Self-Limiting Beliefs and how to get past them

Self-limiting beliefs are some of the biggest obstacles that distract us from achieving success in life or business, but with recognition and a little self-awareness, we can overcome these barriers that keep us on the sidelines.

We have all encountered them. That nagging voice in your head that pesters you. That gut-wrenching thought creeps up and stops you in your tracks. That shadow casts doubt over your entire being. What is that toxic monster that prevents us from living our best life and achieving our goals?

Why it’s the monster of self-limiting beliefs that takes hold of us tightly and does everything in its power to bring us down. And if we allow it, the monster will win. And we will never be the wiser, never be the person we are meant to be.

Self-limiting beliefs, according to business.tutsplus.com, are assumptions or perceptions that you have about yourself and about how the world works. These perceptions hold you back from achieving all that you are capable of because somewhere down the road you began believing that this thing, this toxic monster is right.

These thoughts have a way of seeping into our everyday lives:

“I’m too old.”

“I don’t have the experience.”

“This has already been done.”

“No one will take me seriously.”

Is there a thought like this that you can’t shake? One that has repeatedly silenced your dreams or desires and talked you out of fulfilling your goals? What self-limiting belief holds you back from taking the next big step?

In this blog, we will look at self-limiting belief examples, how to identify self-limiting beliefs, and how to stop self-limiting beliefs from controlling your success.

How our beliefs are formed and how they can transform into self-limiting beliefs

We get most of our beliefs growing up, from our parents, our teachers, our churches, authoritarian figures who teach us. Some of these beliefs teach us values and morals, encourage manners, and keep us safe. For instance, we are told to stay in school, eat our veggies, respect your elders. These beliefs are harmless and help form us into well-rounded respectable individuals.

Then there are other beliefs that are imposed on us that have a longer-lasting sometimes negative effect. They may seem harmless at the time, but as we mature, we realize that these beliefs may not actually help us at all. When we are old enough to think for ourselves and form our own opinions, we must differentiate between our own, and what beliefs have been instilled in us that may be creating negativity in our lives.

For instance, as an adolescent, we may have been told that academics or money equals self-worth. These beliefs stay with us and creep up at the most inopportune times, sabotaging our success. They are so ingrained that we don’t even notice them or realize that they have become our biggest obstacle. That is why it is so important to identify and overcome self-limiting beliefs.

Let’s look at the self-limiting beliefs I just mentioned. Perhaps your parents and teachers instilled the idea that academics equals your self-worth, so you blindly believe it. But mathematics doesn’t come easy to you, so you don’t make high scores in this subject. You may excel in all other subjects and maybe you are known for your writing.?But believing that because you don’t do well in mathematics makes you less of a person, you can’t see the parts that you do excel in and focus on those to become successful.

The same applies to your bank account. Maybe you don’t have a ton of money, but you are a hard worker and a moral and decent human. Believing that your checkbook holds your self-worth will eventually make it harder to see your self-worth in other aspects of your life.

Let’s look at another self-limiting belief example I’m sure you have heard:?“Finish what you start,”?or more harshly,?“quitting is for losers.”?Perhaps growing up your parents told you this so that you would finish music lessons or stick with an extracurricular sport. Let’s see how this thought could be self-limiting. Maybe it applied to your younger self, but as you are older now, think about those statements.?Do they apply to adulthood? Has there been something that you stuck with just because you believe you should always finish what you start? What if this thing made you miserable? What if it was a dead-end job or a toxic relationship? Is sticking with something more important than your happiness? What do you really have to prove by sticking with or to something that you loathe or know isn’t good for you? What could you be doing with your time that would make your life more joyful and more successful?

See how that seemingly harmless belief may have not worked quite well for your future self?

Self-limiting beliefs hold you back and become your reality

Without realization, self-limiting beliefs impact your life negatively. For instance, if you want to change careers, you may think,?“but I’m too old to do something new.”?This belief will stop you from planning to change careers. You will think of all the excuses in the world for how your age will prohibit you from fulfilling your dream of changing careers. You won’t take actions to jump into a new career and see what is truly possible. With the belief that you are too old to learn something new and take a different direction, you are depriving yourself of living your life to the fullest.

That is why it is important to be able to identify self-limiting beliefs. They are already part of your internal dialogue, so when you allow them to surface, you are committing a disservice to yourself, denying yourself of adventure, growing, and taking a risk that could change your life in the most positive way.

Types of self-limiting beliefs

Beliefs about yourself

“I don’t have what it takes to do this.”

“I don’t have enough experience to charge the price I want.”

“I’m too introverted to take a risk.”

These nagging thoughts about yourself will make it hard for you to move out of your comfort zone. They will stop you from achieving what you want in life, getting what you deserve, and most importantly being your true authentic self.

If these thoughts creep up regularly, they are most likely self-limiting beliefs that stemmed from somewhere and need to be addressed. Self-limiting beliefs about yourself may be the hardest to identify and overcome since we are usually our own worst critic. And this is exactly why these self-limiting beliefs about ourselves are probably the most essential to recognize and rewrite because they are the ones we deal with daily.

