Many people fail to reach their potential because they blindly accept false rules about the universe that society or their parents have beat into them.
“The sun revolves around the earth.”
“You died from illness because you were a bad person.”
“The only path to success it become a doctor since you will become rich.”
But when you realize that the people who told you this are no smarter than you and could be wrong, everything changes. That’s why limiting beliefs are the most important thing to fix…
Contents
What Are Limiting Beliefs?
Limiting beliefs are assumptions that we believe about the world and how you can’t accomplish thing that hold us back from achieving our goals even though they’re not true.
These assumptions are so ingrained in our brains by culture and upbringing that they are tough to self-identify.
Additionally, they stop you from achieving your potential, sometimes despite the tools, tricks, or techniques given to you.
For example, take the job market. People will lose any enthusiasm and will give up quickly if they can’t find work.
Why?
Because they still hold a central belief that stops them: “I’m too young.” or “I don’t have the skills and can’t acquire them.” or “I’m too old.” or “I lack experience” or “I’m overqualified.”
Notice how these all play out in other fields: dating for instance or music.
Many men will not even try or give up easily when things look bleak.
Musicians face this too. Justin Bieber mentioned on his appearance on X Factor USA that he was told by everyone that he was too young to be successful when he first started out in the industry.
I think one of the most common limiting beliefs is the abundance and scarcity mindset.
They are two sides of the same coin.
An abundance mindset is one where you feel like there is plenty out there for all. This perspective change affects all other areas of your life: you don’t cling to every dollar like it’s your last, which eventually helps you focus on making more than on the lack that you have… you give freely because you realize that money spent in intangible ways can come back many times over: helping friends or going above and beyond for your customer… you aren’t as desperate or focused on one woman and you end up appearing more attractive because it shows that you are an eligible bachelor with choices.
Scarcity mindset is the opposite: you cling to finances, people, and items like it’s the last you’ll ever get. You think the world is limited.
I’ve always tried to identify limiting beliefs and uproot them.
Now, here are the top limiting beliefs around money that destroy people…
1. Rich People Are Evil and Greedy
There are plenty of stories of people who have subconsciously prevented themselves from claiming the wealth and success they’re after because they think it would affect their values if they became rich. This often hinges on a false belief that “all rich people are greedy” that was told to them by someone they grew up listening to — often parents.
But is this actually true? Or just a lie made up out of jealousy/.
Any group of people has differences. Some rich people are greedy while some are kind.
Jaime Masters has interviewed hundreds of millionaires on her show Eventual Millionaire and she found that rich people are actually the most giving people in the world. They give more money to charity and devote more time to helping others.
If you look at the world’s richest billionaires, they’re giving more money to charity than ever before in history. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett created the Giving Pledge where they have pledged to give over half their wealth to charities before they die.
2. Money Doesn’t Make You Happy So Avoid It
Money does make you happy, up until a certain income level. International studies of wealth controlled for third world countries found that money does correlate with happiness until a first world middle-class income.
Wealth brings peace of mind from the suffering that lack of wealth causes: hospital, car bills, illnesses, starvation, and so on.
3. I Feel Guilty Having All This Money When There Are People Making $1 A Day in the World
This belief causes people to voluntarily throw away, stifle the success of their business by underpricing, or give away their money, even though they could have used ti to make more money or give back more to society.
One of the best way of disproving limiting beliefs is finding people who have disproven it with their own lives.
Warren Buffett, for example, has pledged to donate 99% of his money to charity before he dies. He has helped more people living in poverty than most other people because of his charitable donations. To do that, he had to use the money to make more money and compound that money until he was very old to make the most to donate. Having the money isn’t always a bad thing.
4. My Parents and Ancestors Were Never Rich, So I Can’t Be.
You need only look to all the self-made millionaires and billionaires alive today to know that this isn’t true. There are more and more new stories of self-made successes every day thanks to new technology that makes it easier and faster to scale a business idea.
Listen to the podcast, Eventual Millionaire, for an endless supply of self-made millionaire case studise.
5. I’m Being Selfish For Wanting To Be Rich
Wanting to be rich doesn’t have to be selfish.
