How To Identify Limiting Beliefs

Learn what limiting beliefs are, how they form and most importantly how you can identify them so you can eliminate them. No more wondering why you can't get what you want in life, now you have the tools to identify those limiting beliefs that are blocking you. I've included five different techniques to help you uncover those limiting beliefs.

Transcript

Welcome back to the Discover Heal Thrive podcast.

My name is Andrea and I am your host.

And this week we are going to talk about how to discover your limiting beliefs.

We are going to start with exactly what limiting beliefs are and then we're gonna move on to how they're created and then get into how to actually figure out what your limiting beliefs are.

Okay,

So let's get into what is a limiting belief.

A limiting belief is a belief we have either about ourselves or the world in general that is preventing us from achieving our dreams,

Preventing us from finding happiness,

Joy,

Whatever it is that we are after.

Now,

It can be conscious or it can be subconscious.

We might know fully well what our limiting beliefs are,

But for most of the time we actually don't know what our limiting beliefs are.

And so this is why we can get really frustrated when we're trying to make progress on something and we're not having any luck.

So that's what we're gonna cover later in the podcast is finding those beliefs that we just don't know what they are.

Okay,

So how exactly do these limiting beliefs get created?

Well,

The most common way that they get created is when something happens to us in life and we don't fully process it correctly or we ignore it,

It gets turned into a belief.

It can also be something that's repetitively happening that then turns into a belief.

Most of the time this occurs in our childhood.

And this is because as a child,

We need other people to take care of us.

We need our parents or whatever older person is taking care of us or it's difficult for us to survive.

And so when something happens in our childhood,

We don't have the ability either mentally or emotionally to fully sit down and go,

Okay,

What happened?

Why did I react this way?

Instead,

We process that as a child in order to survive in the household environment that we are in.

So if we have an experience on vacation as a five-year-old and it was great,

We internalize vacation with family is awesome.

If it was bad,

We internalize vacation with family is scary and we put that in there as a five-year-old.

Now,

As we go through our childhood,

We have different experiences then to layer on those as a 10-year-old,

A 15-year-old and how all of those then do this layering thing where our beliefs are built upon each other.

And because we are in agreement with those who are raising us in order for us to be safe,

It can create limiting beliefs that are detrimental to us down the road.

So as you are 30,

40 or even 50,

This belief that you created about vacation with family as a five-year-old,

If you haven't readdressed it,

It is still coming up and impacting you,

Helping you figure out what you do or don't want to do on your family's vacation.

So that's the predominant way that these limiting beliefs occur.

This process can happen outside of childhood too.

Let's say you have your first few jobs in your 20s and you are finding that you are continually passed over for a promotion in favor of somebody else.

Well,

If you don't actually sit down and understand your feelings and allow your feelings to be felt,

That becomes a limiting belief that you can't succeed,

You can't move forward.

And then depending on the circumstances around it,

It might turn into you're not good enough or whatever the factors were,

You're gonna turn that into a limiting belief.

Now,

Another thing that our beliefs are formed on is the beliefs that we're straight out handed,

Not just interpreting around us,

But as we're a child,

We're told by our parents to believe certain things.

And we internalize those as correct,

Again,

Because we're in this family environment and that's what we're being taught.

And then one of the final ways that we create these limiting beliefs are by our past lives.

So if you have come into a life,

Into this life,

In order to clear a karmic debt around a particular lesson,

And you need the past life information,

You're gonna bring those feelings from the past life with you.

So you might have zero experience with something in this life,

But you have this random belief and fear that you can't figure out where it came from,

Chances are it's a past life.

Now,

Personally myself,

After I had finished doing all of the really deep work,

Counseling,

Journaling,

All this stuff to figure out my limiting beliefs there was a few of them that I just could not understand.

They didn't apply to my current life circumstances.

And this is when I began to explore past life regression stuff and this is where all of a sudden I would have these aha,

I'm like,

Oh,

That's why I like this,

Or that's why I freak out about this.

So that's your other source.

Before we dive into how to find these limiting beliefs,

I want to put out there that limiting beliefs can be multi-layered and can be at opposing ends.

And so as you're doing this work of actually finding these limiting beliefs,

It can be frustrating,

It can be confusing because of these two factors.

What I encourage you to do is just keep working at it.

Over time,

You will begin to see the pattern.

So to give you an example in my own life,

Money has been one of the biggest issues with limiting beliefs and the limiting beliefs were literally all over the place,

Including you can only be loved if you have money.

On the flip side,

I also have the limiting belief of if you have money,

Then you're evil because you got it in a bad way.

And then I also had the limiting belief that,

And this is a limiting belief,

Not because of what it actually is,

But because when you layered it in together,

I had the belief that money was good because that provided for all of your needs.

The reason I say that was a limiting belief because it sounds like a positive one was it because it was conflicting with the others.

So as you're going through this,

Remember there can be multiple around one section,

They can be multi-layered and they can be at opposite ends of the spectrum.

All right,

So the first thing that you should do when looking for a limiting belief is be aware of your thoughts.

Yep,

The very simple process of paying attention to the first thing that pops into your mind when something happens will lead you to your limiting beliefs.

So let's say that you have an opportunity in your job and the very first thought that pops into your mind is,

I can't do it.

Well,

There's probably a limiting belief behind that.

