When talking about beliefs is worth making an important distinction, not all limiting beliefs fall in the same category.
Limiting Beliefs tend to fall into 3 distinct categories;
- Hopelessness
- Helplessness
- Worthlessness
This distinction is a very useful tool to help you get at the root cause of your beliefs.
To make this concept simple to understand, let’s take the example of someone not being able to achieve his/hers goals, and feeling dejected by this.
By using the model above, the resulting beliefs would sound something like this:
As the term implies, when we have this kind of belief we think that there is no hope.
It does not matter what we try, who we ask, what we do: “It cannot be done”. Stop.
Of course there are (unfortunately) times when this may be true. If you are an elite sport person training for a gold medal at the upcoming Olympiads, and you have an accident that leaves you paralysed, than it is realistic that you may feel hopeless towards your goal.
Fortunately, for most of us, that is not the case. Usually, there is a good chance that we have a limiting belief, and that in fact our goal can be achieved.
Our world is full of examples that illustrate people overcoming incredible obstacles to achieve their outcome.
Click on the video below to watch an amazing woman choosing her beliefs.
The second category is a feeling of helplessness.
An accurate description of this feeling is:
“A lack of self-trust, an inability to establish a sense of trust in yourself so that you can open yourself up to be vulnerable to hurt and failure by taking a risk to “do for” yourself.”
This belief tends to stop people from trying, and often makes them look at others for support. Creating a sense of dependency and self fulfilling prophecy of inability.
The last category is:
This belief is often unconscious.
Something has happened in the past to make us feel that for some reason we are not “worth it” or we are “not enough”.
I remember a personal experience that really shocked me.
Few years ago, I was participating at my very first “personal development” seminar. (I am omitting the name of the organization on purpose, as I do not really endorse their methods now).
One of the exercises involved all participants to go around the room and introduce themselves to every other person by their biggest limiting belief.
Therefore instead of going up to someone and saying: “Hello, I am Susan/Mark/Jim etc…” You would say something like: “Hello, I am too stupid/short/tall/ etc.”
Well, about 75% of the people all said the same thing when shaking hands:
HELLO, I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH
At the time it shocked me. All these people taught that everyone else was good enough, BUT not them! They felt that they were inadequate, and most of the room felt that way.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since that first vent, and I have learnt few things. If someone were to approach me now and say those words, my reply would be: “Good enough for what?”
Since then I have learnt that, for most people, limiting beliefs are often a result of an unconscious issue related to self worth. You see, when we believe that we are worthy of something we also usually belief that we can achieve it. We belief that there is a way.
When we give up on something, is usually because we do not believe deep inside that we’ll ever be able to achieve it. We are not worth of it. You see this often in regards to relationships, careers and financial situations.
Regardless if you feel hopeless, helpless or worthless, have a look at your beliefs, the unconscious ones as they dictate your actions and therefore your results.
How can you uncover your unconscious beliefs?
You can either book for a one on one session with us or you can download your free Belief Buster Workbook here.