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Why it Matters
Can people learn, change, grow? Can I, and is it worth it to even try? Why does it matter?
It matters because your beliefs are so incredibly powerful and most people don’t even know what they believe living on auto-pilot, let alone know how incredibly powerful beliefs are and
that they can be changed, for the better. Beliefs influence your attitude, your behaviors and ultimately your identity. And that is really incredible and exciting, even if you already have a growth mindset – there is always room for improvement. You can have a growth mindset in one aspect of your life but limiting beliefs in other areas of your life, but in another, not so much.
When you can identify your limiting beliefs – those that hold you back – and eradicate them, there is personal power in that. When you can change your limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs – then you can work effectively towards everything you want to have, be or do. The ability to identify, eradicate and replace your tired, outdated belief structure is a valuable skill that will take in the direction of your dream life.
This is one step in moving from where you are to where you want to go.
I tell you how in Simple How-To Guide to Identifying and Replacing Your Limiting Beliefs. This instructional post will help you identify the beliefs that are holding you back and give you practical steps to getting them out of your head, replace them with empowering beliefs and start moving forward. A basic how to get unstuck guide. As a life coach, I walk my clients through this process and have many other tools to guide them on their best life journey.
Your beliefs strongly influence:
Your attitude; your attitude is how you feel about and react to what happens during the day – your life experience. And your attitude influences how others react to you. Do you think people are generally happy, nice, friendly? Take a look in the mirror. That is very likely who you are; how you show up. Others reflect back to us what they see in us. Do you think people are grouchy or unfriendly? Take a look in the mirror.
Your behaviors, which then become habits. And your habits shape your life. They make things easy, or hard. They help move you forward or hold you back. They let you see opportunities, or only problems and situations to be avoided.
Your self-talk. How you encourage yourself, or dissuade yourself. How you feel about yourself and what you can or cannot accomplish. The possible vs the impossible. Positive self-talk leads to healthy self-esteem.
Your language. How you talk to others, how you talk to others about yourself. what you believe is possible for them and for you. Encouraging or discouraging. Opportunities or pitfalls. Stuck or unstuck.
You can see how incredibly powerful your beliefs are. To be able to identify those that are not working for you, correct them – it’s like a super power. And it can be your super power.
Do you know where your beliefs came from? Did you inherit them from your parents? Were they created by your own experiences? Or someone else?
You have, most likely, an endless array of beliefs about everything. From ‘knowing’ how your day is going to go based on the weather. Perhaps not consciously, but when you wake up and it’s dark, rainy, the wind is blowing – somewhere in your mind to you think ‘this is going to be a bad day’. A lot of people have that correlation. That belief that links how they feel to the weather.
Do you feel love when your significant other gives you a gift? If yes, you believe love is expressed by gift-giving. You have a correlation, a belief that links receiving to feeling loved.
Do you feel angry or disrespected if someone interrupts you? You have a belief that it is disrespectful to interrupt someone. We really don’t know what is going on with the person doing the interrupting. That person may have great respect for you. Maybe they are in a hurry, or have a headache, or are just so excited about what they want to say. It may have nothing at all to do with respect.
I’ll share one of mine so you can see how sneaky they can be. I uncovered this belief that influenced my behavior a long while back. Whenever I would make Sunday breakfast for my husband and son I would never eat with them. I would pick at things while I was cooking, but never sit down and eat with them. I didn’t even realize I wasn’t doing that (we ate dinner together). What I was doing – the not sitting and eating breakfast with my family - just felt normal to me. My husband mentioned it eventually and I had to really think about why I was doing that. I had to go back to my childhood where on the weekends, my grandmother would make my cousin and me weekend breakfast of pancakes, bacon and eggs. And she never sat and ate with us. My belief was that you do not sit and eat breakfast when you are the cook. Obviously a groundless and ridiculous belief. And I never questioned it until it was brought to my attention. Not a tragic hold-me-back belief, but it did steal Sunday-Morning-Breakfast-with-the-Family from me. Wild. What’s going on in your life?
Your challenge is to find one limiting belief lurking in your mind and influencing your behaviors. Do you know where it came from? Share in the comments, or even better - join my Community and we'll chat.
It is possible to identify limiting beliefs and replace them with empowering beliefs. Find out how here.
Today has your name written all over it!
Linda Short of Elle Short Coaching is a certified health and life coach. I help people struggling with where they are to create their own life story and take action toward their life vision. So that they can get unstuck, find joy in each and every day, and live their best life.
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