Self-Limiting Beliefs

[Catlover]

Which approach do you think would work better in overcoming self-limiting beliefs? For example, beliefs like you can only lose a certain amount of weight or that you are not a "people person"

• Meditation--clear your head altogether to lessen negative and self-limiting thoughts. Deepak Chopra suggested this in a recent interview concerning his book on Buddhism.

• Affirmations--using the Law of Attraction, believe that you are in the process of becoming something in order to attract it. "I am in the process of becoming a healthy weight." From Michael Losier in The Law of Attraction.

I'd love to get the forum's thoughts on this question, especially those who have experience with one or the other approach.

[ReallyGoodIdeas]

EFT is brilliant for clearing limiting beliefs! I used EFT on my own limiting beliefs to lose the weight I needed to lose.

It takes a lot of mental head-clearing to clear limiting beliefs cos they are deeply ingrained. Many limiting beliefs are listed under our basic "how the world works" and "self-identity" rules, and they are very hard to clear just by emptying your mind.

Affirmation by themselves can actually just underscore the beliefs. Go on, say out loud to yourself "I am in the process of becoming a healthy weight", and listen to the voice that comes into your head right after you've finished speaking. It's actually like a conversation is happening. "You can't lose weight, you always give in on a diet", or "You've always been fat" or something along those lines. Did you hear it?

EFT refers to these comments as "tail enders", and they are being affirmed each time you say the affirmation. So unless you get rid of the tail enders, you will have difficulty with affirmations. This is where standard affirmations give affirmations a bad name.

Now get a basic beginners guide on EFT (my website or the emofree website - mine's shorter tho!) and now, say the affirmations over a few times, write down the tail-enders and do EFT on each tail ender until you can say the affirmation and there is no voice telling why you can't.

Now the affirmation will work, and you may well find that with no willpower used at all, you will lose the weight. There's more info on this at <http://www.reallygoodideas.com.au/positivity-part-1/>, including how to frame the affirmation for maximum success!

Give it a go, what have you got to lose?
Much joy to all
Hazel

[Steve]

I have tried many strategies for this, including various forms of meditation. What worked the best for me was reading this book: Amazon.com: Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated: Books: David D. Burns

The book was originally meant for treating depression, but cognitive therapy can be used to change any limiting belief you have.

[Brett]

I've come to understand that self-actualization is a multi-step process (no-way simplified here):
1. Identifying what you want.
2. Stop jeopardizing or witholding yourself.
3. Act!

For me #2 is the biggest challenge cuz it holds everything in place (i.e. it becomes real). For #2, there's NLP, meditation, affirmation, etc. I think EFT is one of the best ways to quell limiting beliefs (google: emotional freedom techniques affirmation limiting beliefs).

All limits are held in place by energy (any form: physiological, chemical, electrical, etc). EFT helps reset the flow, and re-balances the energy levels, essentially restoring the flow. Basically you become complete with yourself. I.e. all limits are now realized and held as concepts and ideas without the emotional investment, or being "caught up in it". You end up "letting the belief go" and move on. Another benefit is that it's fast. You can have limit after limit piled on top of each other, but EFT is quick and driving to the real core of the issue.

You can then use other techniques to empower, act, etc.

P.S. when doing EFT, notice any physical/feeling changes immediately. I seem to burp alot when working on anger issues...

[dianec]

Oh, EFT, most definitely. This ranks way, way above NLP in my book.

Also consider other energy techniques like Tapas Acupressure Technique and EmoTrance (which sounds like it ought to be about hypnotism, but isn't - it's so named for EMOtional TRANSformation). Another good one that I sometimes work with is Zensight.

[laceyjade10]

I love the info you guys are posting here, it's helping me alot, I'm so excited!

[eblight]

Why not use both approaches; meditation and affirmations. Both help to focus and concentrate the mind. However, to be effective meditation and using affirmations need to be done regularly and consistently. A lot of people will give up because they say it doesn't work for them. They give up because the mind starts resisting and comes up with all sorts of excuses and reasons why meditation or making affirmations is not working. I write about meditation and I have used affirmations. I can truly say that both are very effective to change yourself and your life.

[Mark Lapierre]

Why's that, Angela?

I second both the EFT and cognitive therapy suggestions (though part of EFT is cognitive therapy). I haven't repeatedly used any formal techniques, though I have tried out and had some success with many. Looking at my successful changes of belief from a high level, all of them have come from learning to accept reality before trying to change it.

