Limit Your Limiting Beliefs

Emotions have nothing to do with things that go on outside us,

or with logic.

The people I meet in my practice clearly understand that

their limiting fear doesn’t make sense, that it isn’t logical.

Actually, they feel frustrated and angry when people try to

explain to them that their thoughts are irrational. They already

know that.

Creativity and Sensitivity in Abundance

People who are limited by their fear aren’t weak in the mind. In

fact, they possess a recipe made up of two of the most amazing

ingredients anyone can own. The same goes for all of us. To

have limiting fear we need to be creative and we need to be

sensitive. It takes a lot of creativity to create a fearful image – for

example a hungry bear that looks real and scary.

Creativity, the first ingredient, is a wonderful thing. If you’re

creative, you make the best kind of teacher, friend, employee,

or CEO. Anyone who has accomplished anything in the world

used their creativity to do it.

Sensitivity, the second ingredient, can make you the

best child, the best sibling, the best parent, the best teacher,

or the best employee. It’s wonderful when you can be sensitive

to others. People who are limited by their fear possess an

extremely high degree of sensitivity.

And when creativity and sensitivity work together in

However, if your creativity is producing a scary bear, and

your sensitivity is causing you to run away from the bear you

created in your mind, that’s a destructive combination. That

can blow your life to shambles.

On the other hand, if you can gain control of creativity and

sensitivity, then you’re in business. You can create positive,

beautiful images in your mind. Then, with your sensitivity, you

can feel and experience them deeply.

You need to recognize that just as you can be more limited

by your fear than most of the world around you, you can also be

happier, more excited, more tender, and more loving than most

of the world around you.

Just as you can frighten yourself deeply through fearful

thoughts, you also can get yourself to feel amazing through

imaginative, positive thoughts.

How Do People Develop Limiting Fears?

How do we develop limitations when we have a lot of creativity

and sensitivity? The answer is simple. The regular world,

including the regular school system, teaches us how to manage

a regular degree of creativity and sensitivity.

Let me explain. If you want to learn to drive a car, you can

learn from the people around you. But if you want to learn to

drive an eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer, you’ve got to get special

training and a special license. If your creativity and sensitivity

are the size of a car, you can learn how to develop these traits

by watching the people around you. But if your creativity

and sensitivity are on the order of magnitude of an eighteen-wheeler,

you’ll need special training to manage it.

And if you’re living at the level of a car, accidents will be

of the fender-bender variety most of the time. But if you’re

living at the level of an eighteen-wheeler, accidents will be of

the variety in which highways close, everything is in shambles,

and people die.

You develop limiting fears when you drive your life with

creativity and sensitivity on the order of magnitude of an

eighteen-wheel truck. When you’re driving it, it’s big and overwhelming,

but as long as it’s on track, it’s fine. As soon as it goes

off track, however, that’s when your limiting fears make you

resistant to the behaviors you need for success.

In my office, I show clients that if they drop a pen, it hardly

makes any noise at all, but if they drop a book, it makes a big

noise. An average amount of creativity and sensitivity is no big

deal when it’s out of balance. It is a big deal when you have an

abundance of creativity and sensitivity.

Sensitivity is beautiful:

? if you have the knob to turn it up or down,

? if you can turn up the sensitivity when you’re around

people who make you feel good,

? if you can turn it up when you’re receiving a compliment

and back down when you’re being criticized.

And the same thing is true with creativity. You need – and

can develop – the ability to turn up the volume on creativity

when you want it and turn it down when you don’t.

An abundance of creativity and sensitivity is the biggest

blessing of all once you learn how to manage and control it.