Can We Overcome Limiting Beliefs?

“I’m not good enough.”

“I’m not pretty enough.”

“I’m not smart enough.”

Have you or anyone you know ever thought this way?  It’s a serious deep-seated mindset that seems innocent enough, but can eat at your insides slowly.

Some call it a lack of self-esteem or confidence.  May I suggest there are deeper roots to this issue than just low self-esteem.

Dictionary.com defines self-esteem as, “a realistic respect for or favorable impression of oneself; self-respect.”

So low self-esteem can be defined as, “a low respect for or impression of oneself.”

Someone who struggles with it can think, “I’m not good enough.”  The puzzling part of it is, they actually ARE good enough.  Think of a thin woman, who looks at herself in the mirror and says, “I’m fat.”  Puzzling, right?

How can this be?  It could have started with hurtful events or words spoken over her.  No matter how it started, she’s captive to some lies that she can’t seem to break free from.  She thinks she’s fat when she’s not, so she continues to find ways to slim down her waist size.  It’s a driving force, a complicated belief system that has her trapped.

This may all sound bleak, but there is hope!  A belief system is just that…a system in one’s mind of whatever he or she believes.  It’s not necessarily true, and it can be changed.  That’s mindset, how you and I set our mind on something…

…and choose to believe it.  Or not.

A complicated belief system was formed from years and years of negative “programming.”  I’m probably going into something deeper here than what I’m qualified to teach, but I truly believe if we have current frustrations that repeat themselves in patterns, we can first work on identifying them.  Then, the cool part is, we can harness them to grow beyond those frustrations!  Many times I work to push past my limiting beliefs.  I ask my God to show me what’s really true and real – and to free me from these things that hinder me from being who I’m made to be!

Here’s a song called, “I Will Overcome.”  What was hindering me from recording this song was the fact that I didn’t sing or play it very well.  As a “recovering perfectionist”, this would have stopped me entirely from sharing this…but I’ll share it to push past my own fears about being true to myself.  I hope it encourages you.

What about you?  What kind of limiting beliefs do you have to overcome?

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Tags: mindset, Mindset Monday