Limiting Beliefs
We’ve seen them all over social media - so called inspirational quotes. Intuitively Natalie often posts limiting beliefs quizzes on her Instagram stories where she shares inspirational quotes and asks her audience to guess if they are limiting or not. Some are blatantly obvious, while a lot are very nuanced.
It is important to be aware of statements that are limiting so you don’t accidentally let them negatively affect your life by either making you believe that it is the reality you should be calling into your life or by shifting your subconscious to start calling in the unwanted energy. Identifying and letting go of limiting beliefs can free you, filling your life with more ease and joy.
A limiting belief is any statement or belief that limits you in some way. These can be very easy to spot, such as “I am unlovable”, or they can be a little bit harder to discern like “I don’t have enough experience to get that job.” You may think, well of course jobs require certain experience. But that belief is limiting because it could stop you from applying to a job where you may have enough relatable experience to be hired
These beliefs come from societal and familial conditioning or from personal assumptions based on past experiences. They place a limit on your experience and cap your expansive potential.
Societal limiting belief = marriage is hard work
One of my family’s limiting belief = money doesn’t grow on trees (heard this all the time growing up)
A personally created limiting belief = I only date guys who didn’t graduate from high school.
These statements are undesirable because they get stuck in your energetic body and then your subconscious starts to manifest experiences that align with them. Your subconscious, as powerful as it is, doesn’t understand nuance. It learns the statement “marriage is hard work” so it finds ways to make marriage hard work all the while thinking it’s helping you. It deals in present tense statement and the actually stated words, not implied meaning. Be careful with negatives because your subconscious often times ignores the negative, such as changing the statement “I don’t have to work hard to succeed” into “i… have to work hard to succeed”.
A tip off that a statement is a limiting belief is if it includes the words all or none, expressly stated or implied. The limiting belief “I only date guys who didn’t graduate from high school” is an expressly stated “all” statement. An example of an implied all statement is “marriage is hard work”. This statement implies that all marriage is hard work and doesn’t leave room for the fact that marriage can be very easy sometimes.
Shifting limiting beliefs starts with identifying the belief. Consider the words and the language you use, especially internally to yourself. When you are paying bills catch yourself if you think “I never have any leftover money after payday”. Spend some time contemplating the language you use and if there are any areas that could use some support.
Next, examine the limiting belief and where it originated. Discover if that same belief comes up in different areas of your life. Journal about it, meditate on it, or talk about it with a friend. Think about where this belief came from and if there is any truth to it. Identify if the belief came from society, your family of origin, or yourself. Try to consider where this thought started and have compassion for where it began.
Then come up with a more expansive and positive belief you’d like to replace the limiting belief with. The new statement should be something that feels reasonable and incrementally possible. If the new statement is “I comfortably pay my bills and am able to save a portion of my paycheck every payday” doesn’t feel possible to you at the moment, then maybe the new statement could be something like “I feel grateful for the ability to pay my bills”. Any shift, no matter how small, is the desired outcome.
Finally, the next time you think or say the limiting belief, stop, take a breath, say a marker word or phrase such as “cancel, clear, delete”, and then say the new thought. This will guide your subconscious to cease the limiting belief and replace it with the expansive belief. Be kind to yourself as this may take practice. Take it slow and have compassion for your journey.
An alternate, especially for those bigger limiting beliefs, is to work with a Psych-K facilitator who has been trained to help you shift limiting beliefs.
Let me know when you try this practice and the beliefs you are working on shifting!