You can be your own best friend or your own worst enemy.  It is the beliefs you have about yourself, others or situations that moves you forward or holds you back. Your belief system creates how you see the world and the possibilities or barriers within it.   When self-limiting beliefs create roadblocks to your success, the result can stop you from living your best life.

A couple of months ago I attended the W.I.S.E. Women’s Annual Breakfast hosted by the Greater Lowell Chamber of Commerce. The guest speaker was Hank Phillippi Ryan successful author and award-winning investigative reporter for WHDH TV Boston.

Hank told the story of when she was writing her first book, Prime Time. She was speaking with her mother telling her that she was unsure if she could finish the book; she questioned if she had what it took to complete the project. Very simply her mom replied, “You will if you want to.”

How many times have you started a new project or was in the process of announcing a new product or service when you stopped and began to have doubts whether or not you could pull it off? I know that I have had those doubts creep into my mind on more than