Our level of happiness and success relies heavily on our belief system. Thriving for happiness is innately linked to our beliefs. So what are the beliefs that are limiting your growth and affecting your own happiness?
A few weeks ago, I wrote to you about how meeting your values can lead you to happiness. Today I would like to discuss what can hold you from meeting your values, and in turn prevent you from being happy, so your limiting or disempowering beliefs. These often come to us in a form of negative self-talk. That voice in the back of your head that tells you that it’s “too difficult”, “I am not good enough” or that “it’s too complicated”.
Some examples of limiting beliefs are:
. “It is hard to make money these days”: You won’t afford yourself 100% dedication to making money because you will convince yourself that it isn’t worth it, as it is too difficult to make money these days.
. “Relationships are too complicated”: This is a limiting belief because if you believe relationships are too complicated, you will not seek a relationship, therefore setting yourself up to feel lonely, even though deep down you are looking for someone to share your life with.
. “Only pioneers are successful people”: If you believe this, you will probably never attempt to start something new because you may feel that this has already been done, and there isn’t a chance for you to be as successful.
Through life coaching, I have done a lot of work relating to the bond between your beliefs and the results you get. The reason that beliefs are so important for us to understand, is because they are directly responsible for the results we get. Our beliefs determine how we behave in any given situation, and the way we behave makes a huge difference in the results achieved.
Knowing what your beliefs are, plays a huge role in how we move through life with more ease, and how to enable yourself to reach your full potential. Awareness is the first step in change. Once you know something is not helping you, you have the ability to change it.
The facts are…
You absorbed most of your belief system before you turned 7 years old. Your brain was still developing, so what this meant was that you took statements as facts.
These beliefs were installed in you by the people closest to you. They were not perfect (none of us is) and although they did what they thought was best for you at the time, they were not experts. You continued developing and confirming those beliefs as your own while growing up into a teenager and then into a young adult, and you chased evidence to support these adsorbed beliefs. The family may have passed on their own set of beliefs that may not be empowering you right now. However, life coaches are trained to understand the human potential and how to make changes, and now you can understand that too.
Emotion creates motion (and vice-versa). By making the realisation that your belief is not a law or a fact, but something that you have chosen to do (consciously or subconsciously), then you will be able to change this.
There are no right or wrong beliefs
There are only beliefs that are Empowering or Disempowering. Empowering beliefs lead you joy, happiness, growth and fulfilment. Our subconscious mind is instinctual (almost as if in autopilot mode). Most of our inner conflict comes to life when your conscious mind and subconscious minds are out of sync.
So how do you turn your limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs in order to reach your full potential and to find happiness in your life?
1. Recognise and write down at least three limiting beliefs in relation to different topics in life, such as money, success, work, relationships, self-belief, exercising.
2. Come up with the opposite of each one of your limiting beliefs.
3. Start using your new beliefs as a mantra by repeating it over and over again.
4. Create a short-term and mid-term plan where you can integrate your new beliefs into your life, and to reinforce these through your mantras. For example, if your limiting belief is about people and you always say “I can’t trust people, they always try to hurt me”, this belief won’t serve you, if your true wish is to be more social and to trust people. So, you would have to create mantra like “Most of the people are kind and trustworthy, and they can be such towards me” and then you must put yourself out there where you can, in order to meet people, network or socialise with this new open mindset.
5. Stay focused and keep repeating this mantra and the activity that you chose, until you feel completely free from that limiting belief.
In conclusion, you can change your beliefs. The first part is to identify what beliefs are limiting your growth, happiness and achievements. Find the core beliefs within you that bring happiness, success, and abundance.
A professional life coach can guide you through the process and help you to unleash your limitless potential, so don’t give up.