Most often, we are unable to realize the influence of our mind on us. We hold on to certain limiting beliefs that do not serve us and prevent us in life from achieving our goals and dreams and from enjoying ourselves as we are. It’s time to stop holding ourselves back.
If you have trouble understanding how to love yourself, you may accidentally hold back with negative thoughts and limiting beliefs. Being able to love yourself and increase your self-esteem is not just something you need to do to feel good about yourself, it is an essential part of escaping the feeling of being “stuck” in your life.
Everyone is stuck at one time or another thinking of the worst, ruminating on shortcomings or wanting something to change. It makes us human. What you do when this happens is what makes the difference between breaking down or getting stuck.
Your thoughts become words. Words turn into actions. Your repeated actions become habits, and these habits can increase or decrease your self-esteem. Good habits move you forward and expose you to opportunities to feel good about yourself. Bad habits only make you feel bad and can get you stuck in a rut.
If you are immersed in thoughts and patterns that make you feel bad or defeated, it’s hard to motivate yourself to do something. Believe it or not, you can change your thoughts and create a new cycle that leads to words, actions, and habits that will motivate you to start living again.
It starts there because, like anything else, until you recognize that there is a problem, there is no way to find a solution. Admitting that something makes you walk on treading water in sight is the first step.
The second step is to discover the pattern of thoughts or behaviors that caused it. For most of us, it’s not just a demon – they come as a team!
Here are 11 limiting beliefs and thoughts you may have that keep you from being your true self:
Table of Contents
1. “I can do nothing right.”:
This can be a pervasive feeling in all of the roles you play, or it can be limited to one area while you are fine in another. For example, something may have happened years ago that made you feel bad.
Over the years, you have struggled to build meaningful and fulfilling relationships with your life partners. Although this is an area of life where you feel inadequate, your professional life can be very successful and rewarding.
2. “I must be perfect”:
Since perfection is in the eye of the beholder, this one sets an expectation that’s impossible to achieve. This need for everything around you to be perfect perpetuates the feeling of not being good enough.
When you strive for perfection in all you do, how you look, where you live and work, you’re asking yourself to be super-human. Now, that’s a deep ditch.
3. “I have to do everything”:
You can have several roles to play: woman, mother, daughter, aunt, employee, boss, friend, mentor, confidante, etc. Are there others for you? Each role requires your energy, your time, your efforts, and your commitment.
Some of these roles may be easier than others, while others feel harsh and less manageable. With too many plates spinning at once, some may wobble until you spin them again, and some may fall. This repetitive pattern of juggling priorities can cause you to dig deeper, rather than allowing you to breathe and stop.
4. “Am I pleasing people a little too much?”:
When you put the happiness, comfort, and desires of everyone else before yours, you never have enough left. You’re stuck thinking that your partner, your boss, your kids, your friends, or your family should come first.
Perhaps that is how you were brought up. It is probably a long-standing belief rooted in your habits. It may not be your fault, but you can change.
5. “I have to be on control of everything”:
It takes too long to train someone else. I can do it better myself. It will take less time if I do it. I know it will be well done. Have you ever said things like that? Then you’re probably a control freak. This is a major hurdle to overcome when you cannot ask for help or, if offered, you refuse to take it.
These thoughts and behaviors can keep you mired in a place that does not allow you to move forward. There are only a few hours in the day, so when you keep doing everything that someone else could help you do, you can’t do more or better.
Recommended: 7 Things to Keep Secret in Order to Avoid Devastating Consequences.
6. “I’ll do it later”:
Procrastination can be a major rock blocking the entrance to your rut. This can prevent you from moving up and out as it is heavy to move. Excessive thinking can lead to paralysis of analysis, which can lead to doing nothing quickly.
More often than not, you can drag fairly serious thought patterns into your rut as you try to stray from your own path. Not knowing what to do first can prevent you from doing anything. Pay attention. In this state, depression can set in.
7. “I must keep up with everyone else”:
It’s hard to meet everyone else’s expectations when you don’t feel like you are real. Pretending to be someone you don’t integrate with is exhausting. It also seems inauthentic.
A habit like this creates thought patterns that can make you feel like a fraud. A constant diet of this will leave you struggling to find out who you are.
8. “Why am I so scared all the time?”:
As you approach life from a place of fear, you will be defeated before you begin. It can also be used as an excuse to get stuck where you are. Fear will never go away completely because it is an emotion designed to protect you.
How you handle fear is key to redirecting the feeling that arises so that it can propel you rather than restrict you.
9. “It’s not my fault”:
Blaming someone else or a circumstance that has happened, because the reason you can’t do what you want/must do is one of the safest ways to hang around in this rut longer than you shouldn’t. If it’s not your fault, it’s someone else’s.
If it’s someone else, then there’s a good reason to get stuck where you are. Someone else is holding you back. If it is you, it may be time to regain control.
10. “I can’t do this”:
Negative thinking will limit your progress better than almost any other model or habit in the book. This rock blocking the entrance will never move because you don’t think you can move it.
This “half-empty” view stifles your enthusiasm. It is difficult to solve problems creatively when you are not looking for evidence of their resolution.
Recommended: 7 Things You Will Realize When You Finally Awaken.
11. “I will never get out of this”:
You can have trouble with just one of these ways of thinking, or more of them can hold you back. It doesn’t matter if it is one or more, being trapped by one of them is a state of mind.
And you can change your mind if you wish. Consider this: you can choose your habits and thoughts. They don’t have to choose you unless you leave them.
Here is a simple process:
This can help you change your thoughts and habits so that they can serve you better and become the steps to get out of your rut:
Identify the habit or thought pattern that blocked you.
Ask yourself, “Where did it come from?” Should I still believe this? Is it good for me today to believe it? Do I want to change that? ”
If the answer is “yes”, set an intention to change it and believe that you can. And if you didn’t have that habit or that way of thinking, what would your life be like instead? Who else would benefit if you changed it?
How could you change this habit or this pattern of thought to benefit you more today?
Write about your new habit or thought pattern as if it had already changed. What do you do differently? How do people react to this new way of thinking and behaving?
Own and practice it. Catch yourself every time you revert to the old model and immediately take corrective action. Concentrate on your new behaviors and integrate them into your daily life. Ask for help if you need it anytime during the journey.
To overcome the blockages that block you, you must first recognize the thought patterns and habits that hold you back. Understanding that you are not relegated to getting stuck in these models is the next step in your rut.
Choosing to change mindsets and decide what you want to think about will create new positive habits that will improve your life and your relationships.
