Not Going to Happen

So you’ve made your ‘New Year Resolutions’ – and at least one of them hasn’t happened – go on, admit it, it just didn’t work out.

You’ve added something else to your list of things you ‘can’t do’, ‘don’t want to do’ or just don’t ‘feel like’ doing or maybe it’s your list of things that ‘don’t work’ or ‘don’t work for me’.

We all have this list.

It’s embedded in our subconscious mind and even though our conscious intention may be to do many of these things it gets vetoed by our subconscious:

• I can’t do that
• I don’t want to do that
• It won’t work even if I do it

So we don’t – whatever it was just doesn’t happen.

Even if we ‘try’, because as Yoda said “Do, or do not, there is no try”.

When we ‘try’ something our subconscious has already decided that it isn’t going to work, so whatever we attempt with the sceptical attitude of “I’ll give it a try and see what happens” or “I’ll try and give you a call” is automatically doomed.

(Now there is another meaning of try – as in ‘trial’ or experiment or test. This is different. Edison ‘tried’ thousands of times to make his vision of the electric light bulb work. Eventually he succeeded because he believed he would. That was ‘doing’ not ‘trying’.)

But back to our lists – those things that we can’t do or will never work.

These are our Limiting Beliefs

We’ve programmed our subconscious mind to give these priority over our decision making processes. Not deliberately, it’s automatic – we can’t help it (and that in itself is probably a limiting belief by the way!).

Of course we’ve had a lot of ‘help’ along the way. Our limiting beliefs have been fashioned by our parents and families, our ‘education’, our employers or business partners, the press and media, what we’ve read and what we see on the web.

Everywhere we’ve been subconsciously picking up ideas that there are things we ‘can’t’ do. Not for reasons of legality or morality, but just about life, the universe and everything.

I have to emphasise that we don’t consciously make these limiting belief decisions; the trouble is that although we can block certain things consciously, our subconscious is open all hours and open to all ideas.

Our limiting beliefs really do hinder us dramatically from making progress with things we want to do.

It doesn’t matter how strong the conscious decision to do something, a limiting belief that ‘it won’t work’ or we ‘can’t do it’ always wins out.

But here’s the good news

We can get rid of our limiting beliefs

However, we can’t reboot or re-install the operating system or wipe the disc clean; our limiting beliefs have to be removed one by one – once we’ve identified them.

So the first step is to recognize when we have a limiting belief about something and fortunately they always make themselves known.

Whenever you get the thought that something ‘won’t work’ or that you ‘can’t do’ something or just ‘don’t feel like it’. There’s probably a limiting belief arguing with your conscious decision making process.

Write it down. Make a list of your limiting beliefs. Once you’ve identified them you can get rid of them.

But that’s another story . . .

I’m going to add some more limiting beliefs to my list – how about you?

Have a great week – and don’t let anyone (especially yourself) stop you.