Limiting belief is a new word in my vocabulary. It was introduced to me by my Coach Patrice Washington. The importance of limiting beliefs is to know exactly what they are for you to remove them from your belief system. In this post, we will see three ways that you can stop your limiting beliefs.
What is a limiting belief?
In Emmerance’s words, a limiting belief is a mental conviction that you cannot do certain things because of a certain way you view yourself or the world.
For example, when I started this blog, emmerance.com, after a few months, I stopped posting because I thought that I needed to gain more life experience for me to blog, inspiring people to keep the faith. Back then, I was 22 years old, and I thought I was too young to give people advice.
In my example, there are two limiting beliefs. The first one is “I need more life experience to write my blog,” and the second one is “I was too young to be writing a blog.”
Those thoughts didn’t help me grow. They made me stop what I truly wanted to do, and it affected my self-esteem and confidence. However, two years in, here I am blogging. So how did I stop these limiting beliefs?
In this blog post, I will share with you what had helped me with my limiting beliefs, along with some close acquaintance’s story.
The way you view yourself:
Most people worry about how people view them. They fear that people will judge them or not encourage them when they start pursuing their dreams. And when nobody’s saying anything, we begin to judge ourselves instead.
The most important thing that will help you get rid of your limiting belief entirely is your view of yourself. I always say, if you want to know if you love yourself, look at yourself when nobody’s watching.
The reason for that is, when nobody’s around, we tend to think about other things. We don’t do anything for ourselves. We’re not even able to enjoy our own company because we’re too focused on social media or what other people are doing.
If you need help with your negative self-talk, read this blog post.
To eradicate your limiting belief, you have to believe that you are meant for more in life. God created you to have a good life and that everything is working for you, not against you. You can also go to the extremes if that’s going to help you by wiring your brain and believe that you’re a goddess, warrior, spartan. Essentially, you will believe that you’re strong and capable of doing anything in life.
Thinking like this will help to reduce or even altogether remove your limiting beliefs. You will qualify yourself for doing what people or your mind says you can’t do.
Create an experience:
Many people that I know who are whole within themselves or in the process always have a story where they either travelled alone or did something that people usually do with a group of people.
I have my own experiences of it. I live it every day, and I get to know myself daily because I live alone. However, these examples are from my peers.
I have one girlfriend who decided to move to a big city by herself without telling everyone on social media. She told me how she learned a lot from life just by moving out and creating an experience.
Two of my business friends told me that they travelled to a different country on their own. What it does is, when you’re in that country, you already paid for the plane ticket and hotel (wherever you’re staying). So when it comes to going out and visiting the city they’re in, they don’t have a choice but to get out of their comfort zone.
Creating an experience allows you to get out of your comfort zone and prove your limiting beliefs wrong. A comfortable person with friends will do things that other people would like them to do.
However, when you travel alone, you remove many limiting beliefs like “I will get robbed,” or “people won’t talk to me,” or “I won’t be able to meet new people.” Well, how do you know if that’s going to happen if you never try?
By creating your own experience, you increase your self-confidence, which decreases self-doubts. I firmly believe that getting out of your comfort zone often, at least once a day, helps you reduce your daily limiting beliefs.
The way you view others:
Let’s go back to my first point. Many of us worry about what other people think of us. Just for the way we see ourselves, we must also see others the same way.
I want you to know that we react to things based on our own beliefs, and many reflect our minds. Therefore, when someone doesn’t like what you do or isn’t supportive, you shouldn’t feel discouraged. They have their own reason for acting or thinking that way which has nothing to do with you.
See people as they are and not as a reflection of your own limiting beliefs. Treat negative people around you with compassion and find people that are there to elevate you. You can always turn off harmful noises, especially if it’s on social media.
To finish, I recommend that you read the book The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene. I’ve learned so much about myself from reading this book. On the other end, I wanted to highlight that limiting beliefs aren’t real.
Limiting beliefs are the results of our fear. We fear that people will judge us, laugh or dislike us. However, fear is simply a false experience appearing real. It is all in our heads. I recommend that you pick one uncomfortable thing and do it regardless of fear.
