What is a limiting belief?

People talk a lot about limiting beliefs, but what are they really?

Beliefs are like a root system, you find one, and realize it’s attached to another one, and so on it goes. So it seems like a mammoth task to not only become aware of these limiting beliefs but then also to address them.

I’ve realized that attached to all the limiting beliefs that I have are a few core beliefs I have about myself. So really, I don’t need to worry about all the offshoots of other beliefs, I just need to address and shift those about myself.

For example, if you believe money is hard to come by and that you have to work hard to get it, what is a belief about yourself attached to that? That you don’t deserve an easy life? That you don’t deserve good things to happen to you and for you? There will be something you believe about yourself attached to this first belief. Yes you can alter your belief about money, but the other belief still remains and it’s a much stronger belief.

If you believe that it’s hard to find a good man or woman, and that dating is hard, you can similarly trace a belief about yourself. Is it that you believe that it’s hard to love you?

Once you can start to see which beliefs about yourself are the roots of all your other beliefs then you’re heading in the right direction to start to evolve what you believe. You might like to start with spending a little bit of time learning how these beliefs formed. Likely, they formed quickly and easily when you were a child. You can choose different beliefs and change them relatively quickly in the here and now.

Listen to your self-talk and observe what it all shows you about what you believe. Then get down to the essence of those core beliefs about yourself. Give yourself a huge dose of compassion for this too, because it can be quite confronting. But once you see the core, you now know you can change, and life will never be the same again.