Book a Class

Limiting Beliefs

Apr 28, 2022

Let’s just get into it, I want to talk about limiting beliefs. What do I mean when I say limiting beliefs? I mean beliefs that we carry with us that really stop us from reaching our full potential. They stopped us from even exploring other options, alternate routes, getting creative, and brainstorming how could I maybe be the person who makes this happen? A limiting belief just kind of puts the kibosh to all of that. And the reason I want to talk about it is some of my own beliefs start to resurface. One of the things I teach people in my membership is what we believe is always in our control. 

And a lot of what we believe is unintentional.

It's either been socially conditioned or maybe a product of how we were raised or the school we attended, or, you know, whatever. But what we don't often do is look back and say, Well, why do I believe that or why do I do this? We often can just default to thinking, this is just how it is. This is just my life. And I gotta figure out how to live it like this. 

The More Obvious Limiting Beliefs

 There are more obvious limiting beliefs like I don't have time. I'm not a morning person. I can't afford that. They won't hire me. If you say to yourself, I'm not a morning person. How right off the bat is that limiting you? In essence, you're saying from noon to midnight, you can do what? Verses from midnight to noon. Well, that's morning,right?  So what do you not do during those hours? What does that mean? I'm not a morning person. 

 For a lot of us that just means forget asking me to do anything in the morning because I don't want to. I'm either grumpy. I'm tired. I'm not thinking clearly. Therefore I'm not a morning person. But is that true?  Or are we just deciding that works for me, that excuse, that limiting belief that I'm not a morning person? And so I'm just going to keep using it. 

 How could it work for you to reevaluate? Well, why am I not a morning person? Do I want to be? How could it serve me? Is it serving me to not be a morning person? Right? And so you get to look at each belief you have and decide on purpose either, yes, this is worth keeping. Or No, it's not. 

 And then there are those less obvious, more unspoken limiting beliefs. 

And these beliefs are more along the lines of what you believe your role in your household to be. For example, I have an idea of how I think a mother should show up in a household, I have an idea of how I believe a husband should show up in a marriage. And I also made assumptions about what I think other people will do or say if presented with a circumstance. These all limit me!

If I live under the belief, for example, that a mother should be X, Y, and Z in a household. Then I automatically am focusing my attention on how to be X, Y, and Z in a household. I'm no longer open to explore.

What else could a mother look like in a household? We have to uncover what is the thought and the belief that we have that just might not be serving me, it might be hanging me up, stopping me from making progress.

I can tell you a year ago, I did not think the mother of a household also starts a business. That would be too much. That would be less focused on the family. That felt very uncomfortable to me because I really believed this is how a mother shows up. And so I have to tap into that limiting belief. And I have to ask myself, why do I think this is how a mother should show up? How could a mother show up that would be acceptable to me? Am I willing to try it? And then if I try it, what else has that freed me up to do? 

How am I less of a mother now because I have a business versus the mother I was before I had a business. And I'm not saying that I am less of a mother. But my limiting belief would lead me to think that in starting a business I am now going to be less of a mother and that is not true. 

We all have these beliefs and they apply to weight loss. They apply to business, they apply to friendship circles. And so as we look to see, what am I believing? And is it serving me? We also have to be vulnerable and willing to give ourselves and the people around us the gift of pure transparency. 

We might say, ok this is what I've always thought, kids. Let's just go on the idea of what I think a mother should be. That's no longer serving me, I reevaluated that. I understand why we're all responding, the way we're responding in different situations because that's what I've groomed to happen under my belief that this is what a mother should do. And now, I have the option to look at that and say actually, I've reevaluated and I'm changing my mind. We think that these beliefs are written in stone and then that's just the way it is. 

But is it? Does it have to be? Are you okay with it being just the way it is? Do you want your limiting belief to design your life? Or do you want your limiting beliefs to serve as a call to action to you to challenge the! To push through them!  To find new beliefs! BIGGER  belief. That's the other thing when we limit our beliefs, we limit our potential. 

