Blueprint >> Limiting Beliefs

Disclaimer: This document is in raw form as I process and distill 4 years-worth of my personal development notes. Expect some typos and cryptic language for now. I will be updating frequently and polishing up.

Prescription: Understand limiting beliefs. Eliminate limiting beliefs.
Related Concepts: Mind Power, Subconscious Mind, Destructive vs. Constructive Thinking, Positive Thinking

What is Limiting Beliefs?

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Why is it Important?

Limiting beliefs are holding you back from achieving your goals, keeping you stuck in frustrating old patterns. Victims are full of limiting beliefs while creators believe in their own resourcefulness.

Limiting Beliefs Videos

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Limiting Beliefs: Key Points

A limiting belief is just any belief that hinders your potential growth in life. A limiting belief is just an unresourceful way of seeing the world. If you could believe the opposite of what you belief now and performance better, then your current belief is limiting you. Limiting beliefs are usually developed during childhood or adolescent, or from traumatic life experiences.

Examples of common limiting beliefs:

• Money is evil.
• Rich or successful people had to cheat or screw people to get the top.
• I am unattractive.
• It's impossible to lose weight and keep it off.
• Running a business is hard.
• I am a shy person.
• People can't change permanently.
• Money is hard to make.
• I am not talented enough.
• I am not smart enough.
• I can't charge more for my product/services.
• I have to be extra-nice to people so they like me.
• You can't make money in a bad economy.
• All the great men are taken.
• All the great business opportunities are taken.
• If I lose my current job, I will be homeless.
• A beautiful girl will never want to date the real me.
• Going to the gym is painful.
• A small, new business can't compete against a big, old business.
• You have to pay your dues to get to the top.
• Life is inherently frustrating and bad.
• All marriages fail.
• Other people can do it because it's easier for them.
• I am too old to start that.
• People can't be trusted.
• People are out to hurt you.

The objection naturally comes up, But what if my limiting belief is actually true?! This is rarely the case. Most limiting beliefs are very easily disproven by looking around at examples of other people. Are there people who make lots of money easily? Are there people who lost a lot of weight and kept it off for years? Are there people who found their ideal man or woman? If so, then you can do it too. You just don't want to face the reality that the way you've been things up to now isn't right and that you'll have to make some changes.

Don't be too attached to your beliefs. Beliefs are just models of reality, not reality itself. The fact is, you can't ever be certain that any of your beliefs are true. The best you can do is to strive to weed out false beliefs and adopt beliefs that empower you. Why would you hold on to a disempowering belief like, "I will never find my ideal mate?"

Limiting beliefs are hard to drop because your brain is really good at finding selective evidence to support them. But your brain is subject to confirmation bias. If you belief that all men are assholes, your brain is likely to underscore every example of male asshole behavior while ignoring kind male behavior.

Any limiting belief can be challenged and dropped with time.

The strongest beliefs are subconscious. These beliefs guide you behaviors without you even realizing it. These beliefs don't even feel like beliefs, they just feel real. This is the way reality is. But you don't know the way reality is. Your model of reality constructed from a very limited set of experiences that have been biased by your confirmation-seeking mind. If you had a different set of experiences, your beliefs would be completely different.

Subconscious limiting beliefs need to brought into the conscious and consciously eradicated. Ways of eradicating limiting beliefs:

• Contemplation + Affirmations
• Actively seeking out disconfirming evidence
• Study the matter. Read books or watch seminars to expand your awareness of the evidence.
• Talk to experts and friends.
• Act despite your belief and try to disprove it, even if only just a small part of it.
• Lefkoe Method

Is it advisable to accept a belief you know is untrue but is empowering? If the belief is patently false, like "I can fly if I jump off a building", then the downsides of operating from a factually incorrect basis will outweigh the benefits. But this is rarely the case. Most limiting beliefs are never this black and white, and they concern your self-image — which can be whatever you want it to be. In which case, make it empowering. There is also a potential downside to taking on false beliefs that weaken your epistemology and value of truth. If you take on a lot of negative beliefs about how the world works, or the concept of truth loses value for you, you will get in trouble at some point.

References

1. Mind Power, John Kehoe
2. Lefkoe Method, Morty Lefkoe