Have you ever gotten frustrated with your health and thought:
- I’ll never be able to meditate – I just can’t sit still!
- Only certain people are athletic enough for yoga and that’ll never be me.
- I’ll always be a sugar addict and that’ll never change!
Don’t worry, we all have thoughts like these at times.
But we feel so upset or frustrated that our minds search for ways to protect us. So we tell ourselves stories or make claims to do just that.
These stories we tell ourselves are called limiting beliefs. They’re “limiting” because they restrict our actions and prevent us from healing.
As a spiritual counselor, I can tell you this is a normal part of life. Plenty of my clients share absolute and rigid beliefs with me during our sessions. But these beliefs don’t have to continue to define your health journey.
You can change the stories you tell yourself and overcome your limiting beliefs. And it starts with understanding where these stories come from.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Limiting beliefs or stories we tell ourselves is something everyone experiences, especially when it comes to our health. We all have thoughts (like the ones above) that we believe to be the absolute truth.
But where do these thoughts come from? And why does our mind supply them?
Limiting beliefs about our health can crop up because of many factors. But it all boils down to one reason: your brain wants to protect you in the future.
Our minds are incredibly complex systems that are constantly learning and evolving. So they make note of past experiences, events, or traumas that evoke strong, negative emotions like:
- Pain
- Hurt
- Fear
- Rage
- Frustration
- Guilt
- Sadness
So when we try to do something that might evoke these same emotions, our brains want to protect us. It’s an instinctive and perfectly normal reaction.
The key is to understand how your mind forms these limiting beliefs – and why these thoughts interrupt our healing journey. Then you can figure out the triggers that cause these limiting beliefs and stories to surface.
Why Limiting Beliefs Disrupt Our Healing
Limiting beliefs about our health are rigid and absolute thoughts that we revolve (and evolve) our lives around. They don’t allow space for new ideas, growth, and other stories.
Most people don’t question their story or beliefs until something critical, like an injury or illness, occurs. We get comfortable with what we know and believe to be true. Until only a drastic event can jolt us out of our comfort zone – which is when we realize that those stories or beliefs aren’t working for us anymore.
As a spiritual counselor, I see this all the time with my clients when we do soul work and self-discovery sessions. We’ll be talking about events on their healing journey when a rigid idea surfaces. They’ll quickly reject it because they’re so attached to that belief that they can’t move forward.
My clients often feel stuck because what they want and what they believe aren’t in alignment.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. You can build a bridge between where you are now and where you want to be. And the first step is identifying what triggers your mind to latch onto these limiting beliefs.
Identifying Your Triggers
When you’re trying to improve your mind, body, or spirit, there’ll be times when things don’t go so well. You might get frustrated or upset and a limiting belief about your health might crop up.
It’s easy to listen to that belief and put restrictions on yourself. But I encourage you to try to identify why your mind supplied that limiting belief or story. Was it caused or triggered by:
- Past experiences or traumas like being bullied at school when you were little or getting rejected by an old partner.
- Imposter syndrome which leads you to doubt your abilities and feel like you’re not as capable as your competitors.
- Fear, anxiety, or stress about the future like interviewing for a new job or preparing for the birth of your first child.
If you can figure out what triggers your limiting beliefs, you can find ways to overcome them.
Tips to Overcome Limiting Beliefs and Stories
When you want to overcome limiting beliefs about your health, the key is to find ways to open your mind to new ideas. When you make space for them, you can grow and evolve in new directions.
But creating that openness doesn’t always come easy. After all, our minds created limiting beliefs to protect us. By making a change, you’re opening yourself up to new possibilities, which may include getting hurt in the future.
To make this process smoother, I recommend using tried-and-true mindset techniques to reword your thoughts and compassionately question your existing beliefs. Some tools my clients find the most helpful are:
- Journaling – this is a great way to get all your jumbled and chaotic thoughts out of your head and onto the page. You can clear out limiting beliefs from your mind and make room for something new.
- Meditation – sitting with yourself and staying present in the moment lets you focus on something besides the stories in your head that you tell yourself. So you can calm your conscious thoughts and open your mind to new ideas.
- Expressing gratitude – giving thanks on a routine basis can open your mind and change the way you view the world. Your mindset will shift as you stop taking things for granted, like your limiting beliefs and stories.
- Depth hypnosis – a spiritual counselor (like me) can guide you into a meditative state so you can listen to your inner self. The goal is to look past your limiting beliefs and discover what you truly want.
- Applied shamanic counseling – these sessions are perfect if you’re trying to process your thoughts and feelings about a specific event. You can examine any limiting beliefs that cropped up and work through the experience.
- Shamanic healing techniques – if there’s a particular story or belief that you’re struggling to detach from, you can use this technique to tap into your inner power. You’ll find the strength to let go of your negative thoughts and start the healing process.
- Daily affirmations – you can replace negative self-talk with positive statements that you read aloud each day. By changing the way you talk to yourself, you’ll start to change the stories you tell yourself.
All of these techniques are ways to help you be kind to yourself as you try to overcome your limiting beliefs and stories. They’ll also help you open your mind to new ideas and let go of the absolute truths you’ve been holding on to all these years.
You Can Change Your Limiting Beliefs and Stories
Limiting beliefs, or the stories we tell ourselves, feel like absolute truths that we can’t change. They crop up when our minds want to protect us from future hurts or pains.
But holding on to these limiting beliefs, especially about our health, doesn’t allow room for new ideas or growth. Instead, they prevent us from moving forward on our healing journey because we believe we can’t change.
This simply isn’t true.
You can change. You can get those rigid thoughts out of your head to make space for new beliefs and stories that help you heal and grow.
You can start today with the techniques above, like journaling or meditation. Or work with a spiritual counselor (like me) to compassionately question your limiting beliefs, identify the triggers, and change the stories you tell yourself.