So take that thought that popped into your mind and begin to explore the belief around it,

Which leads me to the second way of discovering your limiting beliefs and that is journaling.

Journaling is a fantastic way to uncover limiting beliefs.

So with the thought that popped into your mind of I can't do this,

Take that to your journal and begin to explore it.

So the first thing that you can ask yourself is,

Why did I have this thought?

Why do you say I can't do this?

List out every single reason that you have as to why you can't do this.

Then what you want to do is maybe pick the one or two that really pop out as either a belief or have a really strong emotion tied to them and begin to explore in your journal when that started.

When did this belief occur?

What you're looking here for is a very specific situation that triggered a belief.

Now,

There might not be a situation because some of our limiting beliefs can be because our entire life we were told,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No,

No.

And so sometimes there's an event and sometimes there's not,

But we really want to see,

Okay,

Was there an event that triggered it?

Now,

Sometimes you'll find in a,

Sometimes it is a series of no's,

Like no,

No,

No,

But then you'll find one specific instant that it really,

Really showed what that whole theme was about.

So if you were told no your whole life and there was one particular situation where you really wanted something and you got no,

Start with that.

You want to look for something that you can begin to unpack.

Then what you want to do once you find that instance is begin to work through it.

You can start by writing a story of what happened.

You can start by just unpacking your emotions tied to that.

You can start by simply sitting in a meditation or just listening to your thoughts as they come.

Whatever feels comfortable for you.

It might be a whole nother journal session,

But this is where you're going to really start to explore what the limiting belief is,

What triggered it,

So that you can then move on to healing it.

All right,

So the next thing that you can do is look for repetitive issues.

So if you have a limiting belief that is,

I'm not good enough,

You will find that across many different areas of your life.

It'll show up in your career.

It will show up in your finances.

It will show up in your relationships.

And so look across all areas of life where you're struggling with the same thing repeatedly.

And that can be an inroad to understanding the limiting belief that is causing the problems in all those different areas.

If you find a repetitive theme and you think you know what it is,

Go back to those journal questions and explore them even more.

All right,

So the other thing that you can do is body work or body information.

You can also call it somatic meditation,

Somatic body work.

So basically what happens is when we're experiencing life,

We experience it from all of our senses.

We experience it mentally,

Emotionally,

Physically,

Spiritually.

And what happens is when we don't deal with an emotion,

We don't,

It doesn't just go away.

We might think it went away,

But it didn't.

It's still hanging out in our body.

Our nervous system,

If it doesn't have that opportunity to reset or release what we're doing,

Keeps it.

And so you can turn to your body to gain information about what is going on in your mind.

Body work can be just about any form of interaction with your body.

So one thing that I like to do is just tune into my body to see what hurts or where do I feel this feeling?

So I was working on one of my limiting beliefs around money and I just kind of centered in,

I actually did this on a walk.

So this,

You don't have to be sitting to do this.

You can be moving.

I was on a walk and I said,

Okay,

Where do I feel this?

And I felt it in my heart.

And so then I went to my heart and said,

Okay,

What do you need me to know?

And then I just waited to hear an answer.

And as I work through this limiting belief and was given more and more information,

I again checked in with my body.

Where do I feel this?

Okay,

That's on my back.

Okay,

What do you need me to know?

And it will slowly dissipate.

There can be more active approaches to body work and body work can be yoga,

It can be massage.

There's a bunch of other options.

I actually have scheduled for later on a podcast on body work.

So that will be coming up soon,

But you can turn to your body to gain insight on limiting beliefs.

Now,

The final tool that I wanna talk about for uncovering your limiting beliefs are doing past life regressions.

I talked about how our limiting beliefs can be tied to past lives.

And the way to access that information in an efficient manner that you can actually then apply is through a past life regression.

So what happens in a past life regression is you work with a hypnotherapist who will actually walk you back into a past life.

You can either fully experience it or you can just kind of view it.

And everybody does it slightly differently,

But what you will see is what happened in that life and why it's impacting you today.

You can then take that information back to your journal or back to your healing techniques to move forward.

It is such a powerful tool that I think everybody should look at it after they've done everything else.

So I would do everything that I talked about first,

First,

Like get rid of all the limiting beliefs tied to this life that you can find,

Then move on to past life regression in order to find those limiting beliefs that you just can't figure out.

So for me,

It got to the point where I'm like,

I really have zero clue where this is coming from.

And that's when I started doing the past lives and went,

Oh,

Okay,

That's where it came from.

That's where it came from.

And this is the karmic debt I'm trying to solve in this lifetime tied to that,

Which is why I brought that limiting belief with me.

So those are the techniques you can use to uncover your limiting beliefs.

I hope those helped.

If you have questions,

Leave them in the comment section when you rate this talk and I will get them answered as soon as I can.

Thank you.

Reviews

I have never thought to go back in time to figure out was the root of my self limiting beliefs. I will definitely go back and listen to this again, because you speaks pretty fast. I think however that it is more me that gets distracted very easily. Thank you. I enjoyed it very much. 🙏🏼🪷🙏🏼

That was awsome Andrea! I want to do more work in this area😎🙏🏻

Very interesting! Thank you!

Thank you for this toolkit, some of it was exactly what I needed today! I'd love to hear you talk some more about limiting beliefs around money, did you recors by any chance a podcast like this? May you and your loved ones stay safe and well :)