The Complete Guide to Limiting Beliefs and How To Conquer Them

Everyone has heard those dreadful thoughts in our minds that tell us why we shouldn’t or can’t do something that we want to do. These little thought demons are limiting beliefs and they hold us back from our goals. Here’s how you get rid of them.

What is a limiting belief and where do they come from?

A limiting belief is a set of thoughts or feelings that describe why you don’t think you can do something. 

When we’re children, we are sponges for learning about the world around us. Every little situation we experience becomes a building block for the framework of our minds. As we see the things our parents do, hear the way people speak to us, and observe the way the world works, our little brains piece together beliefs that we use to shape our subconscious minds. This subconscious mind (and the beliefs we’ve stored inside of it) stay with us for the rest of our lives. It shapes the life we create for ourselves.

Your reality is created by your beliefs

Every choice we make is determined by what we believe in and every decision we act on spurs our life in a new direction. Therefore, the life that you’re currently living is entirely built up by your past beliefs. 

We have two main belief systems that were programmed into our minds as kids that have shaped the way our lives have turned out as we grew up: core beliefs and generational beliefs.

Core Beliefs

These are beliefs that we learned as children (usually before age 7). Our brains created these beliefs based on an experience that happened which triggered our minds to create the neural connection that “this is the way things are.” 

For example, if you came home from school one day and were singing in the kitchen and your mom shouted from the other room, “Shut up, your singing is hurting my head!” You might have felt embarrassed and made the assumption that you were a terrible singer and shouldn’t sing in front of people. There is no way you could have known that your mom actually just had a migraine and needed the house to be quiet. Thus, the limiting belief that you are bad at singing might have been formed and you might have grown up with a fear of singing in front of people.

Core beliefs can be developed out of little moments like these, as well as traumatic events that happened in our childhood. When these experiences occur, our brian ticks them off as an important event and saves them like a file in our mind as a core belief to protect you from getting hurt again in the future. 

Generational Beliefs

Our parents, grandparents, and society teach us generational beliefs. They are a combination of expectations, values, and common sayings passed down either through family or society. 

For example, when you were a child, you might have asked your father for some money to buy a toy and he may have responded, “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” This is a common saying that basically teaches kids that money is hard to come by. So, hearing this from someone you love and trust, you might have grown up believing that money is hard to come by and now, as an adult, you have a difficult relationship with money. 

We can also form generational beliefs from watching our parents or others around us. As kids, we learn their beliefs and adopt them as our own.

Why do we hold on to limiting beliefs?

Limiting beliefs are a protection mechanism your brain uses to keep you safe. They keep you in your comfort zone. Comfort zones might have been great back in the caveman days, but staying in your comfort zone is not going to help you achieve your goals in modern society. 

How do you tell what your limiting beliefs are?

Everyone has limiting beliefs, it’s a part of being human. But, how do you tell what your limiting beliefs are in order to overcome them?

A limiting belief is anything that says you can’t do something that you want to do. These stories hold us back and keep us in the safety of our comfort zones. So, the next time you decide not to do something that you want, think about the reason why you’re not going after your goal. Whatever that answer is, that’s the limiting belief that you need to deal with.

Here are a few common examples of limiting beliefs:

Common limiting beliefs around money:

• You have to work hard to make money.
• Money is the root of all evil.
• Money is scarce.
• You need money to make money.
• Having money is selfish.

If you believe any of these things about money then it’s no surprise if you’re broke, because your brain is literally pushing away any opportunities for you to create wealth in your life.

Common limiting beliefs around relationships:

• All marriages end in divorce. 
• I’m too old to find love.
• I’m not pretty enough to find love.
• All the good ones are taken. 
• I’m independent and all relationships lead to codependency. 

If any of these beliefs are stuck in your subconscious, then you’ll probably have a hard time finding a healthy relationship or you might end up self-sabotaging once you’re in one.

