How to Reframe and Dismantle Your Limiting Beliefs

“The only limits you have are the limits you believe.”

– Dr Wayne Dyer

Read with empathy

I read the post with a great deal of empathy. It’s hard to think of anyone who hasn’t at some stage in their life believed, with great conviction that:
“I am useless at ABC.”

I’m pretty certain that nearly all of us have or have had an ‘ABC’ that we regard as a serious achilles heel, or ‘weakness’, as we have no doubt been conditioned to refer to it.

Weakness, or ?

Before I share some ideas on how to deal with deeply ingrained limiting beliefs, let me come back to that unfortunate but common term, ‘weakness’.

It’s a term that we humans have readily embraced to describe areas of lesser capability, as opposed to areas of greater capability that we like to call ‘strengths’. But it is also a term that carries a lot of baggage and one that can sometimes be psychologically quite damaging.

Every human being is different and yet, as a common species, we share pretty much the same capabilities. For example, we all have the capability to think and reason. It’s just that in some, that capability is more developed than in others.

Likewise, we all have the capability to move our bodies to a musical rhythm. Some, however are more adept at this skill than others.

That doesn’t mean my inability to dance like Fred Astaire makes dancing a ‘weakness’ of mine. It’s just not a capability that is well developed in me.

Developed and developmental capabilities

I think you get where I am going with this. We all have what I would call developed capabilities and less developed or ‘developmental’ capabilities.

Developed capabilities can arise thanks to natural talent or sheer hard work or – in most cases – a bit of both. Developmental capabilities are not weaknesses, they are simply capabilities that don’t come that naturally and/or those that we have not chosen to work hard enough at.

Let’s get back to the subject of limiting beliefs.

I’d like to start with a story from some time ago in my corporate life.

The limiting belief and the pig

For a great many years, I would happily tell anyone who would listen how utterly hopeless I was at drawing or artwork.

Then, one day, I found myself attending a leadership skills workshop with about a dozen other people. Believe it or not, one of the exercises involved having to draw a pig, of all things. And there was a prize attached!

I completely forget the rationale for the exercise now, but that matters not.

My first thought was to throw in the towel and own up to the instructor that I had absolutely no clue how to draw anything, never mind a pig.

But my ego reined me in … this was a leadership skills workshop after all!

So I grabbed an unlikely form of assistance from my briefcase – a ruler – and set about crafting what was a very geometric, industrial looking, pointy pig!

My efforts and the resulting (truly whacky) ‘pig’ won me the prize of a box of chocolates.

Sweet!

A welcome realisation

Far sweeter, though, was the later realisation that I was, perhaps, not so totally useless when it came to drawing. It was simply more of a challenge for me than for most others … and I could rise to that challenge by leaning on a steady hand and what I had learnt in engineering design 101!

Hopefully, my story offers a neat segue back into the topic of dismantling limiting beliefs by reframing or ‘reinventing’ them.

Subtle reframing

As I explained on The Forum to the lady with the limiting belief about her ability to write exams, a great way to start the dismantling process is to simply and subtly reframe one’s belief.

By adapting one’s thinking from: “I am useless at writing exams” to something a touch more accommodating like: “I find writing exams challenging,” you immediately open the door to possibility. An irredeemable weakness is suddenly reframed as a capability development challenge.

And, as we all know, humans are particularly good at rising to challenges!

Self fulfilling prophecy

A disempowering conviction like: “I am useless at writing exams” is more often than not a self fulfilling prophecy.

Such a mindset leads to negative expectations, which bring about self defeating behaviour with a resultant poor outcome that simply serves to reinforce the negative belief!

However, the belief “I find writing exams challenging,” though only subtly different, encourages the subconscious mind to search for ways to overcome the challenge – like seeking out advice, techniques and support to improve or develop one’s exam writing ability.

A few chinks to start the dismantling process

Ultimately, as I found with my pig, all it takes is a modest improvement or a small ‘win’ to create a few chinks in a limiting belief – that you once thought was a fact of life – for the dismantling process to start!