Limiting Beliefs: How To Identify And Overcome Them

If you want to know how to identify your limiting beliefs easily then you’ve come to the right place.

In this post I aim to show you exactly what limiting beliefs are, examples of limiting beliefs and how they sabotage your success, how to identify them and then finally how to change them.

What Are Limiting Beliefs?

Limiting beliefs are just ideas or statements that we believe to be true. They limit our ability to obtain our desired outcomes.

This is because we act and behave in accordance with what we believe to be true.

I would go as far to say that beliefs have power over everything. Your entire reality now is because of the beliefs you have.

Human beings always act and feel and perform in accordance with what they imagine to be true about themselves and their environment. – Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-cybernetics

How Self Limiting Beliefs Sabotage Your Success

One of the most common reasons people fail to achieve their goals is simply because they don’t believe they can achieve it.

They’re lacking self-belief. Well that’s a limiting belief!

Usually what happens when you don’t believe you can achieve something is that you don’t fully commit and you don’t take enough action.

Because of that you end up failing and that in turn reinforces your belief that you can’t achieve what you want.

Another common area where limiting beliefs come up is around money.

You may want to make more money but if you believe that “money is the root of all evil” or that “people will judge you for being rich”, or that “it takes a lot of hard work to make money”…

Well those are all beliefs that could sabotage your success. You may want a lot of money but you’ll either never really try in the fear of being judged or becoming evil, or you may just make a lot of money and lose it all by making poor choices.

Subconsciously you may think along the lines of “I better get rid of this this money before people start judging me for it…”

Something like that, I hope you get the point.

Limiting beliefs operate at a subconscious (unconscious) level and because of that they are hard to uncover and identify.

They’re operating silently in the background, dictating our thoughts and actions without us even being aware of them.

Examples Of Limiting Beliefs

In this post I hope to provide you with some excellent questions that will help you to uncover limiting beliefs.

Once you gain that awareness you may find that they go away all by their own. If they don’t, then there are many tools to help change them into empowering beliefs.

But before I do that though I just want to make sure you know what you’re looking out for.

So a limiting belief is any belief that could stop you from achieving what you want.

Typically limiting beliefs limit action, limit your thinking, limit your creativity and lower your motivation. They also trigger fear – so anything that could do that is what you want to look out for.

Typical limiting beliefs take the form of:

• I can’t do that because…
• I don’t deserve it because…
• If I do this then something bad will happen…
• If this happens it means something negative…

This might look like:

• I don’t believe I can make $10,000 a month because I’ve never done it before.
• I don’t deserve to be successful unless I’ve worked really hard for it.
• If I make a lot of money people will and take advantage of me.
• If I fail it means I’m not good enough.
• If I get rejected it means there is something wrong with me.

Questions To Identify Your Limiting Beliefs

As you’re reading this now I’m assuming that you may have figured out that you may have some limiting beliefs that are keeping you stuck – you just need to figure out what they exactly are.

The best way to do that is to ask some probing questions.

So pick a goal that you haven’t achieved yet or an area of life that you would like to improve.

Get clear on the outcome you want and then ask yourself the following questions. What’s important is that you just write down the first things that come to mind. Self-honesty is key here.

1. Why do you think you have not manifested this goal already?
2. What beliefs do you think you hold that stand in the way of this goal?
3. What do you think your main blocks to achieving this goal are?
4. When you think of this goal what thoughts surface (positive and/or negative)?
5. When you think of this goal what emotions do you feel (positive and/or negative)?
6. When you think of this goal, do you feel any resistance to creating it? If so, what comes to mind?
7. A) On a scale of 1 – 10, how deserving of this goal do you feel?
   B) If the answer to the above question was less than a 10, why do you think that is?
8. A) On a scale of 1 – 10, how much do you truly desire this goal?
   B) If the answer to the above questions was less than 10, why is that?
9. A) On a scale of 1 – 10, how committed are you to this goal?
   B) If your commitment is less than 10, why is that?
10. What are your main fears about achieving this goal?
11. How/in what way would you and your life be different if you achieved this goal?
12. Are you comfortable with all the above changes or do any of those changes feel uncomfortable to you? If so, which ones and why?

Once you’ve asked yourself these questions, go through and examine your answers. You should be able to identify some limiting beliefs that you were not aware of before.

How To Change Limiting Beliefs

Once you have identified the limiting beliefs you want to change then you have quite a few options.

Sometimes you may find that just becoming aware of your limiting beliefs is enough for them to lose their control over you.

Your options include NLP, EFT, Sedona method, Lefkoe method, Hypnosis, visualisation, and affirmations to name a few.

Another simple way is to doubt your limiting beliefs. You can do this by questioning them.

A few questions to ask would be:

1. Is that really true?
2. What is the reason(s) I believe that?
3. Where did I get that belief from?
4. What are the examples of this belief being untrue?

If you question any belief enough you’ll create doubt and you’ll be able to let go of that limiting belief.

Lastly, how will you know when your limiting belief has changed?

Simple! Just observe your behaviour for a few weeks. If you have successfully changed your limiting belief then your behaviour would have changed too.

Well I hope that you have found this helpful. If you have any helpful ideas around limiting beliefs then leave a comment below and if you need any more help, guidance or clarification then I’d love to hear from you also.