Common limiting beliefs around success:

• The market is too saturated, there is nothing new I can bring to the table.
• I’m not good/smart/talented/experienced enough.
• I don’t have the time to go after my passions.
• I’m too old to change careers.
• I don’t know what I’m doing.

This world is big enough for everyone to follow their dreams. If you’re letting any of these limiting beliefs hold you back from success, you might end up stuck in a career you hate until you retire. 

Common limiting beliefs around health:

• I don’t have any willpower to eat healthy foods.
• It’s too late for me, I’ll never be able to be healthy.
• Being healthy is too expensive.
• I’ll never be strong.
• I just like sweets too much.

If you have a goal of improving your health but you let any of these limiting beliefs get in the way, then it’s going to be really hard for you to make a change.

How to overcome limiting beliefs

In order to overcome a belief, you must first become aware that you have that belief in the first place. This comes from becoming aware of your thoughts and asking why you are stopping yourself from going after something that you want. 

Step One

Overcoming limiting beliefs starts with introspection. Start with asking yourself powerful questions to help you figure out what your limiting belief is in the first place:

• Why did you say what you said about that thing?
• Why did the thing they said trigger you so much?
• You’ve been saying you want to do something for so long but have never actually started or even tried, why?
• Why are you so nervous when it comes to XYZ?

Fill in the blank with the thing you want to do or the thing that triggers youYour answer to these questions will identify the belief that is holding you back.

Step Two

Ask yourself if there is a chance you might be wrong about this belief. (Hint: there absolutely is).

Step Three

Ask yourself how this limiting belief has served you? What is it protecting you from?

Step Four

Begin to reframe your beliefs. Create a positive affirmation to help start reprogramming your mind.

For example, if your limiting belief is that there is no way your business will succeed because there are already too many businesses like it out there, reframe that thought to something like this: “Even though there are other businesses like mine out there, none of them are exactly like mine. I bring a unique energy to my business that only I have and so I will attract the perfect clients that are right for me.”

Step Five

Go about life as though you didn’t have that belief and begin collecting data that proves your limiting belief to be wrong. 

So, going off the last example, keep building your business, and the next time you get a rockstar client, tell your limiting belief to shove it because it was totally incorrect about you.

Helpful techniques to use to overcome limiting beliefs

Once you become aware of the limiting beliefs you want to conquer, then you can consciously use techniques to help deconstruct and neutralize that belief. Here are just a few that I love to use:

• Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT Tapping)
• Shaking 
• Journaling
• Affirmations
• Meditation
• Breathwork
• Rage dancing
• Cord Cutting

Don’t feel shame if a limiting belief you overcame pops back up again

Limiting beliefs are deep subconscious programming and they’ve been stuck inside our brains for years, possibly decades before we start to work through them. Sometimes, they pop back up even when we think we’ve already conquered those thought demons. If this happens to you, know that this is perfectly normal. 

Overcoming a limiting belief is like an onion. When you peel back a layer, there is another smaller layer underneath. And another under that, and another under that. Reprogramming our beliefs can take years of effort, but don’t let that discourage you! Each time you uncover a layer, you make that limiting belief less strong, and sooner or later it begins to hold no power over you at all.

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My favorite book to help with limiting beliefs

There are many books that have influenced my life in a big way. This is one of them. The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks is my favorite book to describe how sometimes when life is going great, everything seems to go wrong. He describes those thoughts in your head like, “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t deserve this” as upper limit problems. I call them limiting beliefs. Either way, those nasty thoughts hold us back from our goals and it would do us a great service if we figured out how to get rid of those pesky buggers. The Big Leap helps us understand why we have these limiting thoughts and how to overcome them and jump into our zone of genius. This book was an integral part of my journey in overcoming some of my limiting beliefs and I 100% recommend it for your journey, too.

Do you love learning how to build a strong mindset and how to overcome the mental blocks that hold us back from our goals? Then you might also love, How To Lower Your Anxiety Now: 5 Easy Hacks You Can Use In The Moment.

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