Your biggest asset and the biggest barrier to achieving more may be one in the same – you. Your own false assumptions and limiting beliefs can sabotage your progress.
You can achieve more by establishing strategies and disciplines needed to employ . . .
Tip #6:
Get clear of false assumptions and limiting beliefs.
False assumptions are ideas we have formed with inadequate information, we build a weak case for holding them, and we act as if they are true. Beliefs are adopted by us and/or they have been programmed into us early in life. Some of our beliefs are lies that limit us from becoming all we can be. As we repeat them to ourselves and others, they sound like:
I can’t . . .
It’s out of my reach . . .
I never will . . .
It won’t be good enough . . .
I will always . . .
I am not ________ enough . . .
I don’t deserve . . .
It’s too late . . .
I am too young/old to . . .
I need others to approve . . .
False assumptions and limiting beliefs hold us back from reaching our full potential. We tend to hang around with people who share similar assumptions and beliefs to ours which further reinforces these limitations.
Removing these barriers is essential if we are to achieve more. Some keys to dealing with limiting beliefs and false assumptions are:
- Ask honest questions, even if painful.
- How did I come to this thinking?
- How do I know it is true or accurate?
- What drives me to hold on to this belief/assumption?
- Argue with yourself about your assumptions and limiting beliefs.
- Focus on people like you who are also achievers. Since they are like you and are achieving, you may think, “If they can, I can, too.”
- Hang around with people who
- Will speak truth to you, ask questions, and challenge your thinking.
- Are positive, hopeful, grateful, encouraging, and big thinkers.
- Will help you dream, affirm you, acknowledge you, and encourage you to achieve more.
- Avoid people who are discouraging, negative, and tend to encourage your false assumptions and limiting beliefs.
- Visualize what things would be like if the positive opposite is true (instead of “I can’t achieve that goal” visualize actually doing it).
- Take courageous action. If what you visualized would move you forward to achieve more, take action as if that vision is true. With each little forward step your actions will prove your assumptions were indeed false and your beliefs were unnecessarily limiting your achievement.
What results when you act against your false assumptions and limiting beliefs?
What has worked for you in acting against them?
