People can sometime be their own toughest critics and their own worst enemies — all at the same time. They let their limiting beliefs step between themselves and their goals. They convince themselves that they’re not cut out to become successful, or realize their dreams, or reach financial abundance and live the life they truly deserve and desire.
Their limiting beliefs have become so ingrained in their subconscious that they really don’t need anyone to put them down. They put themselves down by themselves and give up without any external pressure whatsoever. They’ve trained themselves to lose out before they start out.
How can you overcome limiting beliefs and de-condition yourself from planning your own failure?
1. Limiting Beliefs
Limiting beliefs are beliefs, thoughts, and ideas you have about yourself and the goal you’re after. They come in different forms, variations and intensity and they can become a real psychological obstacle that will scare you from ever stepping into your own greatness for the rest of your life.
For instance, you may hold the false belief that you can’t connect well with others because you’re not good looking enough. You may hold the false belief that you can’t start a business or become a speaker because you don’t have an MBA or an advanced professional degree in communication. You may also hold the false belief that you need to have a complete thorough plan for how you’re going to reach your goals before you can ever start, etc.
There are an abundant of false and limiting beliefs out there and people can’t seem to get enough of them. They invent all sorts of excuses and construct all sorts of limiting beliefs about themselves and the process of success that they’re out of touch with their own strengths and what they’re really capable of.
Not only do people hold false limiting beliefs. But they also hold true limiting beliefs. For example, in order to enroll in a Master’s program, you need to have a bachelor’s degree. You hold a true belief about what you need to have before applying to an advanced degree. However, this belief becomes a (true) limiting belief when you decide not to take action because you’re afraid to fail, or because you don’t know how, or because you’re not sure you can afford it, and so on and so forth. Essentially, you can make any belief a limiting belief if you really want to, and most people do.
The most popular limiting belief among people these days is:
“I need a lot of time to begin making progress on my goals. And I don’t have that privilege.”
I’m not going to address this limiting belief because if you still have any integrity left in you, then look at yourself in the mirror and say that line to yourself a few times. In fact, I challenge you to stand up in front of the mirror and say it right now…
My point: Stop lying to yourself and live it up to better standards.
2. The Will to Overcome Limiting Beliefs
There’s a technical way of overcoming limiting beliefs that I’ve written about here, and there’s the non-technical way of diving head first, and that’s what I want to discuss in this post.
The quickest way to remove a limiting belief is to put it to the test as quickly as possible and insist on finding the opposite results.
For example, if you have limiting beliefs about how your appearance affects your social and love life, then go out and take a look around. Do you see good looking men and women only with partners that are equally good looking? No. If you have limiting beliefs about needing advanced degrees to do certain things, then look around you. Can you find successful people that don’t have advanced degrees? There are a ton of successful entrepreneurs who are college dropouts, so what’s holding you back? If you have the limiting belief that you have to be born into a rich family to be rich, then look again. Do you know of anyone who was born into a poor broken household and has become rich? There are so many stories of people in this world who’ve made it against extraordinary odds. Why are they different from you? Why can they achieve their dreams, and why can’t you?
Sometimes, you have to will your goals into existence. You have to be single-mindedly motivated by an internal burning desire to be great. That’s all you have to know. Sometimes you just have to let go of the idea that there a “formula” out there that’s going to help you make it.
There’s really not much of a “formula” to break a brick wall. You only need to will to break through it, to smash through it, and to get every single ounce of courage to face up to it and decide to crush it. You just have to be ruthless.
3. Model Successful People
Aristotle and a great many classical and modern teachers have emphasized the importance of modelling others. If you want to be successful, you have to imitate success. But what do you do if you can’t get such people to mentor you?
If you can’t, that’s okay.
It’s enough for you to be inspired by the example of others. Instead of spending time watching superficial entertainment on Youtube, why don’t you listen to great speakers? Why aren’t you watching TED talks? Why aren’t you reading the ton of free information on the internet that can help you stay motivated? There isn’t a lack of information out there. Watch such speakers and be inspired by them. Humans are capable of doing, achieving and becoming more than you can begin to imagine.
If you’re waiting for the right time to start doing, making, creating, inventing, marketing, selling, communicating, and believing in yourself, then you’re still in the mind-paradigm of limiting beliefs. You need to get out of your head and silence that internal dialogue.
It’s cliché these days to say “the best time to start is right now.” And if you don’t find clichés useful enough, here’s another one, “if you don’t start right now, you will never start.”
Are you still standing in front of your mirror repeating the same old limiting belief to yourself “I don’t have enough time, money, education and contacts to work on my goals?”
Think again.
Get out there and change your story.