How to Identify Limited Beliefs: Understanding Their Presence and 4 Ways They Manifest in Your Life

Limited Beliefs is a mindset composed of false stories you tell yourself, and negative beliefs held as an undeniable truth. It’s the way you perceive certain things and bring meaning to the world around you. 

Introduction

One Wednesday afternoon in Bible study, our group talked about the Bible with our Bishop leading the discussion. He asked questions, and I knew the answers, but I felt scared to speak up. My voice was very low and shaky. Then, our Bishop stopped and asked why I seemed so nervous even though I got the answers right. That moment showed me how limited beliefs can hold us back and affect our lives.

These beliefs make us doubt ourselves and hide the truth with lies. They stop us from feeling confident and reaching our full potential. It’s like having a heavy weight on our shoulders that stops us from speaking up and believing in ourselves. Recognizing these beliefs and working to change them is important for growing and becoming the best versions of ourselves.

What Are Limited Beliefs?

Limited Beliefs is a mindset composed of false stories you tell yourself, and negative beliefs held as an undeniable truth. It’s the way you perceive certain things and bring meaning to the world around you. 

These beliefs constrain you in different ways and stop you from pursuing your goals and dreams, even though you have the desire to do so. Have you ever told yourself that you weren’t good enough to do something or thought about what others would say about the things you wanted to do? It’s clear these beliefs are lies and come from a place of fear and wrong beliefs.

Limited Beliefs are usually about yourself, others and the world around you; they dictate how you choose to respond to people and events in life. These beliefs are mostly negative and limit you from living fulfilling lives. Limited Beliefs come from childhood, your environment and from within your own imagination. 

Limited Beliefs are ingrained in your thoughts and behavior. These beliefs have been with you for a very long time, possibly since you were a kid and they are the driving force to the way you show up in the world. Whenever you have a strong desire to accomplish something great and choose not to work at it, you’re embracing all the negative reasons within your own mind. Which is the manifestation of a limited belief. 

How to Identify Limited Beliefs?

1.Consider Your Reaction to Success and Failure:

Do you often blame yourself when you fail at something? When you succeed at something do you deny giving yourself credit or a pat on the back? Do you contribute your success to happenstance? Your reactions can reveal what you believe about your worthiness and abilities. 

Next time you have a successful moment try paying attention to the way you feel (the emotion tells it all)? If there is any resistance toward being proud of yourself then it’s a chance a limited belief is the culprit. How about when you don’t finish something you start or your idea doesn’t turn out how you imagined it. 

Do you come down hard on yourself,  put everything up and stop trying new things? That my dear is a limited belief, considering Thomas Edison, the renowned inventor, made thousands of attempts before successfully inventing the electric light bulb.

2. Pay Attention to Your Negative Self-Talk:

Is your Internal Dialogue compiled of uplifting words to and or about yourself? When you make a mistake are the thoughts about yourself full of GRACE or self-criticism and judgment?

 How about when you eat that additional bag of chips that you promised yourself you weren’t going to eat? What is that conversation like? Pay attention to how you feel next time you do something you may have told yourself you weren’t going to do. Do you beat yourself up about it or do you forgive yourself and move on?

How do you feel when you walk in a room full of people? Do you tell yourself everyone is staring and judging you? Maybe, that’s why you tell yourself you don’t like being around people. In my younger days I would take ages getting ready and then I would convince myself out of going. This was because of my negative self-talk and how I believed people would judge me. Limited beliefs like these can steal your freedom and hold you back from living the life you desire “IF” allowed.

3. Examine Your Fears:

What do you believe about the world and your ability to succeed in the world? These beliefs might be thinking that opportunities are few, that success is only for a select few, or that the world is a harsh and unforgiving place. 

What do you believe about yourself and your desire to live a prosperous life? If you believe that pursuing prosperity will bring negative consequences, you might stay stuck in a cycle of fear and self-doubt, never fully embracing your potential. Perhaps you think that because prosperity hasn’t been a common thing in your family history, it’s just the way things are meant to be. 

What do you tell yourself when you have an idea to learn or try something new? I’ve always wanted to learn how to swim, but I never had the chance to. None of the women in my family—my mom, grandma, and sister—know how to swim either. Growing up, seeing that none of us knew how made it seem okay for me not to learn, which was a limiting belief that kept the fear of learning how to swim alive in me.

4.  Identify Recurring Behavioral Patterns:

At times, you might do things that make you feel really down on yourself and unhappy about your actions.. These habits could be because of beliefs you have that hold you back. 

For instance, you might have trouble with emotional eating: that means using food to try to feel better when you’re stressed, but it doesn’t actually help, and you end up feeling worse afterward. Maybe down through the years you’ve come to believe you always feel better after eating. 

Here’s another example: Sometimes you might struggle with procrastination. This means you often tell yourself that you’ll only need 30 minutes to get ready, even though deep down you know it will actually take you an hour. But you still hope to arrive on time and this is done over and over again.

Finally, there’s Conflict Avoidance: You may have the desire to communicate effectively and share your viewpoints about certain things, but the fear of being in disagreement with others always prevents you from expressing your ideas. You may keep repeating to yourself what you believe will happen if you express yourself, or how it may lead to an argument, but in reality others would love to hear your ideas.

I remember being in a mastermind class where we were brainstorming ideas to improve our organization. When asked for my input, I hesitated and said I didn’t have anything to contribute, even though I had plenty of ideas. I was afraid they wouldn’t sound good when spoken aloud. Later, I tried to share my ideas with the director one-on-one, but it was too late. I felt defeated because I realized how my recurring false belief was controlling my actions.

Conclusion: 

This narrow way of thinking happens subconsciously to keep you safe, comfortable and in control. You might think that agreeing with these limited beliefs is the easiest thing to do, hoping it will help you predict what will happen. This only keeps you bound and prevents you from reaching your full potential in life. It also stops you from thinking creatively to come up with new ideas and inventions. 

Identifying limited beliefs takes awareness and Self-Reflection. You’ve told yourself these stories for a very long time so it’s important  to remember that it will take patience and organized effort to acknowledge the presence of these beliefs. So be kind to yourself and try to identify where these beliefs are coming from.