Beliefs are essentially made up of thoughts. When you habitually think of the same thoughts and when they become “real” in your mind, they form your beliefs. Beliefs can be positive and empowering; or negative and limiting. Positive beliefs can propel you to greater heights, while negative ones can send you spiraling downwards! Remember all your New Year resolutions and goals from years ago?
Many times, you probably feel as if your beliefs are fixed. You are dead sure that you are right and would stubbornly hold on to them. You feel outraged when someone dares challenge your “truths” and distort your reality. However, what you fail to see is the possibility that your beliefs may be flawed; giving you a false representation than what is truly the case.
You are a victim in life, when you refused to let go of your negative thoughts. In the face of a financial disaster, you believe that you are not worthy of having money. When you find yourself with no friends, your perception is that “no one loves me” or that “it is hard to make friends”. When you encounter problems at work, you say that “I am not good enough”. On a more horrifying scale, terrorists were motivated by their beliefs, to kill and die with others, by hijacking and crashing two American airplanes into the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. And it was the belief that terrorism must be defeated at all costs that prompted President Bush to respond by attacking Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sadly, all of us, including myself, grew up with several limiting beliefs. Perhaps it was that when you were young, you were told that you were lousy at art, music or dance. The beliefs became self fulfilling in a way, because you gave up your dream in pursuing any one of these interests. If anything, when you were 6 years old, it was easy to accept what an adult or an authoritative figure tells you. Let me explain further –
What Are Limiting Beliefs?
According to a research into beliefs done by Dilts and DeLozier (both NLP innovators and authors), there are 3 main ways that people limit themselves.
They are:
Hopelessness. You feel as if there is no hope because you do believe it is possible to achieve anything.
Helplessness. You believe that something is possible but you are not personally capable of achieving it.
Worthlessness. You do not believe that you deserve to attain success whatsoever.
Ask yourself if you have any of these limiting thoughts:
“I really have to work hard at…”
“It is too hard to reach the top”
“Other people can be rich not me”
“Money don’t grow on tree”
“Rich people are greedy and obnoxious”
“Others can do it better than me.”
“It is difficult to be successful.”
“Trying something new is too scary.”
“It’s impossible for me to lose weight.”
“I am just not genetically wired to be creative.”
“I am not attractive and cannot attract a good man (or woman) into my life.”
“I am not good at selling things”
“It runs in my family genes”
“My DNA is what it is and I can’t change it”
How Are Beliefs Formed?
The terminology “Childhood Imprints” in Neurolinguistic or “Engrams” in Psychology refers to the time of life starting from conception of a child until the developmental stage of 7 years of age. Major events can affect your view of the world and of yourself. These imprints come from all the experiences you have been exposed to unconsciously and consciously from:
- The environment in which you grew up. Your parents, your school and the community that you are exposed to play a part in shaping your belief system. How you encounter difficulties now is largely determined by the stories that you have been told as a child.
- Modeling. You may unconsciously take on the beliefs of someone you deeply admire. If the model in your life says so, then it must be so. Again parents are the most predominant model shaping our beliefs system about who we think we are and what we are expected to do.
- Significant Experiences. You may go through certain life-altering experiences that shape your beliefs. If the experiences turn out to be triumphs, you are likely to believe that anything is possible. If the experiences are horrid ones and your attitude is negative, you are likely to adopt a lot of disempowering thoughts and fears.
The life that you create is largely determined by your beliefs. Take a minute to assess where you are in life – are you fulfilled and satisfied by your life, relationships, and career? Are you achieving your goals? Are you getting the results? When you hold on to your beliefs that you are not capable of achieving something, you don’t have the desire to work at it enough, lose interest and sabotage your efforts in some way. Ring some bell here? You also prevent yourself from finding evidence to disprove them.
Change your Limited Beliefs – Change your Life
Using NLP terms, beliefs are perceptual filters. They determine how you view the world. They also act as confirmations in your reality of the environment. However, problems arise when they are flawed, distorted or steeped in unhelpful ways. Only when you become consciously aware about your assumptions, can there be the possibility of you breaking free.
Whatever makes up your beliefs becomes true for you. Thoughts that are disempowering wear you down and put you in a constant struggle. Instead of a smooth balance path, you find yourself facing more difficulties than others. With limiting beliefs, you are thwarting the process of personal growth for yourself. According to the Law of Attraction, it will also be difficult for you to attract the outcomes that you desire, since you are not in alignment with your inner Being and the Universe.
It is crucial that you deal with these self sabotaging thoughts. When the beliefs are deep rooted, they are usually in the form of black or white thinking. This simply means that you think in terms of extreme pole ends such as “should” and “should never”, “can” and “cannot”; and “a piece of cake” and “way impossible”. For myself, my pet words used to be “don’t know how” and “no I can’t”, which created many missed opportunities in the past.
What you don’t often realize is that when you learn “how to do the new things” that you initially have no faith over; your beliefs start to change. Suddenly, from a feeling of failure and hopelessness, you feel more positive and empowered!
The paradigm shift that you experience can be a very liberating experience! And when you do have this shift, you experience Oneness with your inner Being. You are in alignment with who you really are, doing your PURPOSE. The Law of Attraction works in your favor and best at this stage and you create more opportunities to confirm your new belief system!
Take a minute to assess where you are in life – are you fulfilled and satisfied with your life, relationships, and career? Are you achieving your goals? Reaching your dreams? Are you getting results?
If you don’t say yes to all of these questions then it is time to consider taking my New group class called “THE POWER OF BELIEFS” starting in May – Space is limited so act quickly – for more information just give me a call!
The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The
difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.”
– Michael E. Gerber, Author of The E-Myth Revisited
