Listen on Apple Podcasts here.
In this episode, I discuss:
how beliefs impact our life
the two types of beliefs: empowering and limiting
common limiting beliefs we hold
the step-by-step process to shift a limiting belief into an empowering belief
an example of a limiting belief I shifted into an empowering belief
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the Mindful Soul Collective Podcast, a safe space for your healing.
I'm your host Shorina, a counsellor, well-being coach, multi-bus owner and mum.
I'm here to talk all things mind, body and soul.
You can expect conversations on mental health, mindfulness, mindset, healing and whole body wellness.
I've completely redefined my relationship to myself and to my life.
And now it's your turn.
Hello and welcome back to the podcast.
I came across a quote this week that I really wanted to talk about and that quote was,
life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.
Now I don't know if I completely agree with the statistics in this quote but I definitely
agree with the sentiment of it. I don't think life is something that happens to us. I think that life is something that just happens in general and goes on whether we like it or not. So I truly believe that how we react to something is going to determine how we experience life and that all comes down to the beliefs that we hold.
The beliefs we hold, whether they're positive or negative, make up our reality. Our lives are determined by our subconscious belief system. So how we see life, how we feel about life, how we react to experiences, our relationship, our job, everything about our life comes down to our beliefs. So basically our beliefs are our entire life.
Most of us don't actually make a conscious decision on what our beliefs are. They're more determined by our pasts and the so-called evidence that we've collected over the years, the way we were raised, our caregivers' beliefs, our teachers' beliefs, society, and a lot of these beliefs that we hold, even still now as adults, are cemented when we're little kids.
There's two types of beliefs. There are limiting beliefs and empowering beliefs. A limiting belief is basically a false belief that's preventing us from doing, feeling, achieving, or being something. They're basically holding us back from who we truly want to be. And a lot of the time these limiting beliefs are either about ourselves, about the world or about life overall.
An empowering belief is basically a belief that is the opposite of that. So essentially it's a helpful belief. It helps us to do the thing we want to do. It helps us to feel positive. It helps us achieve or be or, did I say do, like it's just the opposite of limiting a
belief. We want to hold empowering beliefs.
And in saying that, everybody holds empowering and limiting beliefs every single one of us. And they are something that's going to continue to pop up over life. And we will have limiting beliefs probably until the day we die. So I think that's something to accept and be okay with.
Our beliefs, both empowering and limiting, are super personal to us because if we go back to where they come from again, it's from the way we were raised. The life we've lived, our caregivers, the society we experienced. A lot of common limiting beliefs do come up in my sessions with clients. And in my life, my friends' life, they're very common to a lot of people.
And they are, you know, I'm not blank enough. So I'm not good enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not skinny enough. I'm not smart enough or whatever enough.
I'm not worthy.
The world is an unsafe place.
People don't like me.
I can't do blank, you know, whether that's because it's already been done or there's
a saturated market or whatever it is.
Some more common ones are I'm too busy.
Money doesn't grow on trees
And sometimes we can actually use our emotions against ourselves with beliefs as well.
So for example, that could be I will never have a healthy relationship because of my
anxiety or I'm not going to get that job because I'm too shy.
Again, our limiting beliefs are very personal to us. You may relate to a lot of those. You may relate to none of those and that's okay. They're just common ones that come up quite often in our lives. If you continue to hold and tell yourself these same beliefs and stories or about the world in your life, it will continue to be true for you. If you can change your stories and your beliefs, you can change your life too. And to change those beliefs and stories, you need to be able to deal with the limiting beliefs by shifting and reconditioning your mind to have empowering beliefs instead.
I'm going to share a few steps that you can take to shift into those empowering beliefs
instead, but please know and understand that it isn't quite as simple as just thinking
something different and the job's done. If you're new to looking at your beliefs as a big chance that you've been holding those same beliefs for decades, so it's going to take time to shift them. You're not going to wake up tomorrow and everything be different.
If you want to take any notes on these steps, now's the time to pause me. And if you're ready to go, let's get into it.
So the first thing I want you to do is find some time to consider what limiting beliefs
you hold. And to do this, you can really consider what you want to achieve in life or what you want to do, what you may want to achieve or study, the relationship you might want to have. Just look at what you want in life, whatever it is. And remember that there's nothing too big or nothing's unachievable. And if you think that there is something like whatever you're dreaming of is unachievable for you, that's your first limiting belief.
From there, you would really look at why you may not be working towards that thing or why you may not have achieved it yet. And this is usually where your beliefs are going to come through and that could be empowering or limiting beliefs. But for this exercise, obviously, we really want to look at the limiting beliefs. So once you've determined your limiting beliefs, I want you to ask yourself three questions.