Beliefs about the people in your life

“What if they don’t like me?”

“What if they laugh at me or judge me?”

Entertaining beliefs about what you assume other people think is probably the silliest self-limiting beliefs to have. Allowing someone else to kill your dreams because of fearing what they might think is the ultimate betrayal to yourself. Chances are that person probably isn’t thinking about you at all. And here you are so concerned about what they think that you give up on your lifelong dream. This boils down to insecurities you have about yourself and the lack of confidence you have to succeed.

Think of a time when you were scared to tell a friend something because you thought they would get upset or mad. You work yourself up into a tizzy, thinking of all the negative ways the conversation could play out. You shakily pick up the phone and your voice cracks when you spew the words you’ve been practicing. Your friend replies with not a care in the world is not mad or upset and thanks to you happily for the call. You end up making plans for happy hour later that evening.

You assumed the worst because something along the way made you believe that your friend would get upset. You wasted energy and time dwelling on something that was not only not true, but also out of your control if your friend were to have gotten upset.

The same applies on a much larger scale if you worry about what others think about you. Eventually, you lose your identity and become afraid to take risks. Begin to think instead that everyone is cheering you on. If someone is truly judging you, first, you will never know. And just like it stems from your own insecurities to think someone is judging you when a person judges another it too comes from their own insecurities. They most likely have had a dream derailed by allowing their self-limiting beliefs to take over and feel a resentment that you were able to overcome your own. And honestly, it is none of our business to assume that anyone is judging us. You don’t know what is going on in your peers’ lives, just as they don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes in your own.

This reminds me of my coaching package pricing blog post. You should never assume what a person is willing to pay based upon their job or even what you think is in their bank account. This limits the coaching package price you should charge hurting only yourself. In turn, if you assume that someone is judging you, you are only hurting yourself in the long run.

Beliefs about life in general

“No one will care about this.”

“I’ve missed the boat.”

“There are too many others already doing this.”

These sentiments will do everything in their power to crush your dreams. In your journey to becoming a coach, surely you have thought from time to time,?“Why am I doing this? No one will care about my coaching services.”?Or maybe even,?“Coaching is so saturated, there are too many coaches out there.”

The fact of the matter is, you have something different to offer than any other coach because you are unique. You have your own style and way of presenting your truth. You will relate to someone in a way that no one else can, and who are you to deprive that someone of your expertise?

You may think that the market is saturated, but realize that when you begin to do research on coaching and how to price your coaching packages, and how to create a coaching package template, all of these Google searches put you in a bubble where you begin to see every article and?blog ?written on the subject; it will seem like the market is full of coaches. Your self-limiting belief that the world needs another coach like it needs a hole in its head will seep in daily, but it’s the algorithm that makes it seem this way. Understand that your world consists of coaching, but the whole world is not full of coaches.

And if you think you have missed the boat, think for a minute about how many others may feel this way. Then think about how you can reach those people and show them that maybe one boat has set off for its voyage, but another one will be right behind it. There will always be another boat.

Allowing general life self-limiting beliefs to run your own life is a treacherous road to travel. Once you begin to see the negative side of things, you will only see the negative side. You will begin looking for the signs that lead you away, and trust me, in the world we live in today there are many negative signs to lead you astray. Just as you shouldn’t assume what one other person thinks about you, you should stay far away from assuming what the world thinks. There will always be haters, so fill your world with encouragement and positivity.

Self-limiting beliefs in action

Self-limiting beliefs tend to hang out with one another, feed off one another, tempt each other. Quite often one self-limiting belief bleeds into another, contaminating our path to success.

One of the most common self-limiting beliefs concerns money. We are taught not to talk about it, but that having it shows how successful we are and determines our self-worth. We begin to equate having money with spending money.

And another common self-limiting belief is to put others ahead of our own happiness, to do things for others no matter the effect it has on our own success.

When we add these two self-limiting beliefs together, we get a client of mine, we will call her Mary. Mary was beginning her coaching career with her ideal client in mind. She wanted to target big corporations to sell her coaching packages to their employees. She had a well-thought-out business plan, a stunning?coaching package template ,?and an intriguing elevator pitch.

But Mary was never able to get any traction in selling her reasonably, yet high-ticketed priced packages to big corporations.

Why?

Because she based her “ideal” client on the belief that because these big corporations had money, she assumed they would want to invest the money in their employees to take her coaching courses. But just because the corporations she pitched had megabucks in the bank, they had no intention of spending any of it to enhance their employees. On top of that, come to find out Mary actually hated big corporations. She had left a corporate job to pursue her dream of becoming a business coach because she wanted nothing to do with big businesses. Mary put her own happiness on the back burner to pursue a false dream of helping big businesses because she assumed they would be an ideal client with big bucks to spend.

Mary soon changed her tune and rewrote her coaching package and business model to target?what someone like herself would want in a business coach. She put her values and happiness first and based her package on what she would be willing to spend had she had the opportunity to work with a coach like herself. Mary began reeling in clients based upon her true beliefs after recognizing that what she thought she believed were not her own beliefs.

