There are many self-limiting beliefs that have held you back or hindered your progress that you must rethink to have a progressive life.
At a point in your life, you should revisit your principles and see if they are still as sacrosanct as they were.
Beliefs are the character creators that we have no power over when we are born and would go ahead and build our young life around them until we think otherwise when we are able to reason for ourselves.
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As you grow older and become mature, there are things we don’t want to accept about yourselves. You want to be the best, you can’t see yourself not being man enough or not excelling at your vocation. But these things require effort and focus.
You can question everything
A human has the capacity to question everything when he is of age and deserve answers as this shape his life and realign his mind and how he sees the world.
When answers are hard to come by, he might feel up the vacuum with assumptions that might make or mar him going forward.
You have a mental picture of what you want to be, how you want to be seen and the achievements you want before you die. All these play inside your head day in day out.
These mental pictures are honed by certain beliefs that religion, culture, the society and other factors foisted on you and have remained until you are awake enough to question them.
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Out of experience and painstaking research I have put together these beliefs that you could consider letting go as they either have outlived their purposes or have been doing you more harm than good, keeping you in a rut that has denied you a lot of beautiful realities in this beautiful world.
Your success depends on your actions and inactions
Your progress and fulfillment in life depends on how your daily actions or inactions impact on your daily life to give you happiness and satisfaction, pulling you away from depression and all the inadequacies that comes with failure in these turbulent times.
It doesn’t matter if you are 20, 30, 40 or above, you can find purpose and satisfaction whenever you discover the truth and apply it. The discovery alone is a source of lightheartedness and fulfillment.
At some point in your life, you find out a harsh reality that takes only a curious mind to discern. You discover a lot of things you were told does not make sense anymore or have become redundant.
New realities of life have a way of rendering some beliefs dead and sets the curiosity clock on hyper alert.
You are awakened. It’s a beautiful beginning of a new foundation of your journey. Your story will be rewritten with convincing powerful truths.
Self-limiting beliefs you have to let go of
1. Tomorrow will be better
You are not in this world to live forever. Sometimes people are not aware of how long they have spent here until their body starts to fail them, and then their life’s timeline begin to play before them. They see they don’t know what they have gained or lost.
That’s when they understand how wrongly they have been living in the illusion of a better tomorrow. Tomorrow may be there, but it is not guaranteed that it would bring good tidings.
It would bring only electric bills, water bills, rents and every other service which life depends on.
The only way to service your life and those of others around you is to put away procrastination and get your hands dirty right now and put them to work. For this is the only way to have a double chance of being doubly lucky.
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It is easier to pass the bulk to tomorrow because you are too lazy to be curious and ask questions or you have given up in life and take life at it comes. But you forget that someday, there won’t be a tomorrow to look forward to.
No wonder most aged people who achieved nothing speak in regrets because they were misled by a lot of beliefs that made them live the beautiful parts of their lives in blindness and would have achieved more if they had found the truth earlier.
Do not put away what you would do today till tomorrow because tomorrow never comes.
2. The belief that you can’t be confident enough to be yourself
This belief is coming from a place of inadequacy or lack of confidence. It could be as a result of lack of love during the early years of development and has spilled over to adulthood and going beyond.
Trying to satisfy the whims of friends or people around who may not even place any value on you is excessive in bad taste.
Too many people live fake lives and would rather live other people’s life than be themselves. They feel inadequate when with peers and are driven by peer pressure to join the bandwagon.
The bandwagon could take him further away from himself and he could be lost forever picking up characters that are not in line with your personality, either to please people or to feel among.
This belief will make you lack the self-will to be who you are because you are not confident enough to not to disguise yourself.
As damaging as it is, you will never be able to stretch yourself to successful limits with this belief as people would see beyond the cloak and see through your façade. It is always better to be genuine let people see your real self so you attract the right people.
3. The belief that you would not receive when you ask
“If you never try, you will never know.”
The belief that nobody cares about you or that no one is ready to give you support in any way or just simply being shy could be costing you a lot. It’s understandable not to bug people for support or help, but that could be the only lifeline you could have.
Whether it’s asking someone out or asking a friend for financial support, it’s always better to make a move than sit back and fantasize.
The worst that would happen is rejection which you should also be prepared for. A confident person fears no rejection.
4. The belief that you can’t do it
You shouldn’t be afraid to explore challenges to stretch yourself to limits. Humans are capable of what they fear. The more you try new challenges and fail, the more confident and daring you become.
Fear of trying new things has kept a lot of people in a deep rut. If only they know the feats they are capable of achieving. There is not experience or trial that is absolutely useless because you will be better at the next trial.
Every successful person today had tried and failed severally before getting it right. Believe in yourself!
5. The belief that nobody should be trusted
In recent times, dubious and shady people seem to be on the rise. This has made a lot of people including you and I to be cautious of how we deal with people, especially strangers.
Some go further to see people who still trust others as foolish. Inasmuch as it is risky somehow to trust people, but it is also beneficial to put faith in others. Being a little bit vulnerable is a sign you are human, giving people the benefit of doubt.
Locking up your trust is tantamount to locking yourself out of the human fellowship of networking which a part of your success is dependent on.
