New year's Resolutions 3: Limiting Beliefs?

So many of us are capable of much, much more than we ever try to accomplish.  It isn’t the barriers in external reality that hold us back.  Oh, we see barriers all right.  And some of them are very real.  Yet many of them are not.  One of the deepest oppressions of all comes when the oppressed are so brain-washed by their oppressors that they don’t even try to rise up out of the mire.  The prisons are created in our minds.

We know what we really want from our lives, if we get mentally quiet and listen to our souls speak.  That’s why every coach, every consultant, every religious community has a meditation or quiet prayer tradition.  We need to still the chatter so we can know what our soul really wants.  [Hypnotherapy is REALLY good at this. A reiki Guided Journey is almost as good.  Victoria.leo.reiki@gmail.com or www.soaringdragon.biz for a FREE Getting Unstuck session.]  Sometimes these desires are holdovers from incomplete childish dreams and need more refinement to serve our adult needs. 

Nearly all of us have some limiting beliefs that are NOT truth, and that are holding us back.  Maybe you’d like to try entrepreneurship but are convinced you’ll fail.  You may believe that you can’t go back to school for a new degree that will guarantee a promotion or don’t deserve a really outstandingly loving spouse.  We walk around with hundreds of beliefs filling our minds every day, some of which tell us that we are bound to fail, that we aren’t good, kind and wise, that we aren’t worth people loving us enough to get mad at us.  We settle for half-lives because our earlier experiences have taught us that no one cares about us.  It’s easier to smother our sadness with food because we don’t believe that we deserve to be healed and strong and well and wonderful.  But we do and we are.  Working with a coach, hypnotherapist or other type of really skilled mental health specialist can, if we are willing to do a lot of really hard and courageous work, transform us in ways we can scarcely imagine, into people that we only dream about.

The danger of seeing limiting beliefs as a problem is that sometimes people get so thrilled at the concept of Limiting Beliefs that they forget that some beliefs are actually Truth.  We humans like a good story, and there’s nothing more enticing than the story that the ONLY reason we can’t do absolutely anything at all we want to do is a belief that we can’t.  You can get so mesmerized by the story that you tune out your analytical brain entirely.  A big mistake.  I don’t just have a belief that I can’t climb Mount Rainier.  It’s an actual fact.  Earlier in my life, yup.  This year?  Nope.  I’ve gotten myself into the physical shape that I can, and more “pushing” just leads to injuries.  I have what I have and I am enjoying myself immensely with what I’ve got.

The major way to tell the difference between Truth and a Limiting Belief is that wisdom always whispers.  Your limbic system is always urgent.  Don't listen to the emotions of urgency....

I hear so much dopey stuff from my coach colleagues.  If someone tells you that you have to quit your job immediately to prove that you have a real belief, passion or commitment to entrepreneurship, for example, take a deep breath and listen to your internal wisdom, not your jazzed up limbic system.  It’s very wise to test the waters with a new idea while you keep your cash flowing.  Business success needs hard work and belief, and it also needs to be serving a burning need felt by people who have money to solve that need.  People who get too deeply into the It’s All Belief camp can forget that market economies work in accordance with immutable rules and one of them is that passion is not a substitute for carefully crafted products, very clever marketing and the right channels.   You may have some real physical limitations that you can work around effectively if you don’t try to pretend they don’t exist. 

So do all the courageous work that needs doing to clear out old damage and beliefs that limit your real potential – which is enormous!  Find those beliefs that represent wisdom and truth and hold on to them, and let go of everything else that shackles you from your enormous power to be brave and compassionate in the world. 

When you clear out limiting beliefs, you can soar with dragons!  Come join me in the sky!