Limiting beliefs are the gatekeepers that block your desired manifestations from appearing, and learning to get rid of them is very important. The problem is that we oftentimes do not even recognize that we are being controlled by a limiting belief.
So in this article, I will give my advice on how to identify your limiting beliefs, how limiting beliefs are blocking your manifestations, and how to get rid of limiting beliefs in order to actually manifest what you want.
I urge you to read the full article, but as this is a long post, you can also just jump around and read what you think will be most helpful to you.
What Is A Limiting Belief?
A limiting belief is a belief that, in some way, inhibits or limits your potential. Beliefs shape your perception, controls your behavior, and is the gatekeeper of your manifestations. Your life is a reflection of your current limiting beliefs. Most of your limiting beliefs are buried in the depths of your subconscious mind, running the show without you even realizing it.
Most of the time, our limited beliefs have to do with ourselves; how we see ourselves. For example, you may believe that you are unlovable, doomed to be poor, unfunny, stupid, boring, or whatever it may be.
We also have limiting beliefs about others and other things. For example, if we believe that all people are inherently bad, people are selfish, greedy, etc.
These are beliefs that limit your potential. They do not only inhibit your own individual behavior, but they also directly control the manifestations that occur in your life. Let’s talk about that next.
The Role Of Limiting Beliefs In Manifesting
If you do not change your limiting beliefs, they will keep you stuck where you are. It doesn’t matter if your problem is that you cannot manifest at all, that you cannot manifest a certain desire, or that you just feel stuck in life. Limiting beliefs really are the problem.
Your belief system manifests itself as the things, circumstances, dramas, events, etc., you experience in life.
They do not only manifest themselves in your own individual behavior but also directly affect your external world.
A limiting belief is creates a roadblock when you’re pursuing a desire; problems emerge seemingly out of nowhere, stopping you from moving ahead. You have a desire, but you’re blocked off from it. For example, if you have limiting beliefs surrounding money, there will be all sorts of obstacles and setbacks when trying to manifest money, ultimately causing you to stay stuck.
If you have a strong limiting belief about something, trying to manifest a desire in that area is like swimming against a strong current. No matter how fast you swim, you always get pulled back to where you started.
You cannot successfully manifest something without changing your beliefs at the same time. You cannot manifest wealth if your overall belief is that “I will always be poor.” When you visualize, affirm, script, or any sort of manifesting technique, there must be a new strong, positive belief developed in your subconscious mind replacing the old, limiting belief.
I will explain how you can do this a bit later on.
Examples of Limiting Beliefs
Let’s now look at some examples of the most common limiting beliefs.
The Biggest Limiting Belief In Manifesting
In manifesting, most people’s biggest limiting beliefs have to do with the validity or the actual existence of manifestation itself.
If you have never manifested something big before, you cannot help but be filled with doubt and skepticism. In the beginning, it seems very magical and almost too good to be true – it is not accepted by your belief system yet.
As well as that, even people who DO have a lot of success with manifesting also deal with this. It’s easy to fall out of it if you are not constantly practicing it.
The problem is this: if you do not believe in manifesting, you are manifesting your own inability to manifest.
Since the external world reflects your beliefs, it must act according to your unbelief in manifesting. For that reason, any success you may have will always look like a coincidence, the results of external actions, luck, etc. Things will always be moved not to look like they were manifested, as the idea of “manifestation” does not fit within your belief system.
So, the more you begin to believe in manifesting, the greater power you will gain. When you believe that manifesting is true and that you can do it, the veil is removed, and you will be able to manifest things with ease.
The best way to gain belief in manifesting comes from repeatedly succeeding at it. It follows that the more success you have with this, the more confident you will be in your ability to do it. It’s like a snowball gaining speed and size as it rolls down the hill, making it nearly unstoppable in the end. But in the beginning, when you have no experience confirming this, you simply just need to choose to believe it, even if you’re not convinced yet.
This is a big topic in itself, so I recommend reading my article explaining how to get started with manifesting when you feel completely stuck.
