Are Limiting Beliefs Keeping You From Realising Your Potential?
Don’t you love the current expression: ‘does what it says on
the can’. The can is, of course, purely metaphorical and ‘does
what it says’ suggests clarity and ultimate intelligibility.
A limiting belief, obviously, does exactly what it says on the
can: it holds people back in any and every area of their life.
Perfectly clear - or is it?
In fact, the potential problem lies in the underlying assumption
that the limiting beliefs sufferer actually believes they have
any real and unique value, gifts and qualities. Often they
don’t. That’s the nature of a limiting belief.
Women who have endured the brainwashing of an abusive
relationship don’t feel they are blessed with value, gifts and
qualities. Understandably, they tend not to feel blessed at all.
Even if they know, with their head, that they have certainly
abilities; even if friends, family and colleagues corroborate
this, they don’t really believe it. It has no bearing on their
emotional world.
“Yes, but…” they’ll say; or, “it doesn’t make me feel better
about myself”, or other words to that effect. They can’t feel
any pleasure in the good that others see in them, because they
simply don’t believe it. The only communications they can truly
receive are on the frequency of the negative beliefs that they
hold about themselves.
It’s an agonising place to be, as well as endlessly frustrating
for the people who try to support them.
Working with other women’s limiting beliefs recently took me
back to my first experience of coaching…
At first when the core question: “What’s holding you back?” came
up: I couldn’t even formulate an answer.
I thought I was doing pretty well when I eventually came up with
an answer and proudly offered it to my first coach: what was
holding me back, I said, was me.
Awareness has to start somewhere, I guess. As I now see it, I
was both right and wrong. What was holding me back was me -
inasmuch as it was not anyone else
But, equally, what was holding me back it was not me.
You see, we are not our self-limiting beliefs and our
self-limiting beliefs are not who we are. Not at all. They are,
at most, a distorting, fairground mirror, in which we glimpse a
grotesque distortion of ourselves.
I know this with my head because I’ve learned it somewhere along
my own (ongoing) journey. I believe it with my whole being
because I see it in the women I work with.
They may experience themselves as a human black hole. Regardless
of what goes into them, nothing unconditionally good will ever
come out from them. Or so they believe. They feel condemned to
sit forever on the sidelines, watching the great game of life
without ever becoming full participants.
They are like hungry, urchins, whose nose is forever pressed
against the window, They can see other people seated at the
banquet of life and they know, they just know that they’ll never
participate in that feast.
Now, that knowledge is false. They have no way of predicting the
future. Their view of their world is simply darkened by a
self-limiting belief that appears to have all the trappings of
reality. So they struggle, futilely, with a vision of the future
that is crude, pessimistic, and false. That vision that crushes
them daily.
And yet, as soon as they turn their focus away from themselves,
they are perceptive, creative, supportive, nurturing, dynamic,
multi-talented, energetic. Those qualities, and many more, are
who they truly are.
Anyone who survives an abusive relationship has actually dug
very deep and unearthed enormous personal resources and riches.
For as long as they continue to regard themselves through the
filter of self-limiting beliefs they may well remain deaf, blind
and numb to their own personal treasure. But their treasure will
continue to grow and the day will come when they are able to
claim it and rejoice in it.
How long will the process take? That depends. If you listen to
your limiting beliefs, it’ll make the seven labours of Hercules
pale into insignificance.
But if you start to challenge them, if you start to ask yourself
- or better still, get someone else to ask you: ‘Is it always
that way?’, ‘Do you never…?’ , ‘How do you know what the
future holds? Do you have special gifts?’ then you’ll start to
get some new answers and some new realizations.
You’ll find that your limiting beliefs will start to fall by the
wayside. You’ll be surprised by how much faster you can move
forward without them. And you’ll be amazed to discover just how
special and valuable you truly are.
(C) Annie Kaszina 2005 To contact Annie, email:
annie@joyfulcoaching.com To subscribe to Annie’s bi-monthly
ezine, or order her eBook ‘The Woman You Want To Be, go to
http://www.joyfulcoaching.com