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Limiting beliefs: A comprehensive guide to identifying and removing them

 

This guide to limiting beliefs will teach you how to manage your mindset, which fills your mind with either thoughts of defeat or ones of victory.

  

how to change limiting beliefs 

 

Think about how the thought, "Good things happen to other people, not me," could influence your life.

 

It would cause you stay in situations that don't make you happy because you wouldn't believe efforts to change would work out for you.

 

It would limit the number of chances you take because you'd focus on all the problems and things that could go wrong.

 

It would cause you to feel like you don't know what you want because instead of listening to your heart and taking your dreams seriously, you'd spend time trying to figure out what would make you happy that "someone like you" could achieve.

 

Only this search turns up nothing because what you really want, you don't believe you can create.


Rather than listening to your heart, you’re more likely to spend time thinking thoughts like:


“I don’t know what I want.”


“Things feel so hard and confusing.”


“Nothing ever works out for me.”


Never realizing these limiting beliefs are the exact things blocking you from getting clear and believing you can achieve your goals.

I know exactly how to help you out of this situation.

 

But you have to be willing to do some inner work. That's what I'll teach you in this article.

 

I've totally transformed my life over the past few years — from someone who was depressed and directionless, who felt like she was living someone else's life without the power to change anything...

 

to someone who is connected to her life purpose, has created multiple successful, passion-based businesses, and wakes up feeling happy and peaceful (most) days. #highlyemotionalhuman

 

I have a lot of good reasons to believe why things wouldn’t work out *for someone like me.*

 

I lost my father and sister and survived cancer all by the age of 30. I don't really fit in with most people and often feel like an outcast. I suffered from serious depression for a lot of my life and have received more diagnoses than I can count before I learned how to heal myself.

 

These are all good reasons to believe I am unlucky.

 

But I never bought into it. I've always known deep in my heart that we can overcome anything and create any kind of life we want to.

 

And that's why I created Soul Scroll Journals. To pass on the tools and mindset shifts I've learned along the way so you can thrive, too — as long as you're ready to do the work.

 

 

What are limiting beliefs?

 

A limiting belief is any negative or fear-based belief that limits your potential.

 

They’re stories we tell ourselves about who we are, how the world works, or what’s possible for us, often based on past pains.

 

 

How do limiting beliefs form?

 

We are all born into households with parents and a society that see the world in specific ways.

 

The world is considered a hostile place or friendly one, a world to be met with love and openness or suspicion and fear.

 

Our existence is celebrated and met with love, or perhaps met with apathy or even violence.

 

Inside of these world views, we have experiences.

 

Ideally, we’re taught confidence, which is really a result of loving experiences with adults who tell children things like, “You are amazing. I love you. I believe in you.”

 

But sometimes we’re taught insecurity. Maybe you felt like nothing you did was ever good enough, or a sibling got more attention than you, or learned that because you were a girl, you had to do or not do certain things to be "good."

 

Maybe you were taught that success comes from working in an office and having a fancy title.

 

Or maybe you were taught that success and money is for other people, not for someone like you, who grew up in the neighborhood you did.

 

These experiences are sometimes passed on verbally, but other times through body language or even genetically.

 

Research is showing that trauma, which is ultimately repressed emotion, can be passed on through bloodlines.

 

As children who come into this world as blank slates, we inevitably pushed up against our parents' and teachers' ideas of how the world works, what's wrong and what's right.

 

Each time we felt rejected for who we are, our ideas, or desires or needs, we felt pain. This is a trauma, no matter how small or large because it made us feel unsafe.

 

And in that painful experience of not feeling safe, we blamed ourselves for the pain. In turn, we adapted, creating limiting beliefs and behaviors to help us fit in and receive the love and resources we needed to survive.

 

Rather than wondering if the worldview was flawed, which is impossible because we were so young, we believe ourselves to be flawed.

 

As a result, we dial down our unique qualities, try to blend in, learn to play it safe, learn what is means to be a “good” girl, and adopt the rules of what our family and society sees as necessary for surviving in the world.

 

Rewriting your limiting beliefs and healing your past is the very exciting work of realizing there's nothing wrong with you.

 

There never was.

 

You were simply exposed to a limited worldview, and now you get to change that worldview to create whatever kind of life you want.

 

As you do this work, you will free yourself from the past and open yourself up to unlimited potential.

 

The best way to rewrite limiting beliefs and heal your emotions is through journaling. This is why I created Soul Scroll Journals — to help you do this important inner work so you can create a life as unique as you are rather than spend your life wanting things you don’t believe you can have.

