How to let go of limited beliefs?

by Lindsay
(Barrie, Ontario, Canada)

Question: I am looking to improve my financial and personal situations. I know all about the LOA (Law of Attraction) and I try my best to practice it every day. I know what I have to do, but I am having trouble doing it. My deep rooted beliefs keep getting in the way, even though I know they are not true. Help!


Real Life LoA Answer: Hi Lindsay, thank you for writing to Real Life Law of Attraction -- the question you are asking, about changing limiting beliefs is probably the MOST important question anyone could ever ask with regard to the Law of Attraction, thank you!

You are so perceptive, and so accurate, in recognizing that your deep-rooted beliefs are getting in the way of what you want, and what you intellectually know you should be doing to get it. The reason for that is because most of our beliefs are really formed as children, when we are very young. We perceive the situations we experience with our parents, based on inaccurate and incomplete data, and then we make disempowered decisions about ourselves based on those narrow perceptions.

For instance, if you made a minor mistake when you were little, but your parents got really mad at you for it, you might start to incorrectly believe that you were bad, unlovable, unworthy, or that you weren't good enough. The real fact of the matter is that your parents probably loved you very much, but they didn't know how to handle their emotions, or they were really stressed out about something else, or just didn't have good enough parenting skills to communicate to you that you were still precious and lovable even though a mistake had been made.

When that kind of pattern plays out over and over again, it causes you to form limited beliefs about yourself and what you are capable of being or doing. It also limits your ability to dream, imagine, and believe that the Universe is on your side. Then, those limited and negative beliefs run quietly in the background of you subconscious, influencing everything you do without your conscious awareness that it's happening.

On top of that, when the brain perceives that you are in a stressful situation, it floods your body with stress hormones like adrenaline. That causes diminished functioning of both the immune system, as well as the frontal cortex of the brain, so that the body can divert more energy and resources to the parts of the body that are used for "fight or flight."

Thus, when we are under stress, which for most of us is ALL THE TIME these days, the part of the brain in charge of conscious, rational, and creative thought is getting less energy than the part of the brain that just runs the old habits and old automatic programming we learned as tiny children. So, when under even mild stress, we have even less capacity to do things like pay attention to what vibrations we are emitting and attracting with the Law of Attraction. Whew!

But hope is not lost -- there are things that can be done about it, preferably with a two-pronged approach of reducing the influence of environmental stress as well as re-programming the old beliefs. Here are the techniques that I have had tremendous success with myself for the very same kind of challenges:

1) Reprograming limiting beliefs. There are many tools out there that can help you re-program your limiting beliefs and judgments about life, but I have only used a few of them myself, so those are the ones I can recommend:

• The Lefkoe Method. Morty Lefkoe has created a series of video modules that you can use online on your own, to walk yourself through the earliest memories you have involving your parents and other early influential people, in which you derived negative impressions and beliefs about yourself. Then, the process helps you to re-examine that early experience and assign a new understanding to it, so that you can re-imagine that old memory from a new perspective and heal it for good. It is very simple, but an incredibly powerful tool, that I have found more effective than anything else I have tried.
  
  The program is called "Natural Confidence" because it increases self-esteem and eliminates limited beliefs that are really running the show behind the scenes. It's pricey, but for me it was the best $200 I ever spent. An additional benefit to the process, is that it gives you a wider perspective on ALL childhood issues, so you feel at more peace in your heart generally.
  
  They do offer a free tool to experience changing a belief such as "mistakes and failure are bad" or "I'm not good enough", if you want to try out the process before purchasing the remaining 22 modules. (Links will open in a new window.)


• "The Work" of Byron Katie. The Work is a process that takes quite a bit more self-discipline to do thoroughly, but everything you need to be able to do it is available for free from Byron Katie's website. The process involves identifying a stressful belief or judgment about yourself (or someone else) and then putting yourself in a new state of mind by imagining your life and your capabilities, as if you never had that belief or judgment. Then, once you have a broader perspective on what IS possible for you if you were to be able to let it go, then you create three "turn-arounds" for the belief, and support each turn-around with true and believable examples from your past.
  
  Like I said, it requires quite a bit more self-discipline to get all the way through the process, but you can work with coaches certified in facilitating The Work, and you can also get Byron Katie's books, such as "Loving What Is" from the library to help you do it on your own.


• Some other tools that I have used, and have found success with are "The Sedona Method", "Psych-K", "Brain Gym", EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) though I am not familiar enough with the mechanics of any of them to explain them very well. Clinical hypnosis can also be very effective, when it is facilitated by a well-trained and professionally certified hypnotherapist.

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