Busting Our Limiting Beliefs

It can be difficult to challenge your thoughts in your head as it is hard to separate ourselves from our thoughts.

Thoughts are just that, thoughts. They can be changed, but there a couple of important skills required to do so. Firstly, building ‘self awareness’ around our thoughts and feelings. Being able to name them, starts the process of being able to separate from them and gain a different perspective.

Secondly creating the ability to reframe those thoughts into something far more enabling for us to work with.

I have come to realise that our thoughts can be right or wrong (or even both) but there is a question that I now use for myself and I’d love to share it with you.

Is this thought pattern the most useful and placing me in the most resourceful state of mind right now?

By being able to ask and answer those questions of ourselves, opens the door to creating a new and more powerful frame or belief.

Some examples of more powerful thought pattern prompters

What would I be doing/ thinking if failure was not possible?

What would I be doing/ thinking if I was wildly successful?

What would (insert name of inspiring person) be doing/ thinking right now?

By asking these questions of ourselves, we create a gap in the event and response and potentially change perspectives, giving ourselves a chance to choose the most powerful and useful state of minds.

Try it out and see how it works for you. When you do, notice the little voice in your head that wants to hang onto the old/ less useful thoughts. Just noticing those limiting thoughts, acknowledge them and let them pass, making way for the new and more powerful thoughts.

This process can be very powerful and practicing them when the stakes are lower – enables us to build these skills so we can call on them when the stakes are high, and when we need to perform at our best – be in our most resourceful state of mind.

We are powerful and inspiring, even to ourselves and when we can acknowledge that, we bring a higher level of self-awareness and self-regulation to the fore.

Self-Awareness and self-regulation are 2 of the four elements of Emotional Intelligence that Daniel Goleman has identified that influences our success in life. I would recommend a couple of books for those that would like to explore the field of Emotional Intelligence further

• Working with Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman. Bloomsbury Publishers
• Emotional Intelligence – Teach Yourself Series. Christine Wilding
• The EQ Edge – Emotional Intelligence and Your Success. Stein & Book. Jossey Bass Publishers