WHAT ARE LIMITING BELIEFS?

A belief is an interpretation, a thought, or conviction that we accept as absolute truth, even if it isn’t.

Limiting beliefs are beliefs that are holding you back from acting or behaving in ways that would be in alignment with what you want.

Meaning that if you have limiting beliefs about a particular topic, you are most likely struggling to feel fulfilled in that area of your life because your thoughts and beliefs are working against you.

How limiting beliefs are formed?

We develop limiting beliefs from the moment we faithfully believe in something we have seen, heard, or felt, no matter how much sense it makes, even if we don’t have concrete proof of its existence and veracity.

As the name implies, limiting beliefs prevent us from evolving in some aspects of our personal and professional lives, keeping us stuck and unable to move forward.

Limiting beliefs are caused by our lifelong influences. When we are born, we are blank pages.

But then we are taught certain things, especially in our formative years, that shapes how our brain translates reality.

Through NLP and a deep understanding of the human mind, your attachment style and your basic needs for survival and acceptance, you will be able to break the wall that stands between you and the life you always wanted to live.

Why addressing your limiting beliefs is so important?

Limiting beliefs are characterised by having a negative nature, which leads you to disbelieve the possibility of achieving your goals.

Here are some examples:

- I am not good enough.

- I will never be able to save money, don’t matter how hard I try.

- I can’t learn this.

- I will never have a good relationship.

- People always want something from me.

- I need to work very hard to achieve something.

- If I don’t work very hard, I don’t deserve to succeed.

- I don’t deserve to be happy.

Limiting beliefs makes you easily give up on the things you want as you don’t believe that they are possible for you.

The role of survival in the formation of limiting beliefs.

Limiting beliefs keep people stuck in a never-ending loop of start doing something, second-guessing themselves, stopping before they start, or giving up altogether.

Also, your brain will work towards finding evidence in the world to reconfirm your solidified belief, thus ignoring all the evidence to the contrary.

That’s how survival works. It comes from the most primitive part of your brain that wants to keep you safe. This primitive part of your brain is called the amygdala.

The amygdala forms part of the limbic system. It is most commonly recognised as the emotional processing centre that receives incoming sensory information and processes it for an emotional response. The response may be a defence to a perceived threat, a critical function of this “early-warning system”. The amygdala learns how to respond to various stimuli based on its reference to implicit memory and makes decisions on how to initiate an emotional reaction to such stimuli. The emotional memory learned and utilised by the amygdala is episodic–autobiographical memory that can be notably implicit or unconscious, in contrast with explicit or declarative memory processed by the hippocampus. Amygdala.

When you were born, you were a blank page, then your brain started to access how safe and welcoming your environment was and what you would need to survive in it. From that assessment, your brain will behave accordingly to keep you safe.

If your brain perceives something as a potential threat, it will be looking for this treat on autopilot your whole life, discouraging you from ever putting yourself in danger.

The problem here is that your brain learned from how you felt, how people near you treated you and what you were told.

This means that your current coping mechanisms and what your brain interprets as a threat to your survival could be completely mistaken.

It is like having your car on autopilot and finding out that the map your autopilot was relying on was wrong, and that’s why it has been taking you to the wrong places your whole life.

For example, if you learned to believe that people that are kind to you are dangerous because they have ulterior motives for treating you well, your brain will believe and act on this premise to protect you.

Therefore, you will likely have a tough time forming relationships as you will be avoiding contact with everyone who shows any interest in you.

If you didn’t feel safe growing up…

People born in traumatic environments need to over concentrate on keeping themselves safe. They might feel threatened by the circumstances in the environment and the instability and unpredictability of their attachment figures (parents or caretakers).

Without having a safe base to develop and explore the world, it becomes increasingly challenging to invest time and energy in anything that’s not the child’s primary concern, which is feeling safe and being accepted by his attachment figures.

Their brain is mainly focused on finding safety; whether that would be obtained by gaining parent's approval, peer approval, financial stability, it will all depend on what your brain thought you needed in order to feel safe.

In that scenario, you wouldn’t have much energy left to become the best basketball player, unless being popular and being the best was part of your survival strategy.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that these kids will have concentration issues, self-esteem issues, less interest in exploring the world, lower grades, less will power, less ability to make friends, being authentic, stand up for themselves, or even the ability to trust as they have no base to know who to trust. This will also deeply influence their attachment style.

How can NLP help?

With NLP, we learn that beliefs are divided into levels; some beliefs are more superficial and easily changed, whether others are so subconsciously ingrained that you are likely to be unaware of their existence or accept them as absolute truths without even questioning them. Those are called CORE BELIEFS.

The good news is that CORE BELIEFS can be changed. I have seen this transformation many times, and it’s the most beautiful one.

When someone who has been holding his life back for such a long time finally finds out that the premises that’s been holding him back are not even real it is when a life-changing transformation begins.