And I would recommend you do this per belief that comes up. So again, this isn't a quick process. You want to take your time.
The first question is, is this a universal truth? And what I mean by that is, does every single person in the whole entire world agree with this belief? Is it true for everybody?
And the second question is, how is this belief serving me? Why am I holding onto this belief? A lot of the time, the limiting beliefs we are holding onto are protecting us in some
way. So why are you holding onto this belief? Because there is a reason.
And the third question is, what empowering belief would I prefer to hold instead? You can then really work to continually choose the empowering belief instead. And this can be done in many different ways.
But some quick and easy ideas just for the basis of this episode are using affirmations,
setting the belief as your phone wallpaper or putting it on your fridge or on your mirror,
using mantras. You could journal about it, catching yourself out in the middle of the day when you're thinking that limiting belief and simply saying, I'm sorry for thinking this belief, I'm choosing to believe in your empowering belief here.
As I mentioned earlier, of course, this isn't simply choosing a new belief in your jobs
done. But by continually questioning our beliefs and finding new ones to replace them and choosing those consciously day to day, whatever that looks like for you, that will recondition and rewire your mind over time.
I wanted to give you an example as well to help this process make a little more sense.
And I was deciding whether to use a personal limiting belief or make one out completely.
And I chose a personal limiting belief because I really wanted to show you how I shifted
that limiting belief into an empowering belief. And you know, as another way for you guys to connect with me.
I've had quite a funny relationship with money in my life, you know, living alone at such a young age, I was paying rent at 15 and needing to pay bills. And I had a lot of evidence in my life that I had to work really hard for my money. And that's something I have carried into adulthood. And it comes up still now and again for me, but this is a limiting belief that I held and it held me back so firmly.
So what I've really wanted to achieve is to earn a certain amount of money while still
being able to spend time with my family, own friends and have time alone and to rest and
you know, do all of the beautiful things in life that all the evidence around me. So again, my caregivers showed me that you had to work hard for money in their beliefs, societies, beliefs, the people that I surrounded myself with. I had so many limiting beliefs around this.
And some of them were, I have to work really hard to earn good money or earning a lot of money means I'm never home with my kids, which means I'm a terrible mother. My family would treat me differently if I earned a lot of money. If I earn more money, I will be a bad person.
And again, these are beliefs I had about myself. I'm going to break one of them down for you in a minute, but me saying this right now, I don't believe those things about anybody else, but they're beliefs that I held about myself and money.
So the basis of this exercise and episode, I'm going to work with the limiting belief
that if I earn a lot of money, that means I'm never home with my kids, which means I'm
a terrible mother.
The first thing I do is ask myself, is this a universal truth? Absolutely not. No. There are so many mothers out there who earn great money who are the breadwinners of their
family and they're still incredible mothers. So I looked for the evidence and the evidence showed me that this was not true.
When I then asked myself how this belief is serving me, I got a bit stuck because this
part is hard. It took me a while and a lot of journaling, but it came to me and I held on to this belief because it kept me small and safe because if I'm earning less money, not as many people know my work or my story, which means there's less people to criticize me.
It also kept me safe because if I were to earn a lot of money, that means that I have more
responsibilities like I have to pay more in tax and I have more employees to take care
of and train and I don't want that. I don't want to have to have more responsibilities right now.
And can you see that reason I was holding on to this limiting belief actually had nothing to do with being a mum? It was more about me being seen and having responsibility. And this is how our mind works. This is how tricky our limiting beliefs can be and can feel.
And finally, the empowering belief I'd rather hold was and still is, I get to earn great
money while being a great mother. Simple and straight to the point.
Like I said earlier, I didn't magically change this belief system. I had held these money thoughts since I was a little kid. And sometimes the limiting beliefs are going to pop up again and again. But the more you can explore them and the more you rewrite them, the easier of a process it will be.
Of course, if you have any limiting beliefs that are really hard for you to process and
to move through, please, of course, seek professional help from a counselor or a coach.
I have links to working with me in the show notes if you're after that's kind of support.
But this is really where you start. If you want to change your limiting beliefs to be empowering beliefs, this is what you do.
So I hope this episode was helpful.
If you have any questions, please reach out to me on Instagram or send me an email.
If you loved this episode, please leave me a rating.
It helps me so much.
And it means the world with lots of love and support.
As always, I'll chat to you next week.
Bye.
With love & support,
Shorina | Mindful Soul Collective
Counsellor & Wellbeing Coach
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