What are limiting beliefs? 

 

A belief is a thought that you keep on thinking… a limiting belief is a negative thought which keeps you from doing things. You will start to procrastinate to start to work on your to-do list.

 

 

People are meaning-making machines

 

When you were young you just gave meaning to circumstances you didn’t really understand. And meanwhile, you found a lot of “evidence” that your belief is true. So with all this evidence, you are sure that this is the truth, this is just the way it is. However, everyone has a different view on the world, depending on the things they met in their lives. There doesn’t exist one truth. Everyone has his/her own truth and because of that, we create our own reality.

You have your own preferences

 

You have your own preferences which are also beliefs. For me, it’s important to have a nice home, nice clothes. I like personal development, reading books. For someone else, this could not be of any importance. You might be crazy about McDonald’s, or you prefer to be a vegetarian. You like to watch television or you prefer reading books and listen to podcasts. We all have a lot of thoughts and beliefs about this kind of subjects. My truth doesn’t need to be your truth.

Your beliefs are creating your world

 

What you believe to be the truth is dictating your life and your world. And your beliefs are dictating the quality of your life. With mainly positive and stimulating beliefs your world is looking completely different than when you have negative and limiting beliefs. What we believe to be the truth is just coming in our reality. Your brains are just filtering in what it believes and filtering out what it doesn’t believe.

 

So why and how do beliefs create our reality? In any given moment, we receive millions of pieces of stimuli but your brain cannot process all of them every second of the day. Your brain’s job is to filter in evidence of what you expect to see and filter out what you don’t expect to see. This is done by distorting, deleting or generalizing it. Instead of millions of pieces of information or stimuli, your mind now takes much fewer pieces of information each second, exactly those pieces with which you agree. As long as you have positive beliefs your life will be ok and you can make your dreams come true. If you have limiting and negative beliefs you will just be stuck and stay in the same place where you are for a long time. You will not be able to take action, you procrastinate and you make decisions out of fear which will keep you where you are instead of following your dreams and to move forward.

 

How can you learn more about your beliefs?

 

Your beliefs are not very clear. They say that you have around 80.000 thoughts that you think per day! Can you imagine? And studies show that for most people 80% of the thoughts are negative. And even 95% of the thoughts we are thinking are the same thoughts we thought yesterday and the days before! So if you want to change your life, your results, it is very important to know what you are thinking.

 

How can you find out whether you think positive or negative thoughts?

 

One important way to investigate whether your thoughts are negative or positive is tuning in to how you are feeling! If you feel good most of the time, you will have positive thoughts. If you feel bad you really need to take some time out and investigate what you were thinking about a certain situation. Because your thoughts always come before your feelings.

Your beliefs are immensely important for the results in your life.

Your unconscious beliefs have a very important effect on your career, your finances, your body, your health, your self-image, your relations. For example, if you wanted to become a lawyer but you think you cannot speak in public, you think that people will not listen to you because you are not interesting enough. Or because your voice is too weak, or your looks are not ok, or because you are too young, you will not be able to take the necessary steps to become a lawyer. You will just not do it.

 

What’s the relation between money and beliefs?

 

Your beliefs are just creating your world and you will be directed by your beliefs. If your parents told you that money was scarce and not available for people like “you”, these beliefs will just be ingrained in your system and will predict your future around money. You will just not be able to earn a lot of money because deep down you think you do not deserve it. And if by chance, you do get a lot of money you will be stressed out because unconsciously you have a negative association with money. For example, a lot of people winning the lottery are not having the right beliefs how they could go on with it. And within 5 years a lot of them lose everything or even made some debts because of it.

 

Also in relationships, your beliefs are so important.

 

If you think you are not interesting, not beautiful, not funny, not smart, you will probably not find the partner you are craving for. And if you find him, you will act in such an insecure way because of all your negative beliefs that you will lose him soon. Because deep down you feel you are not worthy of this partner and you will not be able to be vulnerable and show who you really are, which is of course very important as to create intimacy in your relationship.

So if you study your life, your friends, your surroundings, your work, it can give you a good idea of your beliefs. If you are not happy with certain parts of your life, go and study your beliefs about it. If you want to change your outer world, you should start with your inner world.

If you want to find out more about which beliefs are blocking you and how you can solve this, I highly recommend the Free Mindset Masterclass.

Looking forward to seeing you over there!