I’ve been working on finding and correcting limiting beliefs for a while now. As part of my exploration of mindfulness, I started to look for and redefine rules I had created for myself about my life and how I should exist in the world.

We all have these; beliefs about the way we are supposed to live our lives, what we deserve, what success looks like, how we are supposed to interact with others. As I started to examine my own limiting beliefs, I was blown away at how many strict rules I had created for myself without even realizing it. Some examples might be…

People judge me because of my illness. 

I have no clue where to start. 

I am responsible for fixing others. 

I’m not creative.

Success is going to college, getting a job, and working your way up the ladder. 

It’s not the right time. 

Limiting beliefs are sneaky, and if left unchecked it’s easy to accidentally be living life according to a set of rules that don’t align with your values and potential. Limiting beliefs might sound intimidating, but with some awareness and work, I’ve found that they can be flipped around, rewritten and powerful tools to empower you to create the life that you want. 

With awareness of what is holding us back, we can choose to install new beliefs that support us and lift us up. So many of the cliche phrases I used to roll my eyes at and not resonate with — you hold the power, you are the creator of your life, our thoughts create our reality, etc… — now feel like revelations that I want to shout from the rooftop.

YOU get to choose what thoughts you want to play life by. The way you want to talk to yourself, the way you respond to frustrating circumstances. How you measure your success. What attitude you bring into each day. 

So sit down, and start writing down your life rules. Then, after you’ve got a list, start to FLIP THE SCRIPT! Turn “I’m responsible for fixing others” into “the only thing I am responsible for controlling are my actions and reactions.

Choose to measure your success by how much kindness and love you bring into the world instead of by your job title. Speak kindly to yourself and replace “I’m not creative” with “I have important things to say and share them with the world in a way that is unique and special to me”. 

This won’t all happen in a day, or even a week. I’ve been working on this for years and sometimes I get hit with a limiting belief I failed to identify. 

This happened to me the other day while I was in the shower (where I get most of my epiphanies). Out of nowhere, I noticed a script running through my mind. It went something like this: Because you aren’t working you don’t deserve to have fun. The price that you have to pay for not working right now is to stay home and suffer. To prove to yourself and others that you really are struggling and unable to work, your life needs to constantly reflect this. You shouldn’t go to Target, that’s too much of a normal and fun activity. 

This train of thought kept going and going until I tuned in and was like, WHAT THE FUCK? That is insane sounding! If my best friend was going through my health issues, and said to me, “I feel guilty when I have a few good hours and go do a fun thing because I don’t think I deserve that since I’m not working” I would 100% tell them that that is blatantly untrue. This is a pretty strong storyline in my life that pops up almost daily in some form, yet it took me months to really tune into it. 

That’s okay, that is the journey of working on limiting beliefs. As we develop mindfulness and awareness skills it gets easier to tune into that inner voice. And as we tune into that voice, we begin to take our power and decide what it will say.