How can limiting beliefs affect you?

Limiting beliefs can harm all aspects of your life, including not only your professional life but also your relationships, your quality of life, and your health.

It doesn’t seem like it, but simple negative statements, taken for granted by you, can keep you from moving forward and fulfilling your dreams.

A classic example would be a widespread limiting belief taught by many parents to their kids. The belief that RICH PEOPLE ARE BAD. However, most people don’t even realise the extensive damage this belief can cause in someone’s life.

Some people have this belief as a CORE BELIEF; they don’t question its veracity and sometimes are not fully aware that they actually believe that.

However, when you ask them questions about wealth, their beliefs start to unfold little by little with statements such as:

- Money changes people.

- People get corrupted by money.

- People with money are selfish.

- Good people don’t care about money.

- If you want a beautiful and expensive house/car/holidays/clothes you are a superficial person.

They might seem like innocent statements at first, but they all have the CORE BELIEF that MONEY IS BAD.

EXAMPLES OF THE MOST COMMON NEGATIVE CORE BELIEFS:

1. I don’t deserve to be happy / I am bad/ There is something wrong with me - The core belief that makes you feel happiness is not for you because for one reason or another you don’t deserve it.

How to identify this core belief:

You feel guilty when you want more than what you have.

- You feel inferior to other people.

- When you achieve something that you always wanted you have an immediate fear of losing it.

- When something good happens, you expect that something bad will follow.

- You have a difficult time standing up for yourself when people treat you badly as deep down you feel you have no right to complain.

- You feel that your needs are less important, and you put other people’s needs first.

2. I am unlovable - The core belief that makes you feel that most people won’t accept or love you.

This CORE BELIEF might cause you to become:

- Extremely clingy – therefore pushing people away.

- Self-centred, not because you are selfish but out of fear of doing or saying the wrong thing. However, that could give the impression that you are a selfish person since you won’t be very preceptive of other people’s needs.

- Withdrawn and avoidant of people and relationships. Even though you deeply crave relationships and intimacy with others, you are so certain that others will reject you that you prefer to avoid trying to form relationships altogether.

3. I am incompetent/ incapable:

If you have this CORE BELIEF, you might:

- Believe that other people’s achievements are due to their superiority. They went to a better school, are smarter, stronger, etc.

- You think you can’t learn certain things, but others can.

- You believe you are not good with maths, exercise, language, dancing, etc.

- You place lots of limits to what you can achieve based on a false premise that you have a limited or small capacity to learn and to improve yourself.

4. People are untrustworthy and will take advantage of me:

If you have this CORE BELIEF, you are probably very suspicious of people’s ulterior motives. You might:

- Have difficulty trusting others and forming relationships.

- Keep your private life, and any information that ‘could be used against you from your closest friends and partner.

- Believe that people are only nice to you because they want something from you.

- Believe that most people could be easily corrupted and turned against you.

- Consider that most people are inherently bad.

5. The world is dangerous/ unsafe.

If you have this CORE BELIEF you probably feel very unsafe in the world, are always on alert, not able to relax or enjoy and explore the world as much as you would like to. If that’s the case, you might:

- Take excessive precautions and plans things very carefully.

- Rarely would do something spontaneous.

- Would be the person who would take extra medicine to a trip, make sure of the safest routes, etc.

- Think too much about how certain foods, toxicity, pollution and so on can affect you.

- Think you can easily get sick, catch a virus, or become infected.

- Afraid of the sea, storms, nature, or animals that are not considered a treat to most people.

Its important to say that CORE BELIEFS can and in most cases will overlap. Which could make the situation better or worse.

For example, a person who believes the world to be unsafe but believes herself to be capable will function reasonably well.

On the other hand, someone who believes the world to be unsafe and sees herself as incompetent and incapable will have a very hard time navigating the world and is very likely to develop phobias, anxiety, panic attacks and so on.

That’s’ why it is so important to know yourself and what’s going on in your own mind! And by that, I mean not only knowing what you want but also knowing if your subconscious beliefs are aligned with what you want. Otherwise, you will get stuck in an endless loop.

The great news about the SUBCONSCIOUS MIND is that it is always trying to PROTECT YOU.

If you want to travel the world but your subconscious mind believes the world to be unsafe, it will make sure that you won’t succeed by sabotaging all your efforts.

After all, being safe is more important than travelling and having a good time!

So how do you overcome limiting beliefs?

The first step is to identify them. You can do this by yourself or with the help of a coach or therapist who understands how limiting beliefs are formed and then work with you to challenge them.

Once you uncover its origin and intention, you can negotiate with your subconscious mind and offer a healthier and better way of thinking.

That is managed by offering evidence against the fake limiting belief to put your mind at rest that this is not something bad as it was first believed to be.

The last step is to condition your mind to reproduce your new belief pattern in your routine and reinforce it with changes in your behaviour that are in alignment with your goals and the person you want to be.