 

Here's a four-step process I’ve used to erase limiting beliefs, step into my purpose, and create a life where anything is possible:

 

 

 

How to reprogram limiting beliefs

 

1. Identify the limiting beliefs.

 

The easiest way to identify limiting beliefs is to start with a specific area where you’re struggling. What is the story you're telling yourself around this struggle? Is that story ultimately true?

 

One of my favorite exercises inside the Listen to Your Heart guided journal involves identifying limiting beliefs about the roles you play in life — for example wife, mother, daughter, boss, employee — and how they may be stressing you out while limiting your potential.

 

Do you feel like you never have time for you? Always bending your day and desires to accommodate others even though nobody does the same for you? Guilty for doing or buying things that bring you joy? Mad that nobody understands how hard it is for you?

 

An outdated story and limiting beliefs are running the show — things that aren't even true, but create so much stress and frustration. Your struggle will continue until you correct the cause.

 


You have the power to change your life. Nobody else.

 

 

2. Release underlying emotional pain.

 

Painful limiting beliefs are energetically encoded in our bodies, which is why it's necessary to heal emotionally before changing the belief to something more empowering.

 

This happens when emotions related to past painful experiences aren't fully processed, which is really common because most of us weren't taught healthy ways of navigating our emotions.

 

This is what I'm really good at, and I'm so happy to help you heal in this way.

 

Without releasing the emotions underneath the limiting belief, you won't believe the better-feeling one. It will feel like a lie, something that can't possibly be true.

 

But when you release painful emotions, you're suddenly free to believe empowering things and take action to back it up.

 

This is how you stop feeling stuck.

 

Journaling is one of the best tools to do this work.

 

Writing your thoughts down helps you process your feelings because as you write, you feel, and as you feel, you heal.

 

Plus, everyone who buys Listen to Your Heart receives special access to a 20-minute version of my famous Feeling Awareness meditation, which guides you through my signature process of freeing yourself from emotional pain.

 

It's very powerful and many people have said it's helped them feel connected to parts of themselves they didn't know existed.

 

 

3. Choose new, more affirming beliefs.

 

Once you’ve done all this hard work, creating space, now comes the fun part!

 

Select beliefs that align with what you want to believe and who you want to become.

 

In Listen to Your Heart, we spend a lot of time on this.

 

Each day's reading and journal prompt will guide you one layer deeper into getting crystal clear on what you want for this next chapter of your life.

 

You'll identify how this person sees herself, how she spends her day, and what she believes. This is how you lay the groundwork for transformational change.

 

As you go through your day, this deep inner work will naturally begin to shift your thoughts from negative to positive, from defeat to victory.

 

When limiting beliefs keeping you stuck do arise, you'll be much more aware of them. They won't hold you back anymore, creating stress and confusion.

 

Instead, you'll notice thoughts that say you can’t or don’t know the answer and immediately shift to a new story that says you can do whatever you commit to.

 

 

4. Affirm the new beliefs until they become your natural state of being.

 

Writing out empowering, victorious beliefs each day is the best way to create change. Near daily shifting of my thoughts in my journal is one of my most important personal growth practices.

If you’re letting limiting beliefs live in your mind, that’s why you’re not where you want to be in life.

 

But you have to embark upon this process with love and understanding, in a way that opens your heart rather than closes you off from it, leaving you stuck in your mind.

 

At the deepest level we have these limiting beliefs because we feel they keep us safe.

 

That’s another reason why Soul Soul Scroll Journals are so great. This entire process is designed to help you feel safe.

 

If you’re ready to get clear on what you want and create a mindset that will help you achieve your goals, check out the Listen to Your Heart guided journal!

 

This is a carefully designed 4-week program to help you shift from feeling like, "WTF is happening with my life," to knowing exactly who you are, what you want, and how to create it.

 

It's time to declare victory in your life.

 

 

All the love,

Suzanne Heyn

Founder, Soul Scroll Journals

 

3 comments

  • Thank you! I am looking forward to discarding limiting beliefs and replacing with affirming beliefs. This really touched my heart. So often I don’t understand what I am feeling and I feel that others do not understand.

    Elizabeth L Wilson
  • A Lesson to be had….. Much gratitude!!

    Kaz
  • Thank you so much for your blog. I found this article particularly inspiring. I have had my challenges with depression over the years and I have worked hard to continue to change up my inner dialogue. I appreciated the work you do because it helps me remember how to stay on a healthy path. :)

    Jess

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