Other Common Limiting Beliefs
All of us have limiting beliefs in specific areas of life. Below are some of the most common ones. Try and see if some of them fit you in any way.
- “I’m not going to succeed” – This limiting belief often comes from a low self-esteem in regard to achieving things and past experiences of failure. It can prevent you from taking action in the beginning and it also manifests itself as all sorts of roadblocks when you do decide to go for it.
- “Money is too hard to get” – We often group rich and poor people into two different categories. If you believe that you are in the poor category, you likely do not feel that “you are one of them.”
- “I am unworthy” – A lot of people feel somehow that they are somehow unworthy of good things in life. This is especially prominent with people not feeling they deserve love or happiness.
- “It’s never happened before” – This is the mistake of believing that it can’t happen in the future just because it hasn’t happened in the past. We all have this to some extent, and it keeps us stuck in a circle. The key is to recognize that there is no reason at all why things can’t change.
- “I don’t deserve love” – This limiting belief can come from low, low self-worth from childhood, affecting our relationships of today. Also, a person who has never experienced love is almost certain to have this belief.
Finding Your Limiting Beliefs
Becoming aware of a limiting belief is the first step in gaining in getting rid of them. They are stored deep in the subconscious mind, and you first need to bring them to the light.
With the majority of our beliefs, we never really realize that we have them. Oftentimes, this is because we have never even considered that things might actually be different – like the fish that can’t find the ocean.
Our beliefs very often express themselves as thoughts we think. Simply developing the habit of observing your thinking with the intention of identifying the underlying limiting beliefs giving rise to them will help you immensely.
The key is to remember that your limiting beliefs, though mostly hidden from you, already hold an influence over you. Finding your limiting beliefs really is about analyzing yourself, and you can only learn it by doing it. Here are, however, a few tips for self-analysis of your belief system.
Observe Your Reactions
For example, if you notice that you feel nervous or anxious when asked to speak in front of a group, it could indicate that you fear being judged by others. In the same way, if you find yourself avoiding certain activities, it could indicate that you have a limiting belief about your own abilities or self-worth.
Observe What You Tell Yourself
Observing your thinking can help you identify limiting beliefs by making you aware of the negative self-talk, assumptions, and biases that are embedded in your thoughts. When you pay attention to your internal dialogue and the emotions and behaviors that result from it, you can start to recognize the underlying beliefs that are driving them.
Look at Your Manifestations
If you’re getting bad results in a certain area of your life, it means that there is a limiting belief somewhere. For example, if you never have any money and you always end up with nothing in your bank at the end of the month because some bill magically turns up, you may have an ingrained limiting belief that this is just how your life is.
You don’t need to be 100% clear on what your limiting belief is. Having a general idea is better than nothing. Once you know where you stand, you can begin your move ahead.
How To Get Rid Of Limiting Beliefs
Your beliefs manifest as the results you experience in your reality. Getting rid of limiting beliefs and replacing them with new ones will open the gate for new possibilities in life and allow for greater manifestations to occur.
Here are a few methods to dissolve your limiting beliefs.
Becoming aware of your limiting beliefs
Simply becoming aware of a limiting belief gives it less power over you. It’s like you separate the belief from yourself, making it a thing rather than a part of your identity.
Challenging the logic behind your limiting beliefs
When you become aware of a limiting belief, you can begin to analyze it. You can begin to ask yourself, “is this belief actually true?” Most often, you will find that your particular limiting belief is not based on truth but on some sort of assumption you, somewhere along the line, made of yourself. For example, believing that you are not “worthy” of something does not make sense. Why would YOU not be worthy of something, but someone else is?
Questioning your beliefs in this way removes their roots. A limiting belief will gradually become weaker when you realize that the ground it’s standing on is not actually that solid.
Going Into A Deep State of Consciousness
There’s a lot of research showing that being in a hypnotic state of consciousness makes the mind more prone to suggestion.
Sit down, close your eyes, and relax. Allow your mind to relax. Simply let yourself be what you are.
When in this state, you get more access to your subconscious mind.
