Limiting Beliefs

Ten years ago I wanted to start a blog but, I had the belief that in order to do so, I needed to be a talented writer first. I shared this thought with a blogger, and she said she had seen many blog posts where people did not have a great knowledge of the English language and that it would be perfectly fine to start writing. The freedom of just writing a blog without any credentials took me for a loop. Anyone can write a blog? Well of course they can, because who says they can’t? My belief system was illogical that I was certain that someone like me could not write a blog. This belief gave me a feeling of certainty that I would not putt myself at risk for failure. I believed that I had no choice but to sabotage my reality in order to get back in line with what I believed.

 Well, here I am eight years later writing my first blog post now that I have eliminated that belief from my system. See how those limiting beliefs kept me from doing something great? Something for myself and others? A belief is just a thought we keep on thinking. Thoughts that cause feelings that we aren’t even aware of. 

Many of the beliefs that drive us are completely illogical. When we become aware of the things we believe in we might be tempted to disregard them because they seem so silly. This is a big mistake. Many of our beliefs systems were formed when we were small children, when we didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand why things happen to us.

As children, we tend to blame ourselves for everything because we don’t understand the complexities of other people’s lives. We might believe it’s our fault if our parents fight all the time. We internalize the blame for the negative circumstances because the alternative, it being completely out of our control, is unthinkable. We then form the belief that if we were better behaved, our parents wouldn’t fight anymore looking for ways to fix it. We search for ways to cope by trying to generalize what everything means. We take two unrelated things, our behavior and our parents’ marriage, and we connect them. When our parents later divorce, we might internalize this and believe we weren’t good enough to keep them together. 

Many of us hang onto beliefs we developed when we were too young to know better. There’s no one to remind us that now we can question circumstances that have nothing to do with us and not internalize them. We need to remind ourselves that we are good enough and that we always were. We need to go in and pinpoint all those old, illogical beliefs and evaluate them with new eyes as adults.

I encourage you to uncover your beliefs. What do you want to believe? What are the beliefs that have kept you from getting these results so far?

If you liked this post and want to learn more about life coaching, email me at angelak.consultingllc@gmail.com or text 440-226-0696.