Limiting beliefs are not personal

If you are into personal development you have most likely heard about limiting beliefs. For you who have not – a limiting belief is something that you believe about yourself or the world that holds you back.

We all have limiting beliefs, however some of us have more than others. Your limiting beliefs were created in the past when you interpreted reality in a certain way. However most of our limiting beliefs were created unconsciously, without us knowing it.

For example when I grew up I had asthma(I still have) and my parents and other people around me told me that asthma is not good for my health. Eventually that led to me believing that I would not be able to become extremely healthy, although my parents' intentions were not to teach me that. So, a reality for someone can be completely different for someone else. We interpret reality in different ways. To my parents it was obvious to tell me that asthma is not optimal for my health when I asked them, but for me it created a limiting belief about my health in general.

There are different kinds of limiting beliefs. For example if you have no legs, then it is quite obvious that you will have a limiting belief that tells you that you will not be able to play football with the top players in the world. Other beliefs are more subtle, however.

A lot of people in modern society believe that you have to work from 9 to 5 if you want to make a living. I am not saying that society does not need people doing that, however that does not have to make ANYONE believe that they have to be bound to work that way and limit themselves. Another example of a more subtle limiting belief, is that you need to be extremely good looking or own expensive stuff, like cars or apartments, in order to attract women. That is not true.
How are these beliefs that holds us back created? Plenty of them are created due to social conditioning and furthermore they are created when we grow up. However this article will not circle around social conditioning, but why these limiting beliefs are not personal to yourself specifically.

In order to understand fully why most of our limiting beliefs are not personal I want to point out social conditioning particularly. There is an entire system that unconsciously creates and reinforces the same limiting beliefs in people all over the world. That is how impersonal they really are.

Furthermore, if you have a limiting belief about something, let us say that you have an extremely limiting belief about getting girls. If you then even think about getting girls, that will appear utterly outside of your reality. “ How is that even remotely possible. That is just not me.”

Maybe you have believed it for so long that it is now a part of your identity. YOU ARE somebody who is not good at getting girls. That is the evil, limiting and idiotic balloon of doom that I want to stick a needle in with this article. A limiting belief is something you have, not something you are.

It is not bound to you forever and therefore it has nothing to do with who you really are. Nothing. It is most likely something you have picked up along the way of growing up and learning how the world generally works. If you are fat, and believe that being fat will make you unattractive to women, it is not the fact that you are fat that will make you unattractive, but the fact that you believe it will.

The first step of getting rid of a limiting belief is to acknowledge that it exists. The next step is to question it.

Reading this, you will not be able to immediately question and change all of your limiting beliefs. But what you can do, and what you can keep in mind, is that the parts of your life in which you limit and doubt yourself, have nothing to do with you personally.

A very limiting belief, or a web of limiting beliefs brought together, tend to feel like it is holding you stuck where you are. However you are the one holding the limiting belief, not vice versa. Do not misinterpret the fact that limiting beliefs are not personal with not taking responsibility for having them, because taking responsibility is the key to change our beliefs.