People begin establishing beliefs about themselves from birth. Some of them we form consciously, and others develop subconsciously. It is essential to remain aware of and continue looking into limiting beliefs, conscious or unconscious. If you become aware that you have negative thoughts that need work, you must learn to release them to stay healthy and on track in recovery.
This is not only true of people in recovery; it is true of everyone. The more you can process thoughts and beliefs that don’t serve you and let go, you may find yourself happier and more successful. If you are also in recovery, unraveling negative beliefs can help you stay more committed.
Causes of Limiting Beliefs
Limiting beliefs are based on assumptions, not on your reality, and they come from how you perceive experiences in your life. To be successful, you have to keep your beliefs based on reality as much as possible.
People are not naturally wired to desire positive information. Our brains are hard-wired to highlight negative situations as a way to learn from experiences that didn’t go as planned or expected and stay safe. Your brain is programmed to store unfavorable incidents and their consequences so that you can protect yourself the next time a similar situation arises.
While this brain function can keep you safe, you can train your brain to look at things differently and redirect your thoughts away from negativity and instead toward using a more healthy and mindful way of doing things. Start by understanding where your limiting beliefs came from. Limiting beliefs may stem from places such as:
- Family conditioning and beliefs
- Education, or things you’ve learned and observed from family, teachers, peers, celebrities, influencers, or authority figures, impact what you believe, consciously or unconsciously
- Life experiences and decisions you make cause you to form beliefs around them, so negative experiences create limiting beliefs
You Can Overcome Limiting Beliefs
The great thing about being human is that you have the power to change that which doesn’t work for you. This means that you can change your limiting beliefs with a bit of hard work, patience, and determination. The process is not simple, but it is worth the effort to increase your self-awareness.
Changing limiting beliefs starts with abandoning the victim role, rooting out feelings of powerlessness, and rewriting assumptions that change is impossible. Just as you can change a habit by performing a replacement habit for 66 days, the same is true of any belief holding you back — you must replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts mindfully and intentionally.
How Do You Overcome Limiting Beliefs?
There are several steps you can take to overcome thought processes that are holding you back. It is possible to free yourself from negative patterns and achieve the goal of having a happy and fulfilling life. Some ways you can overcome limiting beliefs include:
- Organize your environment: When your space is organized, it improves your mental health, encourages positive thoughts, and allows you to see things more clearly
- Cut the clutter: Having piles and stuff everywhere can be distracting and overwhelming and does not promote a healthy thought process
- Minimalistic thinking: Having less encourages a mindset that embraces honesty, clarity, and contentment
- Be curious and explore your world: When you let curiosity lead you, you break out of your comfort zone, which expands your mind and challenges your beliefs
- Participate fully in your recovery: Actively pursue recovery-supportive activities and use your group and individual therapy as a time to identify your limiting beliefs and the challenges that they present to your recovery
- Meditate: The goal here is to let thoughts pass through your consciousness without engaging with them to relieve the clutter in your head that holds you back
- Self-improvement: When you work on yourself and find opportunities to grow, you also increase your self-awareness and find tools to eliminate limiting beliefs
Moving Beyond Limiting Beliefs
Limiting beliefs are often hidden deep within you, and you carry them around silently. It is normal to be more or less unaware of your limiting beliefs until a life event forces you to look at them. When you have a limiting belief about yourself, your capabilities, relationships, other people, or life events, you’re simply experiencing an expectation that is unfulfilled or troublesome.
Limiting beliefs intend to help you because you learn to recognize danger and adversity through them, but they negatively affect you when you let them control the narrative in your mind. Now that you’re aware of their presence, you can identify them and remove them from your consciousness. Recovery is the perfect time to do that because it is a safe environment that will help you start in a positive new direction based on truth.
Limiting beliefs keep you from having the life you aspire to. Thought patterns that keep you from living your life to the fullest are limiting beliefs. They are some of your most hidden and subconscious ideas about yourself. In recovery, you have the perfect opportunity to sort out which beliefs are holding you back. The Guest House has an integrative staff and a range of therapeutic modalities to help you find these buried ideas and release them. All of your hidden limiting beliefs can be dug up and removed, giving you hope and the knowledge that you can change and replace them with truthful, hopeful thoughts. Releasing limiting beliefs is a process that can help you be the person you wish to be. Call The Guest House today to start the process of freeing yourself from limiting thoughts at (855) 483-7800.