Limiting Beliefs and How To Live Your Potential
What you believe about yourself might not be true. In fact, often the labels and rules that accompany your beliefs are the main thing that hold you back in life.
Belief Systems
Belief systems are fundamental to how we experience the world. They are foundational to the way we think, act and interact with our environment and others. Belief systems themselves are not necessarily limiting, they can be deeply rewarding and powerful avenues to understand the world and our place in it. They are useful ways to compute the overload of information we receive every minute. Essentially, a belief system allows us to answer some of the bigger questions in life and interpret our place within it.
Limiting Beliefs
Limiting beliefs are embedded ideas about ourselves or the world around us that limit us from taking action. They can ultimately stop us from realising our potential or achieving our goals.
They are usually not based on fact, often developing in childhood in response to things we are taught, or what we see, hear, touch, smell and say.
Here’s an example:
Imagine your parent telling you to tidy your room, you do this and they are pleased with you. This can develop into a false belief that you need to please people to prove your self worth.
Often as people age, their belief systems cause much of their inner pain and suffering. It’s helpful to know that these beliefs are not necessarily founded on fact or rational processes. They are often based on fear and negative thought patterns.
There are times when limiting beliefs serve a purpose, when for example, they keep us safe from harm. If I believe that a tiger is dangerous, I am likely to stay out of its way. However, many of us don’t need to worry about tigers, and those that do, don’t need to do extreme things like avoid going outside in case of meeting one.
> In an ideal situation, we are able to rationalise the risks and rewards, and take action based on this information. But for the vast majority of time, limiting beliefs are exactly what they say on the tin, limiting.
False or limiting beliefs can be the result of negative thoughts or emotional responses. Read more about how negative thoughts develop and how they are linked to limiting beliefs here.
Before we go on, I have designed a yoga class to release stuck energy whilst building strength, balance and flexibility. Limiting beliefs can hold you back from realising your potential. And most of the time they are not at all true! In this session we challenge our limits and build our resilience and flexibility to translate from the yoga mat into our lives. Check it out here!
How do limiting beliefs hold me back?
So, limiting beliefs are engrained cognitive processes, they do not define who we are. However, because they are engrained beliefs, it is difficult to perceive things differently.
> They can mean we don’t take action or move our lives forward when we could.
Example 1:
If you hold a deeply engrained belief that you are stupid, you are unlikely to explore opportunities that could reveal to yourself and others that you really are stupid. Furthermore, you may act in a way that is conducive to that thought, or surround yourself with people who reaffirm that particular belief which means you never realise that the belief isn’t true!
Our social and educational framework perpetuates this. If you do not show up as ‘smart’ in an exam, you are put in a lower class, disregarding the vast spectrum of diversity that we now understand as intelligence. We don’t all fit into the same box, we all have different abilities in different areas. Diversity is normal and should be celebrated.
If we were taught that, then we would probably have much fewer limiting beliefs. My readings and personal research has demonstrated how very common it is for, especially women, to feel insecure about their intelligence. This has absolutely no bearing on actual ability, but is much more about our socio-cultural environment. These experiences of inadequacy have been written about by several critically acclaimed authors including Valerie Young, and apply not only to women, but to people from other minority and divergent groups.
In summary - you are unlikely to apply for a university degree or chase that promotion if your underlying false belief is that you are stupid.
Example 2:
If your limiting belief is that you are not worthy, there is a likelihood that you won’t act with kindness to yourself, which then reaffirms the belief that you are not worthy of kindness. It is also possible that you will seek destructive relationships and activities that further embed the belief that you are not worthy.
When we feel into our self-worth, that is the same as anyone else’s, we are able to treat ourselves as if we would treat someone we love , with care and compassion. This is how yoga deeply speaks to these concepts, find out more about yoga and self compassion here.
In summary - If your self-perception and self-talk is negative, based on an underlying false belief that you are not worthy, then it is unlikely that you will be able to see your own self worth and treat yourself with kindness.
It’s easy to compare
The truth is, no one person is any better or any worse than another. Even good and evil are subjective terms. You can be a good person and do bad things. All humans come into this world as pure, organic lifeforms. Not one single person is perfect. We all have our personal challenges to overcome, no matter what it might look like on the outside. It is always difficult to imagine feelings and experiences outside of our own, so just because someone seems to be accomplished or winning in certain areas, it is likely that those areas will be the ones we do not feel like we are winning at. We see through our own lens.
The reasons for inadequate feelings, comparison and low self-worth lies largely in society and the things we are taught. The labels that we get handed and the ones we place upon ourselves. If we associate strongly with these labels, they become beliefs. It is useful to distance from any type of belief about ourselves. Distance from labels.
What’s going on inside that mind?
Our brains think spontaneously, all the time. Different studies have concluded different figures, but humans are estimated to think about 60,000 thoughts a day (Positive Psychology). That’s a lot! Our thoughts can be based on emotions, experiences, stimuli, memories and imagination.
One study demonstrates how a great way to improve contentment is to notice the mind wandering and bring it back to the current situation, to deal with the here and now, as opposed to the worries or learned responses from the pasts that colour the present.
They conclude that the production of thoughts that are unrelated to the present moment can be the cause and effect of unhappiness.
