Ways to Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs

byDShensky

1.3K followers

6 years ago

Your limiting beliefs are often caused by your unconscious and unquestionable thoughts. You can't see it in yourself while you can see it in someone else.

Some things you can do to become aware of and overcome these limiting beliefs:

The book Games People Play refer to the things we do to limit ourselves by using the phrase "I can't because....."

Write down this list:

I can't_____________ because_______________

Then turn around and rephrase the sentence to

I can______________ because _______________

After you change the wording in your sentences repeat them over and over until you believe them.. It's your unconscious thoughts that tell you that you can't and then you move them into your conscious thoughts. What you're doing is retraining your conscious thoughts from the negative thinking to a more positive thought process.

In Transactional Analysis we refer to you thinking on 3 different levels:

1. The Parent who says you should
2. The Adult who says I'm able to
3. The Child who says I want

What the parent or any adult help create limiting beliefs in a child by the things they say to them and giving them the message you can't, then that child grows up to be an adult and repeats those phrases in their head.

That is how low self-esteem is established and how you as an adult can repeat those same phrases to your own children. It's when you recognize what you're doing and first learn to change your way of thinking that you can begin to think more positively about yourself and give encouragement to your own children.

Transactional Model of Communication

When you look at the models in the picture above you can better understand how we communicate with each other and how that communication can negatively impact your psyche and thinking.

As you can see a child adapts their thinking about themselves to the things they're told by adults and their peers. If those adults are supportive or nurturing they grow up with a positive view about themselves but if the adult is critical they grow up with a distorted view of themselves and need to retrain their thinking from that of a negative one about themselves to a more positive view of themselves.