Beliefs are you convictions, which are a result of your experiences, traditions or as told by your elders/parents. But do you know, once upon a time, which is considered a belief, after sometime it ceases to exist when something contrary to that ‘belief’ takes place. Lets’ take a real example of ‘Belief’ disproven. It was previously believed that running a mile under 4 minutes was humanly impossible. But on May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute barrier, running the distance in 3:59.4.
Barely a year after Bannister’s accomplishment, someone else ran a mile in under 4 minutes. Then some more runners did. Now, it’s almost routine. Even strong high-schoolers today run 4-minute miles. Similar is the case of our lives. Sometimes we hold on to beliefs which are totally debilitating our growth. And these are known as ‘Limiting Beliefs’. They Limit our thinking,growth & development in life.
In NLP we say that there is no such thing as ‘I can’t do it’, its only ‘I don’t want to do it.’ When you say ‘I can’t do it’ its just a limiting belief.
Let me give you my own example of overcoming Limiting Belief.
Before 2006, I used to firmly believe that I will never be able to do public speaking. If somebody told me that I have to speak for only 5 min in a particular event, I would have sleepless nights many days before the event. Then finally one day I decided that, if so many people out there do public speaking, then why can’t I? And I started to visualize myself giving public talks & also started practicing alone in a closed room. Until when I could finally break my limiting beliefs.
And Alhamdulillah now I have given more than 100s of public talks, and can easily give seminars & presentations in front for an audience of any size.
Action Item: Analyze what are the Limiting Beliefs in your life, which are hampering your growth and over come them using the Power of visualization.
The Thumb Rule to analyze a limiting belief is: “Any action which you want/love to do, but you think, you cannot.”
To overcome it, you need think/visulize what you want to do in your life, till it starts manifesting itself as a reality. God willing.
Please share your experience of overcoming your Limiting Beliefs.
Note: The Beliefs which I am talking here are not the Religious Beliefs, which is a personal choice.