Recognizing your limiting beliefs is half the battle in taking the leap towards your true intentions.
In the many years I’ve spent helping some of the best athletes in the world achieve their objectives, I’ve noticed that the one thing that is most often in their way is not their opponent, but their own limitations.
Their mindset, and the limiting beliefs they hold near to themselves are most often the thing that stops them from achieving greatness.
No one is immune to this reality. Most of us have these “characters” inside us that are always talking to us and telling us we can’t achieve something, telling us we aren’t good enough to make it happen.
The best thing we can do to allow ourselves to thrive instead of survive in this world, is to take the time to identify our limiting beliefs, accept that we have them, and become more aware of when they are stopping us from reaching new heights.
Acceptance that we have limiting beliefs is the first step.
Awareness of when they get involved in our thought process is the second.
How do we become more aware you might ask?
We journal.
We journal daily, at least once a day and in that journal we listen to our inner voice and we write down the things we like to tell ourselves.
We listen to those negative conversations that we wouldn’t have with someone we love, but we will have no trouble saying to ourselves.
As we become more aware of those conversations, we can start to name those “characters” in our daily conversation. Characters like Judging Jerry who likes to come out an judge everything we do (oh, that was so stupid, how could you do that, why did it take you so long, why did you eat that? Etc, etc.). Or Comparative Pat who loves to come out when we see others doing well, or as we perceive it, better than us!
As we become more aware of these characters, we will begin to realize how often they are in our lives, and we can start to shut them down. When we hear them start to talk, we can use strategies to re-direct our conversations, and trigger more productive thoughts.
One such strategy is to take a moment and breathe. When you hear these conversations ramping up, and your blood pressure beginning to rise. Stop, take five long slow deep breaths and shut down your negative thoughts, instead focusing on your breath.
As we become more aware of the comings and goings of our limiting beliefs, as we begin to shut down the negative conversations, we will begin to adapt, to create new pathways of thought that are more positive in nature and more aligned with who we wish to be.
However, this does not just happen naturally, we need to prepare the soil for the seed, and that means that we’ve been journaling consistently, learning about our limiting beliefs, shutting them out, and inserting new more powerful belief systems.
With greater awareness comes greater accountability. We become accountable to our language, accountable that the limiting beliefs ARE what is holding us back, and as we become more accountable we can further set these limiting beliefs aside and adapt to a new normal.
A new normal where telling ourselves we can’t do it is no longer front and centre. Where telling ourselves we can and will do it becomes the beacon for our deepest intentions.
1. Acceptance
2. Awareness
3. Accountability
4. Adaptation
These are the four steps we have to travel through in order to re-set our belief system and own a new story that sees us achieving our intentions instead of casting them aside.
The key to all of this is the consistency of task. Journal every day, listen to your inner language, change the tide, and keep setting your intentions for each day, and counting your wins when the day is done.
If you follow this path, you will no longer be chained to the dock, you will be challenging open water with no limit to what you can accomplish!
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Originally published at medium.com