Most people are constricted by limiting beliefs about themselves and the world, and most of those beliefs are false. If you can learn how to overcome those limits, you can accomplish your dreams.
What Do You Believe?
The first step is to recognize what type of limiting belief you are dealing with. You may doubt your own capabilities, especially if you have often been told that you cannot do a thing. You may face obstacles from outside yourself, such as a lack of money or time. It may appear as though you have very strong evidence to support those claims, but questioning that is the first step to removing those limits.
Ask Yourself Questions
What you need to do next is allow for the possibility that you’re wrong. You may be very resistant to this. Not having time or money seems like a pretty objective judgment about your situation. Think of this as a game. What happens if you tell yourself a different story? Maybe you want to learn how to play guitar, but you don’t have money for the instrument or for lessons. However, if you pushed past that limiting belief, you might realize that you do have financial options. You could take out a personal loan to cover the costs of a guitar and a teacher. Once you start to see that there are other approaches to solving a problem, you may start to let go of some your limiting beliefs.
Thinking Bigger
Learning not to limit your beliefs is similar to working out to build physical muscles. As you learn to eat healthier, practice physical movement often, workout, and build the habit, it gets easier to move on to bigger things. Maybe you have told yourself that you can’t pursue a certain career because you don’t have the aptitude for it. Underlying the idea that you can’t become an astrophysicist is the belief that you are bad at math, but what evidence do you have of that? Maybe you struggled with math in school, but it’s been a few years since you were in school now and your interests and ambitions have changed. Why not at least test that, maybe by enrolling in a math class online or through a local community college, and see what happens when you challenge it? In most cases, what you will find is that your assumptions were wrong and that there is no need to limit yourself.
Dealing With Others
Dealing with, and overcoming your own self-doubt is tough but getting it from others can be even harder. Many often set their limits based on what their family, peers, and colleagues say or believe. Maybe you want to go on a long-distance hike but everyone thinks of you as not being very athletic or outdoorsy. It can be surprising how easy it is to adopt others’ perceptions of you. Keep in mind that you do not have to change anyone else’s perceptions, and you do not have to share your plans with them if they are going to chip away at your belief in yourself. The more that you do to challenge your own limits, the more you will see them dissolve.