People are the reason why we are prompted to shrink into our shells most times, and people are also the reason we want to go all out and socialize, do business, have relationships.
6. The belief that starting over is a waste of time
Starting over after you discovers you on the wrong track is the best thing that can happen to you. No matter how far you have gone on a wrong path, you will always be wrong if you continue.
Beginning afresh on the right path promises a level of fulfillment it doesn’t matter if how far you are towards your goal. Sometimes, you have lurch backwards to gather momentum for a resounding success.
Forward always does not mean success and this is why we have to pause sometimes, review our goals and plans and see if we are still in the right direction. Life teaches us that U-turns are allowed so you must turn around if you have to, to achieve your goals and live a happy life.
7. The belief that being busy guarantees success
There is a saying that says ‘busy doing nothing’. It used to describe someone is seems occupied but with no productive output. Yes! It’s okay to have a job and immerse yourself in it.
But if that job is not adding value, instead it drains you and keeps you at a spot or pulls you back, then it’s time to rethink the job.
That you are busy does not mean you are on the right path. Sometimes unprogressive tasks that are inconsequential to the bigger dream could unconsciously keep you locked out of your track.
You could be busy working for other people and lose track of your life and live your life for others.
It is always good to have the internal clock up and active at all times. Know when to move forward, when to quit and recognize the universal signs that says “hey, it’s time to move”.
It’s possible for you to be busy doing nothing. This means that what is keeping you busy is not adding value and will only be clog in your wheel of success. Leave space for family, vacation, leisure to balance out life.
8. The belief that doing same thing for a long time guarantees success
You cannot because there is no job anywhere you slave away. You never can tell, there could be a better opportunity out there. It’s always good to explore, chances are you might see something better.
It’s also true that doing a particular thing consistently enough would lead to success. This is true where you have a clear goal and whatever it is you are doing is viable, not when it is not scalable or futuristic.
You cannot be doing something that does not yield result and also does not have a place in the future and expect success.
There is an employment you would have and it is better you get a skill and be self-employed either because of the pay or because of the toxicity of the environment. The key is to know when to move. This has a lot to do with self-worth and mind management.
Some people are tied at a place because of fear of the unknown and lack of self-will to move away from the present spot. People who never try new things seldom become great people.
9. The belief that love only ends in a broken heart
This is not true and should be discarded by anyone who wants to move forward in the matters of the heart.
Though it’s not a must that one should seek love, but it is essential to make humans complete. You cannot because there is risk and decides not to seek for what would guarantee you beautiful experience.
One cannot because he or she had a bad experience in the previous relationship he/she decides to lock him/herself out of the love life. The key thing is to be careful and identify the red flags before committing fully.
Love is a beautiful thing and it has a beautiful effect on the lives of those who participate in it. Love makes one glow, purifies the heart and renders the effects of worry and stress inactive. Seeking love is not a bad venture
10. The self-limiting belief that you can please everybody
As you grow older, you will discover you can’t please everyone. It is good to want to be in the good book of everyone around you – the family, work place, your peers. When everyone revers and places some value on you, the feeling is enviable and makes you relevant.
But it is a hard task as sometimes it puts you in the position of a sycophant. It makes you lose yourself and sink deep into the low-self-esteem pit as you would always seek for people’s validation.
Self-love should be the first step in being self-confident. Self-love does not mean being narcissistic. You should put yourself first and know the line between being clingy and reserving some respect for yourself.
11. The self-limiting belief that someday you will feel 100% fulfilled across the board
It is not uncommon to fantasize about a time when everything would be alright. When you have all your heart desires met, when you have your dream job, your choice building and cars and have the best family and live a life without pain or hurts.
As humans, there pockets of hurts and pains we have from time to time. If not the death of a loved one, it would be a tragedy that happened to someone we know or just a world event that would change our mood.
The key is to find peace in the thought that you will never have it all. There has never been a man who had it all and that is how life is designed.
12. All men are all the same, all women are all the same
You hear this statement when someone in love is hurt and he or she feels it was a futile effort to have engaged in whatever gave rise to the statement. It usually happens when one is heartbroken because of betrayal or cheating.
All men and women are not the same. Sometimes you would be hurt many times before you find your exact match in a lover. Sometimes lucky people find theirs in the first attempt.
Chances are that when you expect a person to act in a particular way, they actually won’t disappoint you because you have conditioned your mind to look out for those negative behaviours in people.
Generalizing and calling all men or women the same because a gender disappointed you is in excessive bad taste. Incompatibility and self-worth play a big part in sustaining relationships.
One should be resilient enough to handle rejection and understand that it doesn’t always work the way we planned.
13. Only brilliant people can succeed
Believing that only brilliant people can be successful is a self-defeating belief and is in excessive bad taste. There very brilliant people who can’t make it past where they are because there are other factors you might not know holding them down.
Life is complicated and need strings of actions and inactions to connect the dots of what we call success. It is not a rare sight to see people who didn’t get much education but do well in areas they acquired skills.
Whatever one does, focus and consistency is essential to propel him over the edge to success.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A Personal Development Content Creator and an author. I write about life ethics and love to document and share life hacks and experiences of people to help others make good life decisions.
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