Changing Limiting Beliefs

Once we figure out the true meaning of our life, aligning our social self to it often means big changes to our daily life. And I mean, BIG CHANGES. When you were reading this, did you find yourself pulling back in doubt? Did you find yourself thinking, "Hey, this guy doesn't make any sense, because he doesn't understand what reality means. I need to feed myself, I need to pay rent, I need to earn money, and, well, this is the only way I can earn money - by working within my own profession! And I am pretty darn good in my career already, thank you very much. Do you tell me to quit my job that I worked so hard for 20 years to get to such a high position and start all over? No way! It's just impossible. You can't do this to me, and I can't do this to myself. So, it's probably going to be the way of life..."

OK, stop! Yes, you are absolutely right, and you have just proved exactly the point of this page. You do not yet believe in your own abilities, or in a possibility of a better life.

There is a deep reason of why you might not be convinced yet. First of all, let us realize that it is your social self talking. Your social self is plenty scared of giving it up. And, by the way, you don't need to give it up. Maybe what you are doing is already a part of your life mission. You simply might not have discovered it yet. Or maybe it is not. Nobody can tell you that for sure. It is only up to you to discover.

There is a good reason for why you are opposed to the idea that you can earn your bread, and earn your living by doing what you truly love. How do you do that? It is actually the second question. But the first question is, how do you believe that it is possible?

There are many possible reasons. It could be just a simple belief installed by your parents or school in your early life that you have to work hard to get a lot of money. You have to work hard in order to be well off in the society. Well, look at the most successful people - how much to they work? Yes, some of them indeed work hard. But they are disproportionally rich. And there are some rich people who hardly work at all! You may say, "Uh, they just got lucky. Maybe they did. Or maybe not. Or it may also be that they created their luck. They didn't take it for granted. And you can do that too.

You may believe, for example, that in order to support yourself, you may have to work hard. And one, probably the most unruly belief that our stressed-out high-paced World is imposing is that you have to have a job in order to support yourself. At the same time, this job has to be "hard", or even "boring". It's true that sometimes you really have to work hard. It doesn't mean, however, that you have to wreck yourself, it doesn't mean that it's going to be unpleasant.

Remember those experiences where you lost the sense of time. Quite often, when you are immersed in those activities, you can actually work extremely hard, and yet, be very joyful about it. It doesn't feel like work, it feels like fun, like play. For some people, working out is hard, but for others, say for dedicated martial artists - they may be exercising for 2 hours a day minimum, and yet they consider it fun! For instance, my martial art instructor says that about 25% of the time he spends practicing is work for him, he feels that he has to do that. But he only has to do that because the rest of 75% is fun. And he knows that in order to have lots of fun, which is most of the time anyway, he needs to do some grudge work to prepare himself physically. So, he needs to do a little bit of hard work, and then he plays a lot.

How many of you can say that you play 75% of the time, and work only 25%? I doubt that there are many of you who can say that. And if you can say it, then you probably don't need any of this information, go ahead and live you life!

In fact, the truth is that, in our modern society, and especially in the very stressed society, the most successful people are those for whom work is play. That's the only way they can put so many hours of work in a day. Because for them it's fun! Because for them it's exciting. That's the only reason they can achieve such a success, because for them it's fun!

How do we change our limiting beliefs? Again, in NLP there is a whole slew of processes that can help you replace your limiting beliefs with more useful ones. Many of them are described in a great book by Robert Dilts called Beliefs: Pathways to Health and Well-Being. Would you rather believe that work is play? That it's actually fun to work? As long as you find the right type of work for yourself and can support yourself. In fact, chances are that you will become much wealthier by doing what you love, as opposed to doing what you have to.

There was an interesting study of college graduates, of those who pursued their passion, who wanted to do what they love to do. There were only about 3% of those among all the graduates of that particular class. And the rest 97% were following the standard career path based on the education and advice they received. So, the 3% that pursued their passion, most of them, the overwhelming majority, have become millionaires in the next 10 years. Among the rest 97%, very very few became wealthy. So it's an extremely clear indication that pursuing your passion has a much higher chance of making you wealthy, and not just being able to support yourself, compared to doing what the society believes you "should" be doing. That's a very interesting observation, it goes completely contrary to our typical beliefs. So, how long are you going to keep that old belief? And how soon will you change your beliefs to the new ones?

What you see is what you belief. So, if you belief that pursuing your passion will give you the most quality and wealth in your life, can you imagine how easy it will be for you to start seeing opportunities to fulfill your passion? And not only to fulfill your passion, but also to support yourself financially, and even become wealthy. You bet!

Has it ever happened to you that, when at some point you decided that you want a car, a very specific type of car, suddenly, you start seeing that car all over the place? Do you think people around you all of a sudden started buying that particular car model? Of course not, it's always been there. It's just you started to notice it.

So, what would you rather like to notice: "proofs" of how it is so hard to survive without a job (e.g. talking to people who were laid off), or the new exciting opportunities of living your life on your own terms? Which of the two beliefs would you rather have?

In our Midlife Skills Newsletter, we discuss the belief change processes specifically designed for people in midlife crisis, along with many other invaluable tips and ideas. In particular, what do you do once you eliminate your limiting beliefs, and start believing that Life, the way you truly want it to be, is indeed possible? How do you proceed from there? Find out by subscribing to our newsletter!

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