How to overcome limiting beliefs: minor changes in perception can create major changes in trajectory

From the onset, let me connect a few dots in order to really hammer the point and purpose of this post home. First the context:

Coaching is a form of development in which an experienced person, called a coach, supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance.

Wikipedia, retrieved December, 2022

Coaching is a form of development in which an experienced person, called a coach, supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance. (Wikipedia, 2022).

Limiting beliefs are part and parcel of the human experience.  They are not characteristic of people of a particular demographic.  They can exist without prejudice or bias in any of our minds at any time for any reason. 

-James W. Falcon, How to overcome limiting beliefs, December, 2022

Limiting beliefs are part and parcel of the human experience. They are not characteristic of people of a particular demographic. They can exist without prejudice or bias in any of our minds at any time for any reason. As a middle-aged man, my life experiences have taught me that limiting beliefs are the boxes that we typically construct and choose to live in that are born out of convenience or avoidance of dealing with other issues. But as a coach I’ve had to understand limiting beliefs on an entirely different level for the sake of the assistance I am obligated to provide my clients. Opinions and experience aside, let’s examine the topic scholastically. A July 2022 post on the website Betterup.com tells us that “a limiting belief is a thought or state of mind that you think is the absolute truth and stops you from doing certain things(Betterup.com,2019).”

a limiting belief is a thought or state of mind that you think is the absolute truth and stops you from doing certain things

Betterup.com,2019

    A 2019 post on the Wharton Magazine online supports the statement I made earlier about limiting beliefs being part of the human condition as well as offers insight as to how limiting beliefs develop.  The post explains…

We all have limiting beliefs that stop us from achieving our dreams or our everyday goals. These beliefs often develop as our mind’s way of supposedly saving us from difficult situations, challenges or failures. Limiting beliefs inhibit our progress(Wharton.upenn.edu, 2019).

We all have limiting beliefs that stop us from achieving our dreams or our everyday goals. These beliefs often develop as our mind’s way of supposedly saving us from difficult situations, challenges or failures. Limiting beliefs inhibit our progress

Wharton.upenn.edu, 2019

     And, lastly executive women’s coach, Anne Shoemaker’s December 20, 2021, post on her site anneshoemaker.com adjusts the lens to give us an even clearer view of our subject in the following description…

In effect, limiting beliefs are thoughts, convictions, or opinions that we believe to be absolute truths that hold us back in some shape or form. As a result, they prevent us from growing, achieving our goals, taking risks or new opportunities, or becoming the people we want to be(Anneshoemaker.com, 2021)

     In the event you missed it, limiting beliefs are common problems that we are subject to experience especially in the course of our pursuit of goals or in the course of progress in general.  Most importantly they need to be fleshed out, properly and thoroughly addressed in order to facilitate forward movement on a number of interpersonal levels.  And here’s my completely shameless pitch: limiting belief are things experienced, knowledgeable coaches can help you plow through successfully.  If you are curious as to what symptoms of limiting beliefs are that would alert you to the fact that you might be a prime candidate to hire a coach continue reading.

In effect, limiting beliefs are thoughts, convictions, or opinions that we believe to be absolute truths that hold us back in some shape or form. As a result, they prevent us from growing, achieving our goals, taking risks or new opportunities, or becoming the people we want to be

Anneshoemaker.com, 2021

    As the antithesis of progress, limiting beliefs can come in all shapes, sizes and about any subject areas.  We can literally have limiting beliefs in play about any one topic or about Many different topics working simultaneously in our hearts, minds, and souls.  An April 21.2019 post on simplemindedlife.com tells us that the most common limiting beliefs are rather general in nature are self-perception related.  Here’s a list…

• I am not good enough
• I am not pretty or thin enough
• I am too old or I am too young
• I am not smart enough or don’t know enough
• I don’t have enough time
• I don’t have enough money
• No one will listen to me, or care about what I have to say
• I can’t be my real self or I’ll be judged
• I can’t ask for what I want because I may get rejected

     There is plethora of opinions, posts, and blogs from a variety of well-meaning people, practitioners and others that have used online platforms to offer their prescription for how they believe they can help their clients to overcome limiting beliefs.  Sadly as studiously as I searched I could not find any science backed information on the topic.  So, in the absence of that information, I will venture to offer the approach that I have discovered to be the most effective approach with my clients.  I am offering this not as an opinion but more or less as a best practice.  Before I launch, let me just say that this practice has been a go to approach of mine for nearly 25 years in the coaching I’ve done with my direct reports when I held leadership roles across a number of industries, both public & private, for profit, none profit and not for profit.  Most recently in my own coaching practice which I opened in the fall of 2019.  If I had to pin a number to it, I could conservatively say that several hundred people to date have benefitted from my approaches to resolving limiting beliefs. 

