho! There are some good nuggets there, right? There’s some stuff with money equating to worth and success. There’s some stuff with determining what enough money really is. There’s some stuff with defining value for your work. There’s some stuff with mindset. So, I mean, true, it’s not actually all that simple. But it is productive. Continuing to explore some of those statements and questions is going to go a long way toward getting unstuck, and be far more effective than just worrying over the “I’m not making enough money,” limiting belief.
Let’s do one more. Write down your limiting belief, like so:
I’m just like every other coach out there.
Write your response, like so:
That is literally laughable! Where are you even getting this?!?
As you can see, it helps to do this in the exact way you would actually do it. Don’t fluff it up and make it all YAY WOO INSPIRATIONAL. Don’t write down what you think the internet would say. Again, respond just as you would as if this were a meaningful person in your life who you totally believe in was coming to you with these concerns. Because guess what? That person is you.
And again, as you can see with this second example, just as with the first, there are some good nuggets here. You can call out how ridiculous this belief is at its core. But, you can continue to ask why that’s so and describe all the reasons why you’re not like every other coach out there. And, you can get to the heart of where that limiting belief is coming from too. This is the good stuff you want to understand, so you can address it in a practical way to defeat the limiting belief.
This is the foundational stuff.
And getting to the foundation of whatever it is that’s underlying these limiting beliefs is the only way you’re ever going to turn them around and start to believe anything else.
I do the live version of this with my clients all the time. Often, I’ll suggest they complete this very exercise on their own. But in our real-time coaching calls, it’s common for a limiting belief to come up as a statement in whatever we might be discussing. And immediately, I respond something along the lines of, “What!?! No way. Period.” Or, “Uh uh. That’s absurd.” And then I follow it up right away with something like, “Where did you get that idea?” Or, “Tell me more about how you came up with that.” It’s doing the same thing – forcing them to come up with their own response to this limiting belief, and it helps us get further down into the foundation of what’s really going on, both in that moment, and overall.
Yeah, it’s painful. But the question really becomes – how painful is it to continue to believe this about yourself or your situation vs. doing anything to try to change it? What are the direct, or indirect, consequences of this belief? What are the costs of limiting yourself in this way? Why do you want to hold onto this instead of whatever lies beyond it?
It’s entirely likely that in doing this exercise, you’re going to feel some feelings pretty deeply. It might be that hurt, that pain. It might be shame. Disappointment in yourself. Disbelief. That’s all part of it.
We can’t get the growth without the grit.
But from there, you’re also very likely to start to feel some relief. Liberation. And resolve to continue the process and keep doing the work to banish these limiting beliefs for good. To do whatever it takes to shift the thoughts on replay to freeing, positive, thoughts. And better yet – to take the actions to do all the things your limiting beliefs were keeping you from doing in the first place. Oh, and you might even start to believe the more liberating, positive beliefs with the same (or stronger!) conviction that you’ve been putting into the limiting ones.
Limiting beliefs can keep us frozen and hung up on all the wrong things. And wow, they can do that for a shockingly long period of time if we don’t catch ourselves and make a choice to do something about it. And while one little exercise isn’t going to change everything overnight, taking the time and making the small effort to begin to confront these beliefs can do wonders for shifting focus back to all the right things.
And really – what do you have to lose in trying it? You never know what doors will open with one, tiny, secret journal entry.
Write it down. Respond. Push the limits of your beliefs.
Wanna do the live version? Book a call below and we’ll do it.