Nourishment for your spiritual awakening

Published by Lola

If you find yourself making the same mistake in various guises and repeating negative patterns no matter how hard you try, you most likely have self-limiting beliefs.  When you are blaming others about situations in your life and not taking full responsibility, there is usually a self-limiting belief lurking around that is obstructing you from joy. 

A self-limiting belief is a belief held in your subconscious mind that limits you getting what you really want in life, as it says on the tin, it limits the self!  So, bearing that in mind,  it is obviously of benefit to remove these beliefs in order to get what you want in life, however before we can begin to think about losing them we need to identify what they are. 

Importance of identifying self-limiting beliefs

Self-limiting beliefs are in fact faulty programming that obstruct or even halt your growth.  The difficulty in identifying them is that they feel as if they are a part of your core.  Their misleading nature leads you to feel that it’s just you, your luck, your genes (after all your Mum/Dad/Sister/Brother, insert relevant relative,are like that) or something else that is out of your control. 

Another difficulty is that some limiting beliefs are embraced by society and as a majority of people hold them, they can feel normal.  Well it’s not and my aim today is to help you wake up!

Self limiting beliefs are dangerous to your personal growth, identifying them will show you just how many areas of your life are being affected.  I was shocked to the core when I started becoming aware of mine and pretty overwhelmed by the realisation that as a self-aware person, I had no clue! 

Law of Attraction

The danger with them is that they can be your core thoughts as you have had them for a very long time, so by the law of attraction what do you think these limiting thoughts are inviting into your life!  When you embrace spiritual laws like the law of attraction, you choose to deliberately create your life.  Doing so without identifying and releasing these limiting beliefs, it is the equivalent of putting clean clothes on a dirty body.  Your older, deep rooted beliefs have more energy as you’ve held and projected them for longer.  So, identifying and releasing self-limiting beliefs will work wonders for your manifestations as it is a massive release of negative thought patterns and hence negative energy.

Where do they come from?

These limiting beliefs come from upbringing, society, experiences, coping mechanisms.  Our parents probably didn’t mean any harm but they passed on their self-limits to us and gave us new ones as a form of protection.  Eg, they may stop us from aiming too high as they don’t want us to be disappointed.  Society is just a collection of people, unfortunately a majority of people are limited which is why society can add to or reconfirm our self-limiting beliefs.  Society tells us that we are limited by our education, class, race, age etc - just in case anyone’s unsure this is class A bullshit! 

Limiting beliefs can come from experiences and coping mechanisms as sometimes we develop ways to protect ourselves from certain things in life.  The problem comes when  we hang on to them even when they no longer serve us.  For example, a child who learns not to trust people due to circumstances, but carries that into all his adult relationships with people he can trust.

The self-limiting beliefs I identified within myself were self-punishment, self-sabotage, fear of success, fear of failure and fear of personal power.  Some of those overlap, but you get the gist of it.  My negative programming manifested itself in that I allowed myself certain levels of success (through bloody hard work!) and then I would run out of fight and destroy everything. 

For instance, I went into business with the wrong partner and fought it for as long as I could and then ultimately I decide to be true to myself and wound the whole thing down.  Wanting to go for it alone, I have stood in my own way at many times, to the point that it’s taken me nearly a year to set up something that took 3 months initially despite the fact I have more experience and contacts now! 

Looking back the reason I didn’t see the real problem was due to my philosophies of no pain no gain, you must suffer for success, the absence of suffering and sacrifice leads to mediocrity.  I was not aware that my thinking was faulty as the reality I had created supported it and living in a Capitalist society, my views were in line with that, so I was heading for success as far as I was concerned.  By the law of attraction, all I was getting was pain, suffering, sacrifice etc.  Also, by law of attraction all of my success stories I’d heard of were of people that had lost everything and built it up again and generally stories that fitted with my philosophy, so I belived I was on the right track.

I have released some of beliefs so they are at a lower level than before, but there’s still room for improvement.  I’m much better than before, at least I now give myself permission to succeed.  As said earlier, these beliefs can be clever little things that you may not notice so depending on your level of self-awareness you may not know what’s holding you back.  Here are some ways I found of becoming aware of my faulty programming.

Ways to identify your self-limiting beliefs

Dream interpretation - I use dreams a lot to see what’s happening in my subconscious, especially recurring dreams.  A recurring dream is like your subconscious constantly tapping on your shoulder trying to get your attention about something.  I’m no dream guru by any stretch of the imagination, but when I realise I am having recurring dreams I set about researching what it could mean to me and what I could do to address it.  Dreams paid a huge part in my identification of self-punishment as a limiting belief I held. 

I was constantly having the same kind of dream where I was being attacked by the same people.  I knew these people in real life and had fallen out with them, which was the right thing to do but it was difficult.  The dreams were telling me I felt guilty and guilt always looks for punishment, my subconscious was telling me that I had a belief that I needed to be punished.  I set about learning about releasing this in real life and made steps, after a few months the dream changed into me having more power in the dream and standing up for myself.  A few months after that, I was catching punches being thrown at me with my hands and overpowering my oppressors.  The dreams ended with a final one of a conversation where we decided to go our seperate ways, made peace and apologised to each other.  I knew then that I was over that and I’ve never had one since.  Don’t underestimate the power of your dreams.

Questions and honest answers - Grab a pen and paper and be open and honest with yourself.  List the area(s) of your life that you are unhappy with.  Deal with each one in turn and explore why you are unhappy in those areas.  Really get into why the situation makes you unhappy, what you could do change the situation and what situation you would be happy with.  Explore what put you in that situation in the first place, what beliefs do you hold that have led you here.  What beliefs would take you to the situation that you have identified you would be happy with.

Really let your hands go and keep writing the answers to each of those questions.  If you are being 100% honest, you will be on your way to identfying your self-limiting beliefs, you may even be clear as to what they are. 

Goal setting - The process of setting clear goals can help you to identify your limiting beliefs.  Particularly the parts where you have set the actual goals for the various areas of your life and are looking into what could stop you from achieving your goals and what has stopped you achieving them so far.  Answer fully, honestly and truthfully.  Review your answers and read between the lines, remember there are no external reasons for not achieving them so far. 

Everything in your life you have somehow created.  I know this doesn’t sit well with a lot of people but unfortunately I didn’t make the rules.  It is unexplainable and there is a reason for everything so don’t feel blamed.  Look on the bright side, the great thing is that this also means it is within your control to change!  When you are continuously unable to do something becuase of someone else, you need to look deeper and be honest with yourself what the real problem is, clue - it is never outside yourself.

Coming soon to a blog near you - Ways to overcome self-limiting beliefs

If anyone knows of additional ways of identifying self-limiting beliefs, feel free to share and  leave a comment below.

Love, light and abundance x x x

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Jun 26, 2007
Filed under: Personal development, Growth