So here we are at the final installment of the 3 Part Limiting Beliefs blog series…
Entire books have been written on this topic, long term transformation programs delivered on Limiting Beliefs alone. So please be assured, I am, in no means, offering a quick fix solution here in my lil’ ol’ 3 part blog, however it is my intention to open your mind to the concept that these nasty gremlins exist, do some serious damage and can be tamed into submission, with work.
Hard work.
Mind blowing, life changing, EPIC and totally worthy, WERRK.
To go into battle, fighting for you, is the most noble of work because it will revolutionize how you engage with the world AND the impact you can have on your own life and those around you. Imagine if Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr or Abraham Lincoln not only believed the what the haters had to say but also believed what their internal fears whispered to them too? Self-belief and belief in others is the solid foundation of human connection and love needs both to grow tall and proud.
Okay, to review… PART 1, I talked about Limiting Beliefs AKA Negative Head Chatter that can totally block your ability to be open to giving and receiving love, and worse, holding up a stop sign to even meeting one of the ‘good ones'. http://www.jessicaelizabethcoaching.com/blog/2016/10/13/love-killer-closed-minds-closed-doors-how-youre-blocking-your-chances-to-find-love-and-be-more-loved-and-what-to-do-about-it
Part 2; We hammered away on getting crystal clear as to why carrying around this negative head chatter is blocking you from love. Check it out! http://www.jessicaelizabethcoaching.com/blog/2016/10/19/hand-over-the-limiting-belief-security-blanket-cause-darlin-its-smothering-you-and-your-chances-for-love-without-sounding-like-some-platitude-crazed-wanna-be-guru
NOW, let’s learn the first bars of the Limiting Belief swan song; how to start to re-write these beliefs and start attaining some freedom, right now. From limiting to limitless!
Warning; The formative lessons in re-writing limiting beliefs is not the stuff inspirational internet memes are made of… we are not skipping way ahead to ‘The Law of Attraction’ or ‘The Secret’ mindset of flipping these 180 degrees to 100% positive manifesting mantras. In my years of coaching work, I have found that being BELIEVABLE is crucial to start turning the ship AND for lasting cognitive change to take root in the brain and grow.
And hey, YOU are a smart cookie. You are not so easily fooled and neither is your brain, lovely. So taking ‘ALL MEN ARE DOGS’ and changing that to ‘ALL MEN ARE PERFECT TRUSTWORTHY BEINGS SENT TO LOVE ME’ is a beautiful sentiment and a powerful manifestation tool however, re-writing limiting beliefs is not about just changing the energy we put into the world. It’s about remapping your habitual mindset. The thought processes that are closing doors on your chances at engaging with the right people and with love. PLUS, as certain as I am that NOT ‘ALL men are dogs’, we both know that NOT ‘ALL people are perfect trustworthy beings sent to love us’ either. Yeah, that.
The best way to illustrate this formative, yet earth shattering life lesson in changing your inner dialogue is through the ancient form of storytelling. Gather around, kids...Its story time.
I want to tell you about Lorna, a therapist and a client I coached last year and her experience with our work on Limiting Beleifs. Lorna came to be struggling in her marriage. She was unhappy. She was focused on all the things her husband needed to change to make their relationship better. However, being a seasoned therapist… deep down she knew she had a part to play too. Even if she couldn’t see it. She also knew she was in the midst of self-sabotage and truly, this was a gem of a partner, she was not willing to lose without a fight.
Over the course of our work, we delved into some sessions around limiting beliefs and core values. We uncovered a lifelong belief she had that resonated as ‘He’s ALWAYS lying; they ALWAYS lie’. When we unearthed this limiting belief, one born in childhood after watching her own parents poorly role model trust in their marriage and then further fueled by past relationship where trust had indeed been broken between herself and that partner, Lorna was truly shocked. She had never actually said it aloud and the thinking was so embedded, she hadn’t realized she was thinking it!
As we unpicked the thought process and the correlated actions she took in her marriage, she saw clearly for the first time, how she was backing her husband into a corner that he could not get out of honestly. Because she greeted him with suspicion and the underlying belief he was lying all the time before he even opened his mouth, a self-fulfilling prophecy and dynamic was being deeply grooved into their interactions. He has started to lie about where he was, even though his true location wasn’t actually problematic, simply because he hoped to avoid the interrogation and fallout. His only defense were self-preservation tactics because nothing he did say or do, seemed to help. He felt defeated and cornered at every turn and, like most caged animals, was lashing out in frustration. Lorna felt hopeless and trapped too. Things were beginning to escalate, at warp speed nine!