If I don't believe I can be a mother and a business owner, then right away, one's gotta go. And while I can't give my kids away, so the business goes. And that's not how I want to live and I don't want to believe that and it's also not the example I want to set. You don't have to choose one thing or the other. You can work to find balance in two things, three things, whatever it is you want. 

When you have limiting beliefs, you live a limited life

When you have a limiting belief, you live a limited life and you apply that to every area of your life. How you do one thing is how you do everything. So if you're limiting your belief in even one area of your life, chances are high that you're doing that in all areas of your life.

So why, why do we limit our potential? 

It’s because we don't want to feel discomfort. We don't want to feel the discomfort of change, the discomfort of not knowing what steps to take, the discomfort of how will I handle that when and if this person reacts a certain way. When I reset my boundaries, and when I redefine my belief, is when I start approaching my life in a way that's more aligned with how I actually want to live and not these beliefs I've carried with me.

How am I going to handle the flip side of that? 

How will I handle the fall apart? Something with the building of anything new, something will fall apart.

What am I willing to put down gently, so that I can build this other area up? 

What beliefs Am I willing to let go of with love? 

Yeah, I understand why I believe this for so long. It served me and after reevaluating it no longer does. So why would I keep doing something that I now know is not serving me.

This comfort is funny in that we often make a big story around it. We make it bigger and scarier and more awful than it maybe needs to be. 

In my example of balancing being a mother and business owner I have this limiting belief that this is what a mother does, this is how she shows up… I had a whole protocol for motherhood. I had a manual for a mom. This is how a mom should be. And then when I started to build a business, in walks the discomfort because now I'm challenging this belief in this manual I have for how a mom should be, and I'm adding other components that have never been on the list for me. I have to really dig deep to figure out -

  • Why is it important to me to add these items to my list?
  • What's the purpose of doing that? 
  • What's the value for me in doing that? 

And I have the option to look at, this is how I think a mother shows up and this is how I think a business owner shows up and I get to pull the components from both of those manuals and rewrite a new one for how I'm going to show up as a mother and the business owner. 

As I do that, it’s uncomfortable!

I have to make different decisions. I have to set other boundaries. I have to raise my expectations of others. As I raised my expectations in myself so let me give you a little example:

The other day. In the morning hours, I do a backpack check before the kids leave. I make sure there are snow pants, shoes, hat mittens, library books, lunchbox…. My son came home and he said, Mommy, I had a mitten for my left hand and a mitten for my left hand. I had no mitten for my right hand so I had to wear school mittens. And my first thought was, I can't believe I missed that. Now listen to that, right that thinking is directly a result of my limiting belief that a mother should do X, Y, and Z. All of a sudden it became my burden to wear. He didn't have the right mittens and he had to wear school mittens, and then I felt a certain way about that. But the other side of the story in my membership in the class I teach, I tell about learning the other side of the pizza story. For example, pizza is so delicious and all these things but what else is it? It causes bloat, it causes indigestion… we have to tell the whole story. 

Same thing here. I had to pause and I had to let my brain keep working through the whole story here. He's not used to checking his bag, he's not used to packing his own mittens, packing his own hat.

What he said to me was, Mommy in the morning, you have got to focus.  What that showed me was, that not only does our limited belief limit us, but it limits the people around us. There is no reason under the sun that my intelligent son can't put two mittens in his backpack. There's none. There's no reason except the reason I created for him not to do it. 

Which is me thinking that it’s my job to make sure they're prepared and have everything for their day. That they don't have to wear school mittens. That's my job. BS!  Who says that's my job? Me, I've always said that's my job. And now I get to look back at my job and say no, that's not really serving me. And it's not serving you. So yes, I'm going to go through the discomfort of feeling like I'm not supporting him the way a mother should. In my limiting belief, this is how a mother should support their child. And he's going to go through the discomfort of that seeing that support is backing off. And now there's a new action of me required and that's going to be uncomfortable for both parties. 