There are many ways to accomplish that, and I highly doubt that any one method could be truly called superior, mainly because some people's perspectives are more in tune with certain approaches. So give everything a try and stick with what works best for you

I'd also suggest meditation anyway, to everyone, regardless of whether or not you want to change beliefs. Mental health is a big issue these days, and meditation is one effective way of staying in good mental health.

[Mags]

I'd definitely agree with eblight - it is probably best to use both meditation and affirmations. The two complement each other: for example, through meditation, you learn to quieten your mind and to focus, which makes your affirmations so much more effective.

[Catlover]

Thanks, everyone, for your comments. I've read them all but haven't the time on weeknights to really dig in to the information. I'll try to report back, but until then, keep the comments coming. Thanks so much.

[Samuel Bryson]

I think the first approach of meditating would work well, however might I also suggest the idea of "living in the now" as i like to call it. This is quintessentially also a buddhist principle, but obviously one need not be buddhist to understand and use it. Basically it asserts that one cannot control the past or the present but rather the little snippets of "now"/present time, which make up our life... thus it empowers the practitioner to change things now, just one little bit at a time, as that it is really all that can realistically be asked. - it is a general principle able to be moulded to any problem, including of course self-limiting thoughts.

I wrote a little about it recently in a post here: Total Wellbeing: Living In the Now – The Philosophy of Happiness with a Twist of Zen , if you'd like to read more about it.

[Christian223]

EFT for sure is a great tool wich i also higly recommend, try following theses videos, they are faster than reading the free manual, just be sure to focus on the feelings, try to increase them, and then tap YouTube - Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) Introduction good luck.

[nick pagan]

Beliefs are just imagined facts or imagined models used to try and make sense of the world - to establish a cause and effect. However, a lot of beliefs are nonsensical but we try to obey them. The best thing to do is to turn a belief into a theory about personal behavior and then test the theory with real world results in a dispassionate way. Real world results can often undermine limiting beliefs and prove them false. This is the most direct way of getting those results that you want and proving that you can turn things around. It is far more practical than meditation and the law of attraction (I personally have short shrift with both of those methods).

If you can prove a belief wrong through some small real world evidence then just keep on doing the little things that proved it false in the first place. Before you know it you will have developed skill, competence and achievement and the limiting belief just has to crumble in the face of the evidence that you have created, little by little.

This article goes into greater detail:Turn Beliefs Into Theories

I hope that it helps you in your efforts to set yourself free of limitations

Nick

[Keith]

An idea suggested by (I think) Tony Robbins is to undermine the belief systematically in a journal or something.

Journal answers to questions like:
* What emotional/financial/physical/relationship etc. pain is this belief bringing into my life?
* What reasons do I have to not believe this?
etc.

Then do the opposite for the replacement belief:
* What emotional/financial/physical/relationship etc. pleasure does this belief bring into my life?
* What reasons do I have to believe this?
etc.

This could easily be combined with meditation, affirmations, etc.

[z1freeride]

Originally Posted by nick pagan

Beliefs are just imagined facts or imagined models used to try and make sense of the world - to establish a cause and effect. However, a lot of beliefs are nonsensical but we try to obey them. The best thing to do is to turn a belief into a theory about personal behavior and then test the theory with real world results in a dispassionate way. Real world results can often undermine limiting beliefs and prove them false. This is the most direct way of getting those results that you want and proving that you can turn things around. It is far more practical than meditation and the law of attraction (I personally have short shrift with both of those methods).

If you can prove a belief wrong through some small real world evidence then just keep on doing the little things that proved it false in the first place. Before you know it you will have developed skill, competence and achievement and the limiting belief just has to crumble in the face of the evidence that you have created, little by little.

This article goes into greater detail:Turn Beliefs Into Theories

I hope that it helps you in your efforts to set yourself free of limitations

Nick

This makes more sense to me than the law of attraction. If one has a "self-limiting" belief then it might be true (at the moment). Confidence in various areas of life come from competence not from a belief.

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre

I second both the EFT and cognitive therapy suggestions (though part of EFT is cognitive therapy). I haven't repeatedly used any formal techniques, though I have tried out and had some success with many. Looking at my successful changes of belief from a high level, all of them have come from learning to accept reality before trying to change it.

My experience of changing beliefs has also come from accepting reality as is and not as I wished it was. To quote DR. Phil, "You can't change what you don't acknowledge."