Busting Beliefs - 5 Strategies for Breaking Through the Blocks that Limit Us

Do you feel like you could achieve your goals if only you had more time, money, skills, or confidence? 

Do you find negative or unhelpful self-talk is limiting your progress?

Is your inner-critic getting the better of you?

Are the stories you tell yourself holding you back?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then the likelihood is that you are sabotaging your own success with self-limiting beliefs.

What Beliefs Are and How They Hold You Back

The Oxford dictionary definition of a belief is: “An acceptance that something exists or is true, especially one without proof.”

 Our beliefs originate in childhood; they come from other people, such as our parents, teachers and friends and still influence our adult behaviour.  For example, families will unwittingly create identities in their children by labelling them as “the funny one” or “the clumsy one”.  Such labels can become unhelpful self-fulfilling prophecies for children, which they then take into their adult life.  Birth order also has an impact on children, with parents often expecting the eldest child to be more responsible than their younger siblings.  I’m sure you have some examples of this from your own childhood experience.

Beliefs can be both positive and negative and are driving our behaviour, along with our values and memories.  They are incredibly powerful; if you believe something, you will collect evidence to support your belief and will filter-out other information that doesn’t “back-up” your belief.  For example, someone who has been told that they are no good at maths at school might say, “See!  I told you I was no good with numbers!” if they happen to miss a financial deadline, but it will be their subconscious belief that will have driven the error in the first place.

So, with this in mind, begin to pay attention to the language that you use; to the way that you speak to yourself and others.  Think about yourself and the people around you - how often do you hear things like, “Oh this is typical, this sort of thing happens to me all the time”, or “I’m such a klutz”.  This language serves to reinforce unhelpful belief systems, and will continue to enable the behaviour, thus providing you with more “evidence”; and so the cycle continues…

Something else to be aware of is that, if your goals are not compatible with your beliefs, your brain will be reference-checking your beliefs and ensuring that you don’t succeed.  So, if you want to get what you want, you need to make sure your beliefs are in-line with those desires!

The good news is that negative or unhelpful beliefs can be changed or re-written with a little bit of work.  Once you understand beliefs and the power that they have over your behaviour, the first step is to build an awareness of your beliefs and begin to notice how they are impacting your life, whether they are positive or negative, and whether they help or hinder you (in other words, whether they are “self-limiting”). 

Once you have started to build this awareness, here are:

Five Strategies to Overcome Your Self-Limiting Beliefs

1.  Ask yourself, “What is stopping me?”.  When you have your answer, for example, “I don’t have enough time”, then imagine that you had all the time in the world – what would you do then?

2.  Ask yourself of the limiting belief, “What evidence do I have that this is true?”.  Dig deep.  Where does this come from?  Do you really believe it?  Then ask yourself, “What would be a more empowering belief?”, and create a positive affirmation (i.e. I am, or I will…) that is the opposite of the limiting belief and repeat for a minimum of 21 days (the time it is thought it takes to create a new belief, or neural pathway).

3. Know resolutely that you have a choice as to how you respond to any event or challenge and frame your thoughts in this way.  You are not a victim, you are in control.

4. Be mindful of the language you use, for example, if someone asks you how you are, try saying, “I’m good thanks” rather than “Not bad” and see the impact it has on your mood in that moment.  Make this a habit.

5. Actively develop a positive mental attitude.  Know that you are the observer of your thoughts, you are not defined by them.  Let them flow past you like a river and practise reframing unhelpful, incongruent thoughts. Develop an openness to trying new things and being open to failure, though in the personal development world we don’t believe in failure, only feedback!

Developing strong self-awareness and practising even one or two of these strategies will set you well on your way to moving past self-limiting beliefs towards a new, empowered version of yourself so that ultimately there will be nothing standing in the way of you and your dreams – good luck!

Vicki Messenger is a Women’s Business Coach, empowering aspiring, early-stage, side-hustling and pivoting female founders to create extraordinary lives through businesses that they love.  You can find more of Vicki’s articles and complementary resources at www.vickimessenger.com.

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