But that discomfort doesn't mean we don't do it. 

And that doesn't mean we stop. 

This same thing happens with weight loss. 

  • It gets uncomfortable, we start to feel sugar withdrawal. 
  • We start to feel deprived, we start to think this is going to be hard. 
  • You start to think this is going to take forever. 
  • It's not fair. My friends are losing weight faster. 
  • How come this person gets to get a burger every time they go out and they never gain weight.

Who cares? But that's the next natural progression. We go from discomfort to recognizing, that we need a change and worrying or anticipating what is that going to look like.  What kind of effort is that going to call of me? And then when the discomfort gets to another stage, we move into comparison. 

As I grow my business, there are definitely moments of discomfort.  As I restructure and as I figure out what's working, what's not working. What do we need more of what do we need less of. I go through all of this every day. I'm reevaluating, reassessing, re-looking at planning, restructuring, figuring out, how do I deliver the most value in the best little packet, so that I know, when I give it to you, you're going to get the results you want. So every day I'm looking at that information, at that data evidence from members and seeing what's working, what's not. 

When I come to the next level, when it comes to scaling business, we say okay, now we've got our foundation and now we're ready to grow again. Every other month. I opened my membership and we grow. Okay, so every time we go through a growth spurt, it's very uncomfortable for me. I have thoughts that come up about my pricing. I'm thinking that  I hope they understand. I have thoughts that come up about feeling like I need to make sure that they get the results they want. In reality, I know everybody's results are in their own hands. It's my job to show up and offer the space for you to come and for you to learn and for you to be part of the community. 

It's my job to keep doing the research, keep bringing the content and it's your job to show up. To make the value known to yourself, that's your job.

But when I get into that discomfort thinking and all of those thoughts come up, my brain immediately jumps to comparison. So then I look at other weight loss programs and other weight loss memberships and then I start to compare what they have versus what I have. And in that comparison, what I'm trying to do or what my primitive brain is trying to do is shrink me back down into the cave, where it's not uncomfortable.

I know what to expect. We don't need to grow. We're okay the way we are. But what if I just sit in the discomfort of knowing? Yeah, with every season of growth, there's discomfort. And I'm learning how to ride that out, what I don't need to do is look outside of myself and outside of my own programs. How do I stack up against somebody else? We do this with dieting, we're doing one program and we're side-eyeing another program just to see is it better? Is it faster, is it cheaper, or are more people doing it?

Because we have this belief that the more people that are doing it, probably the better it is. If our friends are doing it and having success, that's what we do. If it works faster, that's better. What if that's wrong?  What if you're wrong? What if I was wrong this whole time about my belief of what a mother is. What if I was and I'll never know. But what I do know is I can evaluate each moment and see does it feel right? Does it feel genuine, does it match the lifestyle I want for my kids and I to have, does it have a fluidity to it? Or does it not? 

The same as with business, and the same as with weight loss? And the same is with friendships. Everything needs reevaluating. Assessing and then new action steps written. 

So what example Do you want to be to yourself? 

Not what kind of example Do you want to set for your kids? What kind of example Do you want to set for your family and friends? No! That's all fine and wonderful. But that's the cherry on top. That's not the focus. 

I really want your focus to be what example do you want to be to yourself when it comes to limiting beliefs.

Do you want to allow your limiting beliefs to limit you? 

Or do you want to see them as a challenge? 

Do you want to test them? 

Is it possible that you don't need a diet to get to your end result? Is it possible that in designing a lifestyle you want to live your body weight falls to a natural state, what's possible for you???

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Cras sed sapien quam. Sed dapibus est id enim facilisis, at posuere turpis adipiscing. Quisque sit amet dui dui.

Call To Action

Stay connected with news and updates!

Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.
Don't worry, your information will not be shared.

We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.