If Mary wouldn’t have identified her self-limiting beliefs, she may have given up on her dream of becoming a coach. If she hadn’t pinpointed exactly which beliefs were holding her back from being her true self, she may have retreated back into the corporate world more miserable than before. Mary realized assuming that people with money would spend money was a self-limiting belief she formed growing up when her mother always pointed out when the Johnsons got a new car or built an addition to their house or took extravagant vacations every summer. Her mother would always comment, “Those Johnsons love to spend that hard-earned money they have.” So, Mary equated having money with spending money. Mary’s mother was a penny pincher, so her comments came from her own fear of not having savings.

(Mary later learned the Johnsons were up to their eyeballs in debt).

How to change your self-limiting beliefs

Identify

Think about the negativity that creeps into your head when you have a decision to make or an opportunity that comes your way. Recognize the impact of this belief. Has this thought held you back in the past from doing something you truly wanted? Have you passed up opportunities because of this nagging thought??How much time did you waste on an internal dialogue with this belief trying to convince yourself one way or the other?

Where did this thought come from? Is the thought you have truly your own? Is it something that was taught by your parents or a social construct? Identifying the source of the belief will help you identify if it is holding you back. Go back to Mary. Had she not pinpointed that her self-limiting belief came from her mother who wouldn’t spend an extra dollar on something she truly wanted, she would not have realized that her target audience was something she needed to rethink. Identifying that her mother was the one who put this in her head also helped her come to the realization that the value of a product or service is considered when someone wants to make a purchase. Mary’s mom had lots of savings, but she was never willing to part with it for something she truly valued, so that type of person was not an ideal client for Mary. Mary realized she would spend money on something she thought had value and would improve her life, so she began to understand that she was her ideal client.??

Reframe

Ask yourself: are there facts to support this belief or is it only opinion? Does it go against your morals or value? If this belief didn’t exist, what would you achieve?

If you can back up your belief with facts, it’s probably not self-limiting.?Veggies are good for you. This is a fact.

If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again.?Is this a fact? Certainly not. Do you really believe you should keep doing something that you might not succeed in doing? Contrary to what you were probably told growing up, maybe the thing you keep trying it is not something you should keep doing. If it doesn’t go against your morals or values, this self-limiting belief may not ring true for you today. What could you accomplish if you stopped trying over and over again and tried something at which you could actually excel?

Positive psychology strategies

Develop an alternative belief. You are not too old to change careers. No one is judging you or really cares what you are doing to better your life. It is ok to put yourself first.

Be intentional in your new beliefs. Create a mantra affirming your new perspective and constantly remind yourself that your new beliefs will lead to your happiness and success. Adjusting your way of thought is like a habit that needs to be done over and over until it sticks. You must train yourself to think this way until it becomes natural. Eventually, your new way of thinking will become engrained, and those self-limiting beliefs will be a thing of the past.

We are our own worst enemy. We stand in the way of our own success and happiness more than we realize. Once you recognize that those self-limiting belief monsters can be tamed and put to rest, you will have control over your destiny.

Exercise to identify and overcome self-limiting beliefs

Follow this exercise to begin releasing yourself from self-limiting beliefs that are holding you back from being your best self.

Brainstorm

Think about a topic, for example, work or money.

Write down ten things you generally think are true in relation to this topic. It can be anything, like money is the root of all evil. Or working 24/7 is what we should strive for to be successful or work should be our main priority in life.

Recognize

Take a look at your list. What sounds like a self-limiting belief? Is the statement true? Is there any fact to support the statement or is it simply an opinion? Can you remember where you got this idea? Did you experience it from your parents growing up? Did someone make a comment one time that stuck with you?

Let it go

If the belief does not go against your morals or values, give yourself permission to let it go. Think about what your life would look like if you let this belief go. What goals could you accomplish? How much more time would you have?

Now make a list of the potential pros and cons if you didn’t have that self-limiting belief. Do the pros outweigh the cons? Are the pros worth it?

Rewrite your internal script

Now turn the self-limiting beliefs into positive statements. Instead of saying you should put work first, say, you should put yourself first. Instead of thinking money is the root of all evil, think money will allow me to do the things I want to do. You are not too old, you are ready for a new chapter in life. You are qualified to charge the price you want because you are confident in your ability to coach and clients will learn so much from you.

Say bye-bye to self-limiting beliefs

It may be easier said than done in the beginning, but like anything, in life, nothing that’s worth having comes easy.?So you must be intentional when ridding yourself of these self-limiting beliefs. ?The alternative is that you continue on as you have been, whether that is positive or negative, but one thing for sure is that you won’t grow, you won’t change. And life is about learning more about yourself and making changes so that you can be the best person you can be.

Whenever I work with my clients, I make sure we address the elements mentioned here in order to make sure to avoid self-sabotage and grow a thriving confident business.

If you want to learn more about working with me then I offer a complimentary session to get to know each other which is bookable on my contact page .