What are your Limiting Beliefs?

When we were a child, we were used try out as many things as possible, because we naturally wanted to learn how things work.

That natural behavior was soon stopped as we grew up because our parents taught us their view of the world and life and we were encouraged to follow their thoughts. They taught us how to deal with people, how to study, how to get a job, etc.

All of this with time created our personality and our view of things as well. Unfortunately we also came up with a lot of limiting beliefs against our dreams and growth.

I personally believe that 90% of our thoughts are not validated and are untrue. Take the following five examples:

• 95% of businesses fail within five years. I don’t know who said this at first, but I really believed it was true, until I saw some real statistics. Talking about the US market, only 23% of business close within 5 years, and we must consider that not all of them are a failure. Some businesses are sold, and some are closed because the boss retired, that’s far from a failure.


• You can’t become fit at your age. Some people believe that in order to become physically fit you must be younger. Although youth may help to develop muscles, you can work on your physique at any age, you only need to get started.


• Your brain stops to grow at 20 years old. Our brain is extremely malleable and scientists have proven multiple times that it constantly grows at any age. Like with our physic , the more we use it and the more it grows.


• It takes seven years to digest a gum. You might have heard this from your mother. It’s true that gum can’t be digested, but our body knows how to expel it in a few days, so don’t worry if you eaten a gum last year, it’s gone by now.


• Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight. It is very rare that reading in dim lights will hurt your eyes. What’s true is that it might be hard for you to concentrate on what you are reading without proper light.

I highly suggest you to do a google search for common myths if you want to see other examples. You could come across some facts that you were sure to know, but that in reality are the opposite. That’s ok, you are growing.

The problem with limiting beliefs

Let’s make this clear. It’s impossible to live a 100% objective life where you personally validate everything you do or hear. And it might also not be a big deal to know that the chinese wall can’t be seen from the moon. The problem rises when you believe something that causes you trouble.

I call this beliefs limiting beliefs, because they provide no positive value to those who accept them as true. You should be well aware of them, because they are often the cause of our pain.

How to turn limiting beliefs into positive beliefs

Take the 95% of business failure as an example. Once we discover that the truth is that only 23% of businesses fails, and some of them are not a real failure, but rather the business was sold or the boss retired, we can easily assume that you have 4 chances in 5 that your business will succeed. In this particular case you can increase your chances further if you consider your preparation, determination and knowledge.

There are a few simple steps you can use to turn your limiting beliefs into positive ones:

1. Validate them. Is what you think really true? Try to search for evidence, or ask around if someone thinks different than you.


2. Turn them to the positive side. If you are dealing with some sort of statistic, don’t say that 30% of people don’t pass an exam, but say something like 70% of people pass the exam. Can you see the difference?


3. See if there’s room for improvement. If you are still dealing with a negative belief, see if you can do something about it. If it’s true that you can’t do a side split right now, you can train and improve every day, until you reach your goal.


4. Don’t care about it. This is the last step and you should use it if everything before didn’t work. At this point you should simply ignore your belief. With this I don’t mean you should negate it, but rather that you shouldn’t let it hurt your feelings, this is really important. If you can’t do anything about something, let it go.

Exercise

The reason I wrote this post is because I hope you’ll start to see things differently and unlock yourself from difficult situations that exists only in your head.

As an exercise, make a list of the top 5 things you are worrying about and try to work on the four steps to turn them into positive beliefs. Let me know your results!

Posted on October 22 2009