Limiting Beliefs
I recently came upon Morty lefkoe’s free link to eliminate a belief. I got plenty of these things going around in my head stopping me from doing plenty of things, so I figured I’d give it a shot. His institute and lofkoe method is said to be highly effective and is highly recommended. So I click the link, press play and wait anxiously, ready to throw out a couple of my limiting beliefs.
The process is a straightforward cognitive process that sort of works like this:
First, Morty explains that you must become aware of the core belief you wish to eliminate. Whatever it is that you would like to eliminate, acknowledge it. Don’t be ashamed to have it. There is no reason to be ashamed of having it. Everyone has them.
Then, he explains that we need to become aware of when we formed it. To think back to the source or sources. It’s ok if you have one or one million experiences come to mind. What’s important is that you know that no one event led to the belief. In most cases, a belief is formed from many similar experiences. You don’t need to remember specific incidents. As long as you have a sense that there was a negative feeling attached to the experience and you can imagine what that would’ve been like. That’s all that is necessary. Think about the negative feelings that were presented to you at the same time the beliefs were formed.
Next, he goes on to explain that when you go back to the time when the belief was formed, can you see that there was no real meaning in the event until you gave it one. If the same event had happened to a couple of your friends, everyone would have more than likely interpreted it in different ways. For example, say there was an incident where you developed the belief “I’m not good enough” when you came home one day with your report card full of B’s and you showed your mom and all she did was yell at you about something. Well, her yelling could have been interpreted in many different ways and had no meaning to it. One of your friends would’ve assumed that, “She is just in a bad mood,” one might’ve thought, “She could’ve just got in a fight with dad and had been letting her anger out on me.” There are many different meanings that could’ve been derived from the event.
How You Choose
This is where I turned away from the program and had to ask myself,
“What makes a person choose the meanings that they do choose?” “What makes us assign meanings anyway?”
I think this question is important as well and says something about a person on a much deeper level. Since most of us probably have some sort of limiting beliefs I think it deserves some deep introspection to get to the bottom of it, no?
For example, let’s say you’ve just gotten out of a relationship and your ex had broken up with you. Now, this happens all the time, but everyone will give it a different meaning. Some people may take it personal and as a sign that “I’m no good”, some may take it as meaning “It just wasn’t meant to be” and some may take it as meaning that, “Yes, I am ugly and my parents were right, nobody can ever love me!”
Seeing how harsh, hurtful and disempowering some of these beliefs can be, why would someone pick them? Is it because we have a desire to believe certain beliefs that we ALREADY hold about ourselves? Hmmmm…… *walks back and forth deliberating*…. just a thought, but I do think sometimes we already have some beliefs set in stone and adopt supporting beliefs to strengthen those foundations. That’s just my theory, but why anyone would want to believe bad things about themselves baffles me.
The Power of Choice
This idea takes me back to when I first read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and how Stephen Covey explained that between stimulus and response, we have the freedom to choose how we respond to things that happen to us in life so that we can act instead of always be acted upon, becoming proactive instead of reactive, because we have response-ability. Furthermore, in your response lies your power to make or break yourself. It can be the difference between success and failure, getting his/her number or getting rejected, etc.
I do think that the same principle can be applied here. Between what happens to us and the meaning we give to the events, we have the freedom to interpret events how we wish.
Getting to the Point
I’m assuming that you’re on a journey to somewhere in life. Perhaps you’re not there yet; you’re stuck in your thinking. You have a limiting belief, maybe it’s, “I’m not good enough” maybe it’s “I don’t deserve it”, “I’m weak, I’ll fail” or something of that sort. Well, I don’t have to tell you that these beliefs are holding you back from taking action to live your ideal lifestyle. I’d recommend trying the link at the top, but also stopping to think about why you chose the meaning in the first place.
Beliefs aren’t facts. They aren’t “the truth”. Whenever you have a belief that is holding you back, stop and ask yourself, “is this true?” After some reflection, oftentimes you’ll see that it’s not. We only “believe” something because we don’t “know” it for a fact. How everyone develops beliefs is kind of different. These events have no objective meaning. We assign meaning to events so that we may learn about it and so that we can predict certain outcomes in case our behavior produces the same event again.
When an event happens/happened and you decide/d to give it a meaning, why do/did YOU CHOOSE the meaning that you do/did? How then has the meaning empowered or limited you and affected the rest of your life?
Robert says
Hey Sam,
So you’re saying you choose by which explanation motivates you the most?
That’s a productive way to think. That’s sort of how we work in acting. With every action, we have to have a reason for doing the action and in that choice is our talent. Some choices are stronger or weaker but never better or worse. All depends on the actor.
Congrats on picking up the motivation to create yout blog. Way t turn that incident into an opportunity
Financial Samurai says
Sometimes I get mad, but I use bad events to give me motivation to kick their a&& next time in whatever happened.
Getting a guest post rejected a year ago for example gave me so much motivation, to build a good blog and a network of like-minded bloggers (Yakezie) to succeed. Now we’ve got the site going up in August, and hopefully the rest is history!
Choose to be happy, and just to harness negativity in your favor!
Cheers Rob.
Sam