How to Overcome Limiting Beliefs
Limiting beliefs. Have you ever thought about where they come from? They come from all over. They come from culture, they come from movies we watch, from voices we heard inside of our homes as a child, anything through your adolescence, we pick them up from everywhere. Now, the thing about these limiting beliefs is they're often not actual beliefs we hold about ourselves, but something someone else told us about ourselves.
And as we hold on to these, obviously a lot of this is unconscious, but we're bringing it conscious now. As we hold onto these, these beliefs keep us small. They keep you from achieving your goals, they keep you from taking that risk. Challenge yourself to examine them, have a little compassion with them, be curious about them. So grab a piece of paper and a pen and write down the little voices, the limiting beliefs that take up real estate in your mind.
Whether it's that you're not smart enough, or you're not creative enough, or you're not beautiful enough, whatever it is, whatever the limiting belief is that someone told you or you picked up along the way, write them all down and free up some space in your mind. And then once you have them all on the piece of paper, go and do something else that fills your heart, whether that's going out in nature or spending time with a loved one. Something that will bring you joy. After you do that, give it about a day before you revisit that list. This time when you go to that list, look at it as the lens, as if those voices were a friend in a hard place, telling you those things about themselves, telling you that they don't think they're creative enough, that they don't think they have what it takes to make it in this industry.
Listen as if it was a friend, because we're often more compassionate and more gracious and more gentle, more kind with our loved ones and our friends than we are with ourselves. We're really critical with ourselves. So as you're viewing that list with that compassionate lens, write down things that not combat, but comfort those voices. So if it says that you're not good enough, talk about how much work you've done into becoming better and how things are different and how you're ready this time, whatever it is, just spend time and hold space for those voices. Because all they need is to know that you got their back, that you're listening.
A lot of those voices, again, are outdated, or they're not even yours to begin with. So stop carrying them around and let's start to embody the real you, the whole you that is capable, that is enough.
Written and filmed by Melanie Whitney, for Drowsy Sleep Co. 2022
Instagram @melaniewhitney_
See the others in the series here.
1. How To Manifest the Life You Want to live
