No Limits |
The Freedom Blog™
Are You Creating Your Perfect
Reality? Part 3- Limiting the Influence of Your Limiting Beliefs.
Written by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com
“A belief is not an idea held by the
mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle
“Your conscious beliefs are what you
think you believe. Your subconscious beliefs and deepest convictions are what
you really believe.” Susan Shumsky
In the quest to uncover your limiting beliefs I asked you to listen to your inner critic and to pay attention to your inner dialogue.
Identifying a limiting belief
requires paying close and honest
attention to your reactions in certain situations.
For example, your next
door neighbors decide to put in a pool. What are you feeling? Are you happy for
them or do you begrudge them a little? Do you hear yourself saying “Sure they
can afford it because they both have great jobs.” Or maybe “Who wants to have
to clean and maintain a pool?”
Unless you really don’t
like pools, do you hear the negative push back?
Let’s say another good
friend buys a Porsche. How would that make you feel? You’ll probably say “Great”
‘That’s fantastic!” “Can I take it for a drive?” and mean it because you are
happy for your friend but what are you really saying to yourself on a deeper level?
Are you finding
reasons why owning a Porsche would be a bad idea? How it’s not really you? “It
costs too much to maintain a car like that” or “Good luck with all the speeding
tickets!”
You probably had the
thoughts that you can’t afford these things because you don’t make enough money.
You may rationalize that you don’t make enough money because you’re not as
educated or talented as your friend. Or that Jim is just that kind of guy, he
always seems to get what he wants.
These examples of push
back all translate to the underlying limiting belief that you aren't good
enough.
So whatever the examples
are that you come up with, the actual reason is the underlying belief - “I’m
not good enough”. The reasons are the symptoms.
So that is the tricky
part. Identifying and accepting these truths about ourselves.
You have to own it, and this
is the hardest part because actually saying that you have this belief and acknowledging
the truth of it to yourself can be difficult.
You have to be
completely honest with yourself. This is when you are tested. Can you accept
that you have this belief or do you find yourself being pulled back into the belief
and then heap on more evidence to prove why it is true.
In my article The Best Way To Change a Habit I talk about how we actually change our beliefs
to match our reality.
For example, telling
ourselves that eating the grapes in the fruit section of the supermarket is O.K. because
we need to test their freshness. We make it O.K. for us to do something we know
is wrong by changing our belief about it.
A belief is actually a
feeling. There are only positive feelings and negative feelings.
When you are truly aligned
with your positive feelings and take inspired action, you can create the
results you seek. Conversely you can have a positive feeling about something and
take action but the underlying negative feeling or limiting belief counters the
positive and you end up going nowhere.
You keep getting the
same unsatisfactory results.
That’s why so many
people have a problem with the Law of Attraction. They are only getting part of
the story. Unless you are clear and able to release limiting beliefs you are
just spinning your wheels.
Vision boards and
positive thinking are just exercises in futility. You can’t over power a limiting
belief by trying to cover it over with positive thoughts and envisioning yourself having what you want. They are simply too
imbedded and powerful.
But by identifying your negative
programming and getting clear on how you got the limiting belief in the first
place, you can begin the process of reducing and eliminating the belief.
In a previous article on
Limiting Beliefs I recommend three techniques that work to
release limiting beliefs.
Please know that this is
a continual process. You can’t just magically snap your fingers and make all
your limiting beliefs disappear. They need to be worked on all the time. Some beliefs
may dissipate but then show up later in a slightly different form.
It takes constant
vigilance.
Here are the three techniques:
Meditation.
A really good method is
through meditation. There are some
really interesting healing meditations. You actually have a conversation with
your childhood self and help him or her to understand the situation that
occurred to give you a certain limiting belief. I will be posting some meditations in future articles.
Byron Katie-The Work
Another method is
through the four questions from “The Work” by Byron Katie.
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know it’s true?
- How do you react, what happens when you have that thought?
- Who would you be without the thought?
EFT
A third method is called Emotional Freedom
Techniques (EFT) or Tapping. This technique addresses your limiting beliefs by
tapping on certain parts of your face and hands. These tapping points are the Ch'i
or energy channels that run through our bodies.Visit their website: www.tapping.com.
Really, once you dig in and get to the bottom of
your issues you will discover they mostly revolve around self-worth or self-esteem.
But as you get clearer and consciously work on these
issues, you will become lighter and more in tune with your true self.
Then things will start moving faster, things
will happen faster and you will be off and running.
www. stevengriggs.com