Begin meditating. This not only brings you closer to the subconscious mind during the meditative session, but a consistent meditation practice will also keep you more in touch with a deeper part of you during your day-to-day affairs.
Using Affirmations
The best way to get rid of a limiting belief is to replace it with a positive, constructive belief. You cannot believe that you are poor and rich at the same time.
Tell yourself affirmations that are contrary to your limiting belief. If you believe that you are too lazy and undisciplined to get anything done, you could affirm things such as: “I am a hard worker,” “I do what I have to, regardless of how I feel,” “I accomplish the things I make up mind to do.”
Feel the affirmations to be true. Let them become part of you. Affirming in this manner slowly builds a new positive belief replacing the old, negative one. This will, in turn, manifest directly in your environment and in your behavior.
Also, affirmations will have a more substantial effect if you do them in a deep state of consciousness.
I also recommend my article that goes into more detail on affirmations.
Imagining Mental Scenes
Visualization is also a great way to replace limiting beliefs. Similar to using affirmations, visualize yourself in a mental scene where you act in a way that does not go with your limiting belief.
Taking the example before, if you believe you are lazy and unproductive, you could imagine a scene where you feel satisfied and good about how productive your day has been. This will gradually build a belief that you are productive and self-disciplined, which automatically kills off the old one.
A good few tips are, again, to go into a meditative state of consciousness when doing that and to visualize from a first-person perspective.
I also have an article explaining exactly how to visualize effectively when manifesting.
Hopefully, these tips shed some light on how you can go about getting rid of limiting beliefs. The key thing is to be aware of them first, as this separates it from you. You cannot force them to disappear, but looking at them from an objective standpoint, while also building new positive ones is, in my experience, really effective.
Automatically Overcoming Negative Believes
Oftentimes when we focus on the end of a big goal with the intention of manifesting it, we will oftentimes kill off a lot of limiting beliefs automatically. A new experience can automatically cause us to change our whole mindset without us really “doing” anything.
By simply focusing on a new state, you gradually kill the old one. Even though it’s very beneficial, you don’t always HAVE to be aware of your beliefs; just as you unconsciously may have developed certain limiting beliefs, you can also unconsciously replace them with new ones.
It’s impossible to become aware of our entire belief system, and sometimes the best option is to just focus on the end manifestation and let the beliefs take care of themselves.
Habitual Thinking Influences Your Beliefs
This is an important point. To some extent, our beliefs are determined by our free will. Sure, we may not be able to change our most deep-rooted beliefs on a whim, but what we choose to believe actually have an effect. It is, however, enough to tilt the scale on things we are unsure about.
If we decide to believe something, we think from that new premise. For example, if you choose to believe that manifesting is real, even if you don’t fully know it by experience. Your subsequent thinking will begin to flow from this premise. You can do this without having to delude yourself. Having an open mind to the possibility that what you believe is true is good enough.
I also want to add that beliefs come from what we indulge in, not only what we logically conclude (which is why we have so many assumptions that are downright nonsensical). A person who has never heard of manifesting very likely doesn’t believe in it simply because he or she has never even given it any thought. By simply delving your mind and your attention into the very concept of manifesting, a part of you will actually begin to believe that it is real.
Summary
To summarize, limiting beliefs are what hold you back from manifesting your desires.
These beliefs are often subconscious and, therefore, not always that obvious. Our belief system manifests as the things we experience in life, and our limiting beliefs will create obstacles and setbacks when pursuing a higher ideal. Common limiting beliefs include beliefs about ourselves, others, and our ability to manifest.
The belief that “manifesting is impossible” manifests itself as you not being able to manifest anything. Therefore, the more you build the belief that “manifesting is possible,” the greater your ability to do it becomes.
Finding and getting rid of your limiting beliefs is essential. Observing your reactions and looking at your manifestations, as well as developing the habit of observing your thoughts, is a good way to find and analyze your own limiting beliefs.
The best way to overcome limiting beliefs is to first become aware of them, as you will gradually stop identifying with them.
I hope you found this article helpful. Thanks for reading!