If I had to pin a number to it, I could conservatively say that several hundred people to date have benefitted from my approaches to resolving limiting beliefs

How to overcome limiting beliefs, Falcon, 2022

So here’s the launch: limiting beliefs are about framework.  Framework that we create and conclude out of convenience or laziness or sometimes fear and anxiety.  Whatever the reasons, the key to freedom lies in the understanding that we willingly create those boxes.  We create those boxes.  While the prompts & reasons might be varied, those boxes are our very own masterpieces.  We willingly build them and we willingly inhabit them.  The cure is to help employees, clients, friends and family members to understand that they are not powerless in their battles.  They are in fact the gods of those worlds, those boxes!  And, just as they created those boxes, they have the power to destroy them just as easily. That said in very common instances, the fix is allowing clients to reframe their thoughts and to anchor those thoughts  in truth.  Affirmation statement can be developed by the client with the coach’s help to be used in place of the  limiting beliefs.  In these instances the coach aids the client in developing new habits that will support their goal pursuits that inclusive of things like reviewing & repeating affirmation statements.  In so doing, the clients thereby create new pathways of thought and behavior that facilitate the new goal pursuit process. 

     For heavier limiting belief kinds of issues, an approach that can be taken that’s been very fruitful for me with my clients is to have the client trace the origin or the source is a thought of a belief of the client it is a bit easier to help the client to dismantle.  If the origin is a family member, particularly a beloved family member, a grandparent a favorite auntie or a mentor type, the dismantling process is much tougher.  Why because once the origin has been  identified you have to help the client to poke holes in the validity of the belief, the thought, the value system.  In theses in stances, coach’s help clients to find new places for those beloved family members by restructuring the authority those family members held in their lives.  Help clients to understand that Grandma’s belief system may have been a great idea way back when but times have changed and now that the client is older they are choosing to adopt a new frame of reference.  In these instances, clients don’t need to have any conversations with grandma, they simply need to choose new, healthier frames of reference that support their current endeavors.   The framing process does not mean that clients should love their family members any less.  In fact, it’s just the opposite.  By choosing to reframe their belief and the authority of their family members held, they can love those relative much more and enjoy a freedom and an independence that is no longer based on an obligatory bond. 

The framing process does not mean that clients should love their family members any less.  In fact, it’s just the opposite.  By choosing to reframe their belief and the authority of their family members held, they can love those relative much more and enjoy a freedom and an independence that is no longer based on an obligatory bond. 

How to overcome limiting beliefs, Falcon, 2022

Needless-to-say, the reframing process that are connected to family members tend to be much more complex and can, at times, present challenges on multiple levels.  They need to be handled with  extreme care by both coach and client and they need to be executed as a collaborative effort.  The collaboration should occur to reduce the possibility of damaging or negatively effecting the familial connection. 

     Humbly but confidently, as a coach I now have a toolbox that has 20 or more approaches I can use to help my clients plow through their limiting beliefs.  I use different approach for my different types of clients based on the complexity of their limiting beliefs. And more times than not, limiting beliefs can be addressed through with very little effort hence an affirmation that I encourage my clients to use is “minor changes in perception can create major changes in trajectory.”

Complexity aside, limiting beliefs may at first glance appear to be work cut out for a counselor or therapist.  If you thought that, you would be our big winner for the day.  But it can also be the work of an experienced, knowledgeable coach. 

How to overcome limiting beliefs, Falcon, 2022

     Complexity aside, limiting beliefs may at first glance appear to be work cut out for a counselor or therapist.  If you thought that, you would be our big winner for the day.  But it can also be the work of an experienced, knowledgeable coach.  Any, No, stop!  EVERY goal pursuit process a coach engages in with a client should be accompanied by a skillful search for limiting beliefs. Why, might one ask?  Because limit beliefs have an uncanny tendency to  surface at the absolute worst times.  Limiting beliefs are the gaping holes you have in your umbrella that you don’t know you have until you find yourself in a cold downpouring and you leave the office and begin your ambitious trek across a rather large parking lot in the dark after work to your car which feels so far away that its hard to believe you can’t request an uber to take you to your car.  Yup.  Limiting beliefs typically surface at the worst times and they are equally as crippling as they frustrating.  They are joy robbing,

minor changes in perception can create major changes in trajectory

How to overcome limiting beliefs, Falcon, 2022.

enthusiasm stealing, momentum stymieing pests that are not fit for a shelter or any temporary living arrangements or even to let be loose in the park to fend for themselves but only and entirely for extermination!  From a coach’s standpoint the skillful handling of limiting beliefs will buy the client much more time to devote to the constructive, healthy, goal pursuit process.  At the very least, limiting beliefs should anticipated by the coach and the appropriate contingencies should be put into place to counterbalance them so that the client has the very best chance reach his or her goals and declare success & victory.  I can only hope this post and this blog overall provides food for thought for the would-be client as well as to current and would-be coaches, alike.  For more information on limiting beliefs or on any other topics, contact me by calling or texting 855.962.6224.  Don’t forget to ask about our 20-minute free consultations.  Office hours are from 9am-9pm, EST,  seven days a week.

References:

Finerman, A. (2019, November 19). Wharton Magazine. Retrieved from https://magazine.wharton.upenn.edu/: https://magazine.wharton.upenn.edu/digital/the-impact-of-limiting-beliefs/

Shoemaker, A. (2021, December 20). Anneshoemaker.com. Retrieved from Anne Shoemaker: https://anneshoemaker.com/what-are-limiting-beliefs/

simpleminded.com. (2019, April 21). Retrieved from Simple Minded: https://www.simpleminded.life/most-common-limiting-beliefs/