Are your beliefs limiting your ability to progress your career and reach your goals? We explore 8 powerful steps to overcome limiting beliefs, boost your confidence and achieve more.
Napoleon Hill once said, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” In fact, the mind is such a powerful instrument, it can deliver to you literally everything you want. But you have to believe that what you want is possible.
#1. You Always Get What You Expect.
Scientists used to believe that humans responded to information flowing into the brain from the outside world. But today, they’re learning instead that we respond to what the brain, on the basis of previous experience, expects to happen next.
Doctors in Texas, for example—studying the effect of arthroscopic knee surgery—assigned patients with sore, worn-out knees to one of three surgical procedures: scraping out the knee joint, washing out the joint, or doing nothing.
During the “nothing” operation, doctors anesthetized the patient, made three incisions in the knee as if to insert their surgical instruments, and then pretended to operate.
Two years after surgery, patients who underwent the pretend surgery reported the same amount of relief from pain and swelling as those who had received the actual treatments.
The brain expected the “surgery” to improve the knee, and it did. Why does the brain work this way?
Neuropsychologists who study expectancy theory say it’s because we spend our whole lives becoming conditioned.
Through a lifetime’s worth of events, our brain actually learns what to expect next—whether it eventually happens that way or not.
And because our brain expects something will happen a certain way, we often achieve exactly what we anticipate. This is why it’s so important to hold positive expectations, get rid of lack of self belief in your mind.
When you replace your old negative expectations with more positive ones and overcome limiting beliefs—when you begin to believe that what you want is possible—your brain will actually take over the job of accomplishing that possibility for you.
Better than that, your brain will actually expect to achieve that outcome.
#2. You Gotta Believe To Overcome Limiting Beliefs.
When Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Tug McGraw—father of legendary country singer Tim McGraw —struck out batter Willie Wilson to earn the Phillies the 1980 World Series title, Sports Illustrated captured an immortal image of elation on the pitcher’s mound—an image few people knew was played out exactly as McGraw had planned it.
Tug said in one of his interviews - “When I was growing up, I would pitch to my father in the backyard. We would always get to where it was the bottom of the ninth in the World Series with two outs and three men on base.
I would always bear down and strike them out.” Because Tug had conditioned his brain day after day in the backyard, the day eventually arrived where he was living that dream for real.
McGraw’s reputation as a positive thinker had begun 7 years earlier during the New York Mets’ 1973 National League championship season, when Tug coined the phrase. If you want to overcome limiting beliefs “You gotta believe” during one of the team’s meetings.
That Mets team, in last place in the division in August, went on to win the National League pennant and reach game 7 of the World Series, where they finally succumbed to the Oakland A’s.
Another example of his always optimistic “you gotta believe” attitude was the time, while he was a spokesman for the Little League, that he said, “Kids should practice autographing baseballs.
This is a skill that’s often overlooked in Little League.” And then he smiled his infectious smile.
#3. Believe in Yourself and Go for It.
Tim Ferriss believed in himself. In fact, he believed so strongly in his abilities that he won the national San Shou kickboxing title just 6 weeks after being introduced to the sport.
As a prior all-American and judo team captain at Princeton, Tim had always dreamed of winning a national title.
He had worked hard. He was good at his sport. But repeated injuries over multiple seasons had continually denied him his dream.
So when a friend called one day to invite Tim to watch him in the national Chinese kickboxing championships 6 weeks away, Tim instantly decided to join him at the competition.
Because he had never been in any kind of striking competition before, he called USA Boxing and asked where the best trainers could be found.
He traveled to a tough neighborhood in Trenton, New Jersey, to learn from boxing coaches who had trained gold medalists.
And after 4 grueling hours a day in the ring, he put in more time conditioning in the weight room.
To make up for his lack of time in the sport, Tim’s trainers focused on exploiting his strengths instead of making up for his weaknesses.
Tim didn’t want to merely compete. He wanted to win. When the competition day at last arrived, Tim defeated three highly acclaimed opponents before making it to the finals.
As he anticipated what he would have to do to win in the final match, he closed his eyes and visualized defeating his opponent in the very first round.
Later, Tim told me that most people fail not because they lack the skills or aptitude to reach their goal but because they simply fail to overcome there limiting beliefs and don’t believe they can reach it. Tim believed. And won.
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#4. Believing in Yourself is an Attitude.
Believing in yourself is a choice. It is an attitude you develop over time.
Although it helps if you had positive and supportive parents, the fact is that most of us had run-of-the-mill parents who inadvertently passed on to us the same limiting beliefs and negative conditioning they grew up with. But remember, the past is the past.
There is no payoff for blaming them for your current level of self-confidence. It’s now your responsibility to take charge of your own self-concept and your beliefs.
