All my life I saw myself as a creative person, not a sporty person. I did school sports because I was forced to and Athletics Day was my 2nd worst day in the school year – Swimming was the 1st.
I also saw myself as someone quiet and unable to lead as a result of this. I held onto these beliefs and I honestly believed that they were truth.
The actual truth was: I never tried to be good at sport and when I was given an environment in which I felt comfortable I was able to be a great leader. At some point in my journey I had to confront those things which I had held onto: are they true? Really? Or was I just convinced they were true?
When we were growing up we had horses. We would keep the horses in the same field as the cows and these fields had electric fences. Later, when we moved the horses, we found that they would not go near the new fences even though these were not electric. It was as if the horses had created an invisible barrier in their minds.
A lot of the time we go through life and collect limiting beliefs which become barriers to our potential.
Limiting beliefs about ourselves
So often something happens in our lives – someone says something, we don’t do well at a first attempt of something new, or we have a negative experience and this creates a belief in our head. We often believe “I’ll never be able to be regular at gym”, or “I’ll never be able to afford that”, or “I keep messing up all my relationships”. Truth is anyone can be regular at gym and get better. Everyone is able to be good with finances if they keep working at it. And everyone can have good relationships in their life. People love to use age as a limiting belief – oh, I’m too young or oh, I’m too old.
Mostly these are excuses we’re offering because we don’t really want to take the risk or have to tap into courage or confront a situation we don’t want to confront.
Limiting beliefs about others
Have you ever had someone assume that you can’t do something? It’s horrible. Or assume that you will behave in a negative way because they have put you into a “block”. We make assumptions about what people can and can’t do all the time based on race, background or gender. “She’ll be bad at swimming, black people can’t swim”. Or, “all women are overly emotional”. “I have never seen a girl from this area of town do that”. People are individuals. Life is tough, why not encourage each other and remove the limiting beliefs that are attached to stereotypes?
Belief about the world
It will never get better. People often look at the bad stuff in the world and their country and say: “it will never get better.” You don’t know that. Plus your attitude isn’t helping anything get better. Sometimes people say things like: the publishing industry is dead or there are no jobs or all jobs are office jobs. This is not true! How you perceive the world will affect how you do business and how hard you go for things? Don’t focus on the beliefs that say you can’t, rather those that say you can.
” The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit. ” – Proverbs 18-21
This means if you are positive, you see good things in life. If you are not, bad things. It’s good to ask ourselves the question: “What beliefs do I have that are limiting my ability to move forward? Is the obstacle really out there, or is the belief what’s really keeping me stuck?”
Today, I exercise often and I’m pretty decent at sport. I also lead lots of groups and I really enjoy it. Which shows if I hadn’t questioned those beliefs I would have limited myself.