Pat Flynn, and many other lifestyle entrepreneurs, have become millionaires mainly because they want to spend more time with their family. Their motive is to make their children’s lives better by actually having time to spend with them.
Furthermore, there’s nothing wrong with being selfish.
You sometimes have to be selfish enough to take care of yourself so that you are in a good spot to help others (just like how airplanes tell you to put the air mask on yourself before your child so that you can actually help your child without dying).
Many people grow up with flawed ideas of how bad it is to be selfish because they were attacked my family, friends, or acquaintances for doing something pleasurable for themselves. The world should be a place where everyone is happy and enjoy what they’re doing. Therefore, you’re doing yourself a disservice by living a life of self-inflicted suffering.
Why do we have limiting beliefs?
I’ve gotten curious lately as to why we have them.
Why?
Well, I think it’s because they are part of our psychological nature to make assumptions.
Also, a partial truth can become a whole truth in our belief system.
There are elements of partial truth to most limiting beliefs. That’s one big element to why we believe them.
For example: we think that everyone doesn’t like a certain race because we experienced a few horrible racist experiences in our childhood.. or we may think that people can’t get a good job with no college degree because most of the people you’ve met without a degree fail.
We don’t ever really check the numbers or statistics. If we did, we might find general trends that agree with us that further confirms it.
What successful people do is push past that and get excited at some of the super successful wealthy individuals who did well without even a high school degree, like Richard Branson.
This fuels you to become another super successful person.
Instead, many of us end up just giving up without even trying, thus turning your chances of success from some percentage to zero.
Quite frankly, the history of science shows how we really have no idea how the real world works and are just doing the best to figure it out. Not so long ago, we thought sucking our blood out with leeches was good medical treatment and we thought every planet revolved around us.
It took decades of complicated testing and arguing against overwhelming evidence to convince the world.
We make assumptions based off limited evidence to save time.
Sometimes, those things cripple us.
How To Identify Limiting Beliefs
It’s difficult to do so on your own because of your own biases but possible.
Having other people who are skilled in the area you want help in give you an objective feedback on yourself helps. Get multiple people, the more, the higher and better the sample size.
A lot of the limiting beliefs I’ve identified come from people experienced in the area giving a different belief on something that questioned my assumptions of how the world currently works.
Always be questioning.
How to Eliminate Limiting Beliefs?
This is definitely not an end all be all, but I’ve found that small baby step actions working against the identified assumption works really well.
Why does this work well?
Because if it’s a strongly rooted belief, it’s going to be very tough to go at it full force.
For example:
I’ve had a few minor racist moments in my lifetime being Asian America. I’ve identified this as a possible partial reason for my aversion to reaching out to people of different ethnicities for guidance or to learn more.
Rather than immediately trying to boldly talk to hundreds of white people and reach out, you could do a small test first: reach out to 5 people who went to your college and work in your field of interest that you haven’t met before. Because of the alumni and field of interest connection, they are more possibly willing to reach out.
As you can see, if you have huge racist memories from your childhood, it can completely stop you in your tracks from even trying if your move is too bold.
Note:
Some people are different and prefer a “jump in the pool” rather than “one step at a time” strategy. I prefer this myself when I’m actually swimming. Some people might do better with an initial big shock.
Some people tell others to do something huge, like stopping 10 random girls on the street and asking for their number if they’re scared to death of approaching. I would say it doesn’t always work out well because if you’re exceptionally introverted, it could never be forced no matter what you threaten, bribe, or take away from that person. It’s too extreme.
Conclusion
I’m always struggling and working to better myself with identifying and removing limiting beliefs.
They are one of the central things holding us back from our success that we overlook.
All the right tools and techniques in the world make no difference when you have a belief that holds you back.
For example, believing you can never success in the workplace because of your education, experience, degree, and skill set can attempt you from even trying even if you get the best tools, strategies, and advice from the best experts out there telling you that you can.
To identify these beliefs, find as many people you can who are skilled in the area you need help with to objectively analyze you. It’s tough to figure it out on your own because you are biased.
To eliminate them, work on slowly uprooting them through small actions that test your new belief.
Another way is to just go all in immediately. It doesn’t work for everyone.
Have you found any techniques that work even better?
What are some beliefs you have discovered about yourself that aren’t true?