You must choose to believe that you can do anything you set your mind to—anything at all— because, in fact, you can.
It might help you to know that the latest brain research now indicates that with enough positive self-talk and positive visualization combined with the proper training, coaching, and practice, anyone can learn to do almost anything.
If you read autobiography of successful people almost everyone would say, “They were not the most gifted or talented person in there field, but they chose to believe anything was possible. They studied, practiced, and worked harder than the others, and that’s how get got to where they are.”
If a 20-year-old Texan can take up the luge and become an Olympic athlete, a college dropout can become a billionaire, and a dyslexic student who failed three grades can become a best-selling author and television producer, then you, too, can overcome your limiting beliefs and accomplish anything if you will simply believe it is possible.
If you assume in favor of yourself and act as if it is possible, then you will do the things that are necessary to bring about the result.
If you believe it is impossible, you will not do what is necessary, and you will not produce the result. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
#5. You Have to Give up “I Can’t” to Boost Your Confidence And Overcome Limiting Beliefs.
If you are going to be successful, you need to give up the phrase “I can’t” and all of its cousins, such as “I wish I were able to.” The words I can’t actually disempower you. They actually make you weaker when you say them.
Remember your brain is designed to solve any problem and reach any goal that you give it.
The words you think and say actually affect your body. We see that in toddlers. When you were a toddler, there was no stopping you. You thought you could climb up on anything. No barrier was too big for you to attempt to overcome.
But little by little, your sense of invincibility is conditioned out of you by the emotional and physical abuse that you receive from your family, friends, and teachers, until you no longer believe you can.
You must take responsibility for removing I can’t from your vocabulary.
I once attended a seminar, in which the author as part of the seminar, had us write down every other I can’t that we had—I can’t find the perfect job, I can’t be a millionaire, I can’t find the perfect mate —and then we threw them onto the burning coals and watched them go up in flames.
That night we all learned that every limiting belief about our abilities is a big lie. We can be, do and have anything and everything we want.
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#6. Stop Wasting Your Life Believing You Can’t.
In 1977, in Tallahassee, Florida, Laura Shultz, who was 63 at the time, picked up the back end of a Buick to get it off her grandson’s arm. Before that time, she had never lifted anything heavier than a 50-pound bag of pet food.
Dr. Charles Garfield, author of Peak Performance and Peak Performers, interviewed her after reading about her in the National Enquirer. When he got to her home, she kept resisting any attempts to talk about what she called “the event.”
She kept asking Charlie to eat breakfast and call her Granny, which he did. Finally he got her to talk about “the event.”
She said she didn’t like to think about it because it challenged her limiting beliefs about what she could and couldn’t do, about what was possible.
She said, “If I was able to do this when I didn’t think I could, what does that say about the rest of my life? Have I wasted it?”
Charlie convinced her that her life was not yet over and that she could still do whatever she wanted to do.
He asked her what she wanted to do, what her passion was. She said she had always loved rocks. She had wanted to study geology, but her parents hadn’t had enough money to send both her and her brother to college, so her brother had won out.
At 63, with a little coaching from Charlie, she decided to go back to school to study geology. She eventually got her degree and went on to teach at a local community college.
Don’t wait until you are 63 to decide that you can do anything you want.
Don’t waste years of your life, overcome your limiting beliefs, boost your confidence and believe that you are capable of doing anything you want and start working toward it now.
#7. It’s All About Attitude Your Attitude Shapes Your Life.
When baseball great Ty Cobb was 70, a reporter asked him, “What do you think you’d hit if you were playing these days?” Cobb, who had a lifetime batting average of .367, said, “About .290, maybe .300.”
The reporter replied, “That’s because of the travel, the night games, the artificial turf, and all the new pitches like the slider, right?” “No,” said Cobb, “it’s because I am seventy.” Now that’s believing in yourself!
#8. What Others Think About You is None of Your Business.
What others think of you is none of your business. If having others believing in you and your dream was a requirement for success, most of us would never accomplish anything.
You need to base your decisions about what you want to do on your goals and desires—not the goals, desires, opinions, and judgments of your parents, friends, spouse, children, and coworkers.
Quit worrying what other people think about you and follow your heart.
I like Dr. Daniel Amen’s 18/40/60 Rule: When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you’re 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you’re 60, you realize nobody’s been thinking about you at all. Surprise, surprise!
Most of the time, nobody’s thinking about you at all! They are too busy worrying about their own lives, and if they are thinking about you at all, they are wondering what you are thinking about them.
People think about themselves, not you. Think about it—all the time you are wasting worrying about what other people think about your ideas, your goals, your clothes, your hair, and your home could all be better spent on thinking about and doing the things that will achieve your goals