So how did we get past her limiting belief, “He’s ALWAYS, they ALWAYS lie’? First we returned to the point of origin. Coaching is a conversation between two people offering a non-judgmental, fresh, unbiased perspective and challenge to our well-worn way of thinking and doing. Lorna was able to speak openly about her past experiences where the initial evidence for this limiting belief was born and nurtured WITHOUT the fear of therapeutically getting ‘stuck’ there, re-hashing the past. (Please note; therapy is powerful and necessary work for many. Lorna had already spent a lot of time in therapy reviewing these incidents.) In coaching, we focus on moving forward and beyond with action based steps. Coaching is the “okay, I get it, now what?” phase of healing and change.
So I set to challenging Lorna’s application of this life lesson. How it was effecting her in the here and now AND how it was not applicable to all situations. We went through the practical application. How this ‘rule of thumb’, this limiting belief was not only too general a rule for ALL people but how unfair it was to make someone (her husband), pay for someone else (parents, past lovers, etc..) mistakes. We utilized the powerful tools of compassion and empathy to ‘walk a mile in their shoes’ to truly understand how it would feel to be on the receiving end of this mindset. We explored how the application of scarcity and finality in her marriage was robbing BOTH of them of happiness, joy and serenity. That’s about when the damn broke inside Lorna and the tears flooded out. Lemme tell you, TEARS are a good thing!
Now properly motivated as to WHY this belief had to go, we could charge ahead to HOW.
It’s imperative that this belief is re-written by you, in your own voice, tone, language. The negative statement is so comfortable it’s often undetectable so ingratiated in your mind chatter, it does not even blip on your radar anymore. If we are going to trick the mind, the one who has been operating with this belief, we are going to have to go a bit cloak and dagger here. The new belief we will use to challenge it, needs to be as user friendly as the old one, so to speak. So Lorna and I began to negotiate the terms of the re-write.
Going FROM ‘He’s ALWAYS lying, THEY always lie’ TO “He NEVER lies, ALL people are 100% honest all the time’ wasn’t going to cut it. Not for a minute.
In the end, Lorna re-wrote her negative belief as follows;
FROM, ‘He’s always lying, THEY always lie’ TO ‘Some people do lie, however today I am going to trust him, because he deserves it.
Um, really? THAT WORKED FOR HER?? That doesn’t sound very impressive or inspirational!!
There are a million variations of how this could have been re-written, however in the work we did around the limiting belief, the point of origin, the damage it was doing to her current relationship and the empathy journey of what is must be like to be greeted by your partner with this liming belief, was VERY powerful for Lorna. We bottled some of those tears, cause where we were going, we needed them! Using that emotional attachment, tapping into that massive, damn breaking, shift had to be a key part of re-writing this, FOR HER. Most important, Lorna had absolute confidence in this newly written belief.
The above re-write allowed Lorna to acknowledge that the past trauma was indeed real, but that SHE and her husband deserved to live in the here and now. It was jussssst enough, for her mind and heart to open up to the possibility that he wasn’t ALWAYS lying and not ALL people lied.
I warned you, this process isn’t fodder for your social media inspirational quote posts but don’t ever underestimate the massive impact the smallest shift can have. Establishing a pathway with hope opens the door to faith, love and blow your brains out of the back of your head kinda’ change!
Implementing the new belief is a call and response exercise. An ongoing conversation between your existing limiting belief and this new one. The mind throws up 'He’s ALWAYS lying, they ALWAYS lie’ and we pause, acknowledge it, then come back quick with 'SOME people do lie however, TODAY I am going to trust him, because he deserves it.' With practice, practice, practice… repeat, repeat, repeat… and with time, we burrow a new neurological pathway. A pathway that will one-day welcome the footsteps of implicit trust in Lorna’s marriage.
FYI – I bumped into Lorna and her husband a couple of months after our coaching was complete… he pulled me aside and thanked me. “I don’t know what you did but thank you so much for doing it.” The relief, the joy and the serenity were etched on this face, and on hers. TOOT TOOT goes my horn but honestly, Lorna is the real heroine here! YOU GO GIRL! And nothing gives me more pleasure then watching their happiness, romantic travels and long lasting harmony shine bright via their Facebook posts.
