Handling Limiting Beliefs

Limiting beliefs start very small.

At their onset, they're nothing but an interpretation of a certain reality. Something happens to us or around us. We look at the event from the point of view of our previous experiences and knowledge and tentatively interpret it to fit in what we already know. It's coherent and makes sense to us. Then something else happens. It confirms our interpretation of the first event. Slowly but surely, as our original interpretation of events is more and more often confirmed, the way we see things starts crystallizing in our mind in the shape of a new belief. The more we confirm it, the stronger it becomes.

The belief becomes subconscious.

Soon, the belief is so internal and common, that we stop being aware of it. It becomes part of our subconscious belief system.

The human brain, quite similar in its operation to a regular computer, will then begin its most common task of confirming that belief, together with all other ones in our system. Whatever it is that we believe, our brain will confirm it over and over again. Nature, being as smart as it always is, gave our brains that task to prevent feelings of insecurity and doubt in us. The more solid our beliefs, the stronger we stand in front of the world.

The brain will select ways to confirm it

Thus, the brain will subconsciously select and perceive the inputs that confirm what we already believe. All other inputs, those that may question or defy our beliefs, will be disregarded or obviated.

All our beliefs fuse together to create the lenses through which we see and interpret the world around us. Thus, no two people will share exactly the same lenses.

Beliefs limit us

Time goes by and the beliefs crystallized some time ago are still in us. We've been living according to them. Some of them were established in childhood and still remain in us, even if we're not children anymore. Others were acquired later. Some will then logically slow us down or reduce our capacity to perceive new things. Just because of that, some of our beliefs will limit us. Others will limit us by preventing our seeing new avenues or solutions. And still some others will stop us from moving, even if the road is clear.

What to do

In order to handle limiting beliefs, four steps have to be taken. Please, let me share them with you but bear in mind that only ONE belief should be changed at a time. If you try and change several, you run the risk of entering a crisis. Change one belief and, once you succeed, change another one.

1. Identify your beliefs. How can you change what you don't even know you have? Ask yourself what beliefs you keep. In order to do that, observe your thoughts and listen to your words. Anything that begins by: 'I think... ' 'I believe... ' 'I am... ' 'I can't... ' 'I should... ' and their opposites will reflect beliefs. Pick one of them


2. Question the belief. Ask yourself whether that belief in particular empowers or limits you. If you decide that it's a negative one, ask yourself whether you want to change it or keep it. If the answer is 'change it,' move on to the third step.


3. Find a replacement. This is a tricky step. Once you identify a limiting belief and decide it's not something you want to keep anymore, you need to find a replacement. Belief replacements are called declarations and are positive, present-tense statements about ourselves that we have the power to implement. They have to be different enough to change the original belief, but similar enough that we can accept them and pursue them. Let me offer you an example: let's imagine that the belief we want to change is: 'I am unlucky.' Telling yourself the opposite, 'I am lucky' will not work because you will not believe it. That's an affirmation, not a declaration. It's not in your power to change it because your previous belief directly cancels it. You need something you can really believe and apply. You only need to change a little part of the statement to have a completely new one. 'I create my own luck.' could work because it gives you the power to decide. Another possibility could be something like: 'I am lucky when... ' and define one instance in which you believe you are. By changing the original declaration to one of these, you stop limiting yourself. But wait, the old belief is still in you. This new declaration is still just that, a declaration. Take step 4 now.


4. Confirm and reinforce the new belief. The new belief needs to slowly replace the old one. As we saw before, beliefs are constantly confirmed by our brains. We therefore need to stop confirming old beliefs and start confirming new ones. To do so we're going to implement the new one in two stages:
   1. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Repeat the new declaration a million times... in your head, singing, on paper, aloud... write it big and post it where you spend most time, as a constant reminder. Let your brain be exposed to the new declaration until it becomes second nature. And when the old declaration comes to mind, just acknowledge it and tell yourself: "yes, but... " and repeat the new declaration.
   2. Celebrate. Any time your new declaration feels real, celebrate it. Celebrate the feeling, celebrate the certainty, celebrate thinking it. Even if you only felt it or thought about it for one second. Celebrate it. The emotion you feel when celebrating it will strengthen it in your brain.

Start living your new belief

That's it. The old belief will slowly fade away and the new one will take root. Some of the most entrenched beliefs will take longer but if you persevere and use the four steps as described, things will start changing in your life. Give yourself the chance to live a new life and change your limiting beliefs, one by one.

Enjoy life, ALL of it,

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A World Of Possibility

When I started my sales career over 25 years ago, I worked for a small company selling telephone answering equipment. Hard to believe it but in those days I had to explain to prospects what the equipment was for and why they might want to use it.

