Those limiting beliefs are like seeds that were planted during childhood and nurtured over your lifetime? It’s time to dig them up. Not every plant is beneficial to your garden.
As you learn how to uncover and change limiting beliefs, it’s helpful to have a step-by-step strategy.
Follow a strategy rooted in self-discovery.
Changing limiting beliefs means you’ve got to identify them and be honest about the effect they’ve had on your love life.
This strategy is not meant to be complicated; in fact, the simpler the better. I want you to be able to duplicate this again and again, so you can have the relationship you want.
- Name one thing you want.
- Name the reason you don’t have it.
- Where did you get that idea?
- What proof do you have?
- Take all that “proof” and put it in a bucket called “lies.”
- Focus on what you need to get what you want.
- Tell yourself, out loud, that you have what it takes.
- Choose to believe it.
- Go about your day, gathering proof of this belief.
- Go get what you want, armed with the proof that you’ve got what it takes.
So, you may be wondering if I’m going with the idea that everyone has everything it takes to get anything they want. No, not at all…
If you’re passionate about something, and you want it so badly you can taste it, but you don’t have the tools, confidence or courage to get it…then you are allowing yourself to fall victim to limiting beliefs.
When you start to believe that you have what it takes and that you’re no less than anyone else, then you’re choosing to believe in yourself. And that’s the only way to get what you want.
An empowered person who knows how to weed out the beliefs that are holding them back, and find new proof supporting more productive beliefs, can learn to do anything. The can find what they need to succeed in love.
How limiting beliefs are keeping you from creating love in your life?Before you were six, you were fertile planting ground for all beliefs, limiting and otherwise. Your experiences were planted there like seeds. The good and the bad grew together. There were flowers, vegetables, trees… and weeds.
That fertile ground, your subconscious mind, received every seed and tucked it away.
Each seed just lay there, dormant, waiting…until something watered it and caused it to germinate. Again, no distinction between good and bad seeds…eh hem…beliefs.
As a child, your little brain was exposed to more than 14,000,000 tidbits of information at any given moment.
- You learned how to reason.
- You gathered clues.
- You socialized, predicted, interacted.
- You evaluated your own abilities and decided where you fit into this thing we call life.
Back then, your little-kid mind (a.k.a. your self-esteem) was a freshly plowed plot of land with only a few seedlings making their presence known. Little did you know the rest were lying in wait…for the perfect time to erupt into a massive, overgrown tangle of beliefs.
Life events and the people who come into our lives trigger germination.
Maybe a belief had been planted long ago by a parent, teacher, friend…but it didn’t apply to anything in your life until now.
When you start to see that plot, it becomes a little easier to understand why something that should be so simple — like falling in love — can feel so painful, fearful, complicated.
The Nature of the Limiting Belief
Unless you’ve made a conscious effort to adjust them, your childhood beliefs remain unchanged.
Most likely… those beliefs are limiting your ability to find love.
Billions of seeds have been planted to create your beautiful mind. They’re embedded in there.
In many ways, you are still that child with the fertile plot of soil, and so it’s important to get back to the place where those limiting beliefs were planted.
Sometimes, things we’re told and things we hear people say about us aren’t uplifting and encouraging. Those things are seeds.
We might even apply things we’ve heard about others to ourselves. Those are seeds, too.
- You’re not fast enough…that’s a seed.
- Not fancy enough…that’s a seed.
- Not smart enough…that’s a seed.
- Just not enough…that’s a big one.
- If you were loved unconditionally, you will accept love and know you deserve it.
- If you were neglected, you might think you’re unlovable.
- If you were supported and praised in your efforts, you will see your incalculable value.
- If you were made to believe you were incompetent, you might struggle with feeling “good enough.”
- If you were made to feel innocent, you will seek and accept happiness.
- If you were made to feel guilty, you might spend your life seeking punishment.
Even though you have a beautiful mind, not all the seeds planted there have grown into beautiful, love-inspiring beliefs.
Often, the roots of negative, limiting beliefs are gnarly and invasive; they run deeper than all the others. The vines are full of thorns; they snake through and choke out the productive ones.
Close your eyes and envision your plot of land for a moment. See the tangle. See the brilliant blooms being smothered.
It’s time to do some weeding.
And so, from that point in your life, your perception of your intelligence is diminished.
And you may spend the rest of your life finding proof that you are not intelligent. Every time you make a mistake or don’t know the answer to a question, you say to yourself, See? It’s true!
What you’re not seeing is that everyone makes mistakes. Everyone gives a wrong answer on occasion. But does everyone think that’s an indicator of their mental aptitude? No way!
Evidence to the contrary will be all around you, but because you’re only focused on being inadequate in that area, your brain (thanks to a formation at the brainstem called the Reticular Activating System) will “show you” only things related to that belief.
The “proof” shown to you will reinforce that limiting belief, and it will grow to seem true—limiting you in countless ways.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” -Henry Ford.
As a Certified Life Coach and Master Neuro-linguistic Programming Practitioner. I can help you create the life you know you can have. Want to talk? Schedule your free 30-minute consultation.
This article was originally published at www.jadelifecoach.com. Reprinted with permission from the author.