Fact or Fiction

Which of your self-limiting beliefs do you believe to be fact? If you have some negative thoughts and feelings that you focus on regularly then you’re cultivating, nourishing, and ingraining those thoughts and feelings into your core values. The more focus you put on these beliefs the more factual they become in your mind.

• Do you tell yourself that you’re worthless, you’re ugly, you’re fat, you’re useless, you’ll never amount to anything?
• Do you tell yourself that you’re stupid and everything that happens is your fault?
• Do you tell yourself that you’re not worthy of love, kindness, or compassion?
• Do you tell yourself that you’ll never succeed?
• Do you tell yourself that others create the issues you face?
• Do you tell yourself that others are to blame for your circumstances or for the choices that you’ve made?
• Do you tell yourself that this is all there is, and life will never be any better?

If you tell yourself these things, it’s most likely because someone else told you first. Your parents or siblings are the most likely culprits. But maybe you heard it from another family member, a teacher, your editor, the person who bullied you or from someone you thought of as friend.

Fact or Fiction?

The truth is, it doesn’t really matter where you first heard these things. What matters is that you adopted these fictitious beliefs into your belief system as your own. You’ve taken what others believe about you and your abilities and allowed those beliefs to limit you to keep you stuck right where you are.

You may have some of the same beliefs listed above or you may have an entirely different set of self-limiting beliefs. But, in order to get unstuck and realize your true unlimited potential you must challenge every last one of your self-limiting beliefs whatever they are.

First off, start by asking yourself is this belief fact or is it fiction? I used to have the belief that I was stupid. After all, when I was a kid, my sister did nickname me “Dumb Girl.” Admittedly, I was a bit impulsive and sometimes I didn’t think things through before I tried them.

But any time I’d make a mistake or do something that was wrong, she’d call me this. So, I began to believe that I was dumb. I believed that I couldn’t do anything right and that every time I did something wrong or made a mistake it was because I wasn’t capable.

Your Belief and Core Values

Now, I believed all this in spite of the fact that I was a good student. I made A’s, B’s and the occasional C. I scored well above average on all of my IQ and placement tests. And I was someone who learned very quickly. But because my sister called me dumb, I believed it. I took it to heart and ingrained this belief into my core values.

I stopped attempting things because I just knew I’d fail because I wasn’t smart enough. I allowed this belief to become part of me to hold me back. I don’t remember when or why but I decided one day during meditation that I’d challenge this belief any time it entered into my mind.

And that’s what I did. Every time I had the thought “you’re not smart enough to do that,” I asked myself…

Is that a fact?

Why? Who says?

Do I really believe that?

Give me one example of being not being smart enough.

Is it that I’m really not smart enough or do I just need to educate myself a little more so that I understand what I’m doing?

Am I really stupid or is this something someone else told me or believes about me?

Challenge Your Beliefs

Once I was able to sort through and answer these questions, I was finally able to see that this was a simply a fictitious self-limiting belief that I allowed myself to cultivate.

Begin to question your own self-limiting beliefs. Find out whether what you believe about yourself is based on fact or is it based on fiction. I bet you find that 99% of the negative things you believe about yourself are just self-limiting beliefs based purely on fiction and that’s a fact.