Do you ever identify a limiting belief but stay stuck believing in its limitations?
At one point in my own life, I was completely blinded by my own irrationality and thought all of it was true – every last defeating, depressing, disempowering bit of it. I still can recall the feeling of believing that my lack-and-limitation thoughts were set in stone, based on reality, and true, cold, hard facts. I can remember thinking things like, “Here we go again; this is happening again, so it must be true. It’s a fact because it is my real experience.”
This is a common stage on the journey that many people encounter.
The only way out is to persevere until your desire for change outweighs your belief in the illusion of the old, irrational idea.
This reminds me of Randy, a young man who had been suffering from depression. As Randy was examining his belief system, he arrived at the awareness that he didn’t believe he could be happy because happiness was always out there somewhere in the future. When he was little, his happiness was locked into ideas of ‘someday we’ll go to Disneyland’ or ‘wait until Christmas’; when the holiday passed, he still wasn’t happy, and he had to come up with another future fantasy of ‘I’ll be happy when ____ happens’. When asked, “How’s that working for you?”, Randy was uncertain. He shared that he believed it was true that he would never be happy, that happiness is unattainable and will always be out of his reach.
Here, Randy did not yet have the decisive power to update his irrational belief to a more supportive belief. There was clearly no ‘yes, I’m ready’, no determination, no decisiveness and no access to a higher truth for him. Because it is extremely important to trust the process of unraveling at each person’s own unique pace, Randy could not be pushed to a higher level of truth than he was ready to receive.
When a higher level of truth is not yet available, the next option is to simply be open to the possibility that there could be something better available.
When asked, “Are you open to the possibility that you could be happy right now?” Randy replied that he would like to believe it was possible, but he just wasn’t sure he could. Here, not only had Randy not yet decided to make a change in his belief system, he wasn’t even willing to remain open to greater possibility. It was as if he was sitting in front of the computer, staring at the open document with the old, limiting belief written on the screen, ‘I’ll never be happy’, but he just couldn’t bring himself to write something new. There was nothing to click as ‘saved’ because he had not yet claimed his power to make a change.
Sometimes people get very stuck in their old perception of reality. Understand that you create your own, individual reality – literally – based upon what you believe to be true at the time, and sometimes what you create feels really, really real. People will say things like, “But it’s true! Such-and-such really does happen to me all the time, so how can I believe differently?”
What I had to learn, and what you can learn too, is that, yes, we do indeed have certain experiences, but things only happened that way because we believed they would happen that way first. Other people around us are having entirely different experiences in similar situations. Understand that if you don’t like something in your life, your power to change it can only come when you decide to change what you believe to be true about it. This is because your view of truth is relative to your current perspective. It is one of life’s strange paradoxes, because what you are experiencing looks real, feels real, seems real and therefore you think it must always be true. And yet, it will only continue to feel true if you continue to believe that it is so.
Is there a particular limiting belief that you feel stuck in right now? See if you can identify it. Then ask yourself, “Am I open to the possibility that this could change?”
If you find yourself getting stuck on something that you really think is true, yet you know it is limiting and you’re really sick of creating that reality, you can also try asking yourself, “Do I want this to continue to be true and real for me, or would I like to create a different outcome?” Don’t rely on past or current outer appearances to determine your truth; appearances are deceiving because you can change your perspective the moment you decide to believe something more empowering.
If you don’t believe that something could be different, it won’t be. If you are, at the very least, open to the possibility that things could change if you update your beliefs, then things can begin to change. Say, “I am open to the possibility that this could be different.” If you can grasp this concept, really wrap your mind around it, there are an infinite number of possibilities you can begin to create in your own life.
Many Blessings of Joy and Vibrant Freedom
Action Step ~ If you feel unable to see a higher truth, just be willing to remain open to the possibility that it could be different.
Declaration: “I am now open to the possibility that I can believe differently.”
http://youtu.be/ZwkE3Tk19Q0