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Did you know that we all have two types of beliefs? The enhancers that allow us to succeed and the limitations that do not allow us to grow and lead us to failure. Do you want to know how to get rid of the last ones? Keep reading!
We will start by asking ourselves what are beliefs? They are a series of deeply rooted principles, ideas, rules or thoughts that generally come from our childhood and were fixed in our subconscious by an authority figure or by our own experiences.
As we said there are two types, the enhancers that empower us and offer us resources to go beyond our limits and the limitations that put us in obstacles, constantly slow us down to leave us within our comfort zone and lead us to not being able to achieve our objectives.
Both influence our way of acting and thinking, however, according to Joseph O’Connor and Andrea Lages, in their book Coaching with NLP , beliefs are principles of action.
That is, if you want to know what a person believes, look at what they do, not what they believe. Each of us build our own beliefs based on our experiences, but then we act as if they are absolute truths, in other words, we are what we do.
If you observe a successful person, you will surely see that they have a set of empowering beliefs around them. His experiences have led him to think that there is nothing or no one who can stand between him and his target, consciously or unconsciously.
But on the other hand there are also people with limiting beliefs. Those who wake up every day saying to themselves, “Success is difficult”, “Others are better than me”, “It takes luck to succeed”, “Fixed income is more secure”, and so on.
These types of beliefs are the culprits that we do not achieve our objectives and generally fear hides under them, which prevents us from developing and does not allow us to see the growth possibilities that reality offers us.
But then what do you do to get rid of the limiting beliefs?
What we need is to create a process of consciousness through 10 steps with questions that will lead us to question the effectiveness of limiting beliefs and replace them with empowering beliefs.
These 10 steps are as follows:
1. Identify the limiting belief
First you have to identify the limiting belief by asking yourself questions like these: Why does this happen to me frequently? Who told me that this must be so? What makes me think this? Some examples of limiting beliefs can be: “All men / women are equal”, “I will never be able to achieve that”, “I am not good at public speaking”, and so on.
2. Ask ourselves where we got that belief from
We need to ask ourselves, where did I get this belief from? Was it from experience or from an authority figure and what was the context? What is the reason why I think that way?
3. Ask ourselves what this belief is of use to us. (Positive and negative)
All beliefs have some positive point, however some lose validity, for example: As children we were taught not to talk to strangers, that belief was positive in childhood, however, in adulthood it loses validity because we have to learn to relate to people outside our social circle, in other words, networking . It is important to identify what was the original positive reason and later understand the loss of validity and its current negative reason by not allowing us to grow and develop.
4. Give us the opportunity to change our belief
After reflecting on the loss of validity of belief and how it has become a limit to our growth, we must give ourselves the opportunity to change that belief for a new one. This is where the consciousness process begins.
5. Replace the old belief with a new one
Once we have made the decision to change the belief, we must replace it with the positive opposite belief. For example, we can replace the belief that “I’m not good at public speaking” with “I don’t have the skills to speak in public yet.” The second suggests that the skills are not available, but can be acquired.
6. How can I improve my life by applying the new belief?
Then we must analyze the different scenarios and how we can improve our life by applying the new positive belief. Following the previous example, we could infer that by acquiring the new skills we could not only speak in public but also improve our security and self-esteem in front of a group of people.
7. How could my life be made worse by this new belief?
In the same way, we must analyze what the negative scenarios will be in case of applying the new belief. The goal here is to reflect on how little our life would be adversely affected as we are trying to implant new positive beliefs.
8. What’s the best thing that can happen to you if you continue the old belief?
Having asked ourselves the previous questions, it would be necessary to analyze what would be the best scenario that could happen to us if we continue with the old belief. By reflecting on this question we will understand that we are going to continue the same and with the same inconveniences that the old belief entails
9. What is the best thing that can happen to you with the new belief?
And then ask ourselves what would be the best scenario if we change to the new positive belief. For example, having public speaking skills could improve my job meetings, or I could give lectures, etc. Einstein used to say, “It’s crazy to do the same thing over and over again expecting to get different results. If you are looking for different results, do different things”.
10. Create an action plan to install and fix the new belief
Finally, what we have to do is make sure that the new positive belief is installed in our subconscious and that our actions are congruent with this new way of thinking.
For this we must develop a small action plan with tasks and commitments that include new behaviors, behavior change and new forms of language, related to the new positive belief that we wish to implement.
Some limiting beliefs are difficult to change as they are deeply ingrained and to do so alone many times it takes more than just courage and courage. In these cases, the accompaniment of a certified coach with NLP studies is required.
If you are interested in changing any beliefs or want to know more about this process, you can contact me at jesus@lideremprendedor.com .
If you are interested in knowing more about entrepreneurship, leadership and business, I invite you to continue reading more articles like this one on Entrepreneur.com , visiting my blog Lideremprendedor.com or visiting www.startupclub.pro where you can find everything you need to take your idea or business to the next level.