> Limiting beliefs are usually not attached to the current reality of a situation. They develop over time in response to past experiences and become ‘what we know’ about the world and ourselves.
Positive Psychology explain how limiting beliefs linger in our minds and affect our behaviours and how we view the world:
‘‘False and limiting beliefs are like parasites: they stay inactive in the mind until some thought or event triggers their response. Then they impede people’s ability to think sensibly and rationally, and they affect perceptions and perspectives’’
The majority of our thoughts are repeated patterns. Issues arise when we pay the negative aspects too much attention and are unable to distinguish the false beliefs.
We already subconsciously disregard many of the thoughts that enter our brain to be able to function in the day to day and avoid overwhelm. But when we focus on a certain type of thought or belief over another, these thought patterns can become deeply embedded belief systems.
The first step to overcoming damaging beliefs and the negative thoughts that come with them, is by challenging them.
Ways to challenge the belief
If you hear yourself saying any of the following, I recommend questioning the belief behind the statement.
I don’t cry, I’m a strong person
I can’t rest, I’m a highly functioning person
I can’t go for a daily walk, I’m a fat person
I can’t exercise, I’m chronically ill
I can’t show my emotions, it will mean I am a weak person
I can’t go for that job, I’m an under qualified woman
I can’t join that network, they won’t accept me, I’m unlikeable.
I can’t go to university, I’m not an intelligent person.
I can’t go to that restaurant, I’m a poor person.
I can’t be successful, no one in my family is, I am not that kind of person.
A lot of these statements are based on the past, they do not apply to what is true now, in the present. The best way to change false or limiting beliefs is to challenge them, to question their legitimacy.
Most of the time we do not have control over our thoughts and beliefs, it is only when we start to examine them with awareness, that we are able to recognise, acknowledge and overcome them. We can’t just override limiting beliefs, we must see and understand them for what they are, accept them, then create new beliefs based on rational evidence gained from our questioning.
This way, we are able to deal with negative situations without being overwhelmed by negative thoughts and limiting behavioural patterns that stop us from moving forward.
The way to establishing the belief beneath the thought, it is useful to ask a series of questions, each time you have a thought:
For example:
I don’t cry, I’m a strong person - what relation does being strong have to crying? Can you be a strong person and still feel things? Is it helpful to feel and look at our emotions or to look away?
I can’t rest, I’m a highly functioning person - how does resting affect whether you are highly functioning or not? Do humans need rest to survive and avoid burnout?
If we don’t question the beliefs, we continue to believe them. So much of our thoughts and beliefs happen at an unconscious level, but when we become aware of them, we then have the ability to change them from a place of understanding.
5 Ways to manage your limiting beliefs
✔ Mindfulness! Become aware of your thought processes
✔ Identify the beliefs beneath the thoughts
✔ Challenge the beliefs
✔ Identify your strengths and blessings
✔ Implement a regular gratitude practice
How Yoga Helps
✔ Mindfulness
A central part of understanding our cognitive processes is to practice mindfulness. Yoga is a holistic practice with awareness at its heart. We learn to tune into ourselves, to notice our thoughts and the way we think about the world. It invites us to examine our biosphere without judgement and tune out of all the noise and distortion of society and our external environment.
✔ Identify the beliefs beneath the thoughts
Yoga teaches us helpful tools to manage the highs and lows of life in ways that are specifically tailored to our own lived experiences. We become aware of the way our brains think, without any judgement and helps us to avoid over-identifying with beliefs or thought patterns. It teaches us balance in body and mind.
✔ Challenge the beliefs
Yoga also allows a space to play with our limits and challenge our capabilities. At the start of anyone’s yoga journey, we all feel out of place, and like we don’t have a clue what’s going on. We are unable to hear cues as we are too busy copying the actions of the teacher and trying to keep up. As we progress in yoga, we find we are capable of more and more, and with practice, we can push ourselves to achieve new postures, practices and goals. We can then translate that from the mat, into our lives.
✔ Identify your strengths and blessings
Yoga invites us to identify our strengths and build support from the inside. It teaches us mindset practices such as visualisation of our best selves or where we want to be. All these aspects have been proven helpful in alleviating depressive feelings or limiting states of being (Sin and Lyubomirksy 2009)
✔ Implement a regular gratitude practice
At it’s very core, yoga is a practice of gratitude. Gratitude for the practice, gratitude to the teachers and gurus, gratitude for the elements, gratitude for the sun, the moon and the stars, gratitude for each other, gratitude for the earth, gratitude to ourselves, gartitude for life itself and the journey that we are blessed to learn from. A regular gratitude practice is proven to be deeply significant in life satisfaction and contentment (Brene Brown).
I have compiled a Yogi Toolkit for you that is completely free and yours to use whenever you need it. Inside you will find three widely recognised and adopted written exercises to help embed self-compassion, love and kindness for yourself. These are short and sweet but immensely powerful when used often. Four yoga classes of varying lengths which all focus specifically on different energy levels and concepts to help raise your vibrations and give you a caring step up in the right direction. I have also included a short talk on self-love and compassion which complements this article perfectly, and a self-love meditation to release you from negative thoughts and help you step into your power.
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