The company I worked for got business in several different ways. First each of the 4 sales people handled incoming calls and also made calls to people he/she thought could use the equipment. The company advertised so sometimes people called in to inquire about the products we offered. Finally the manufacturers of the equipment sent the company names of people (leads) who called the manufacturer because they were interested in the equipment.

No one particularly liked making cold calls so if we could get an incoming call we took it hoping it was a potential customer. Cold calling was part of the job however so I learned to do it in a way that made it a game. One of the other sales people really hated making the calls so he very rarely made any.

Instead of calling, this fellow would complain to whoever was available that the company didn't provide good leads, that the company should advertise more so people would know what the equipment was, and that the company should move its location to a high traffic mall so we would get walk in traffic. (We were located in a building that housed the mattress factory of the parents of the owner!)

Needless to say he didn't make many sales but it always struck me that he truly believed the problem was with the company not with himself.

Jack Canfield in his book "The Success Principles" says, "If you want to be successful, you have to take 100% responsibility for everything that you experience in your life. This includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and physical fitness, your income, your debts, your feelings-everything!"

The fellow may have been right about the company and its support (or lack of support) of sales but he couldn't change that. It didn't help any of us that he continually complained about the leads, location, and lack of advertising. He needed to take responsibility for his own sales process and begin to think about possibilities not problems.

Instead the focus on the problems put him in a negative mood so that he was somewhat snide when he talked to potential customers. Needless to say they rarely bought from him. His negative mood made him totally unattractive to the rest of us. I knew that I couldn't talk with him too often or I would also get caught up in his negativity.

My colleague's conversation is what Ben Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander call "downward spiral talk". They say in the book "The Art of Possibility", "Focusing on the abstraction of scarcity, downward spiral talk creates an unassailable story about the limits to what is possible and tells us compellingly how things are going from bad to worse."

Obviously it would be good to stop that kind of talk-if you can. This can be difficult especially if you are paid to find the problems with something. Lawyers look for holes in the other person's case, engineers look for problems to solve, and accountants often look for ways the numbers don't work.

There is energy in finding what is wrong with something. The key is to use that energy even if the use is to write a report or argue a case. My colleague needed to take the energy of his negativity and use that energy to find innovative ways to make the job interesting. That is what I had done when I made a game of it. Getting stuck in the negativity makes you a victim of circumstances rather than being 100% responsible for your own results.

Take Action:

1. Where are you being negative? Are you aware of a downward spiral talk in your work? How can you use the energy of the talk in a different way?

2. Read "The Art of Possibility" by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander and "The Success Principles" by Jack Canfield.

3. Another perspective on the issue of negativity: Julie Norem's The Positive Power of Negative Thinking: Using Defensive Pessimism to Harness Anxiety and Perform at Your Peak.

4. David Caruso and Peter Solovay in their book The Emotionally Intelligent Manager give these four key emotional skills:

a. Identifying Emotion: Emotions contain critical information and data.

b. Using Emotion: Different emotions help our thinking in different ways.

c. Understanding Emotion: Emotions follow a logical pattern, if you know how to look at them.

d. Managing Emotion: You cannot be effective without the wisdom of emotions.

How might these skills help you with downward spiral talk?

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How To Live A Good Life After Breakups

The purpose of How To Live A Good Life After Breakups is to convince you that breakups are not only an ending, they are also a new beginning. Instead of feeling like an epic failure the best thing you can do for yourself is to ask yourself three simple questions:

1. What went wrong?

2. What did I learn?

3. What will I do differently next time?

What went wrong?

Most of the time, if you are honest with yourself, things happened along the way to give you a clue that your relationship was starting to crumble. Maybe he started calling you less often. Maybe she started telling you she couldn't get together because she had to wash her hair. This is the way that members of the opposite sex let you know that they are ready to move on. Ignore these signs at your peril!

Look back and see when things started to change. Did you have some conflicts that were not resolved? Did you make requests that met with resistance from your partner? When did you feel the connection start to fade?

What did I learn?

Make sure that the pain of the breakup counts for something. Use it to learn. People are great mirrors. They teach us a lot about ourselves if we let them. They show us what we really value. If someone cheats on you, and you are upset and hurt by this, you learn how much you value loyalty and fidelity. If someone lies to you, or deceives you, you learn how much you value honesty. Use what happened to know yourself better and make wiser choices in the future.

What will I do differently next time?

After you have spent some time figuring out all that you learned from this experience use that learning to do things differently in the future. Now that you have identified some things that you really value in a partner how can you figure out earlier in the next relationship whether this new person shares these values or not? How can you find out more about all the things the new person values, so that you can know who they really are sooner, and not spend a lot of time with someone whose values conflict with your values?

Living a good life after a breakup is about using your life experience to grow. Instead of shutting down, being depressed, withdrawing from life, or making choices that will only make your life more miserable, use the breakup to learn more about yourself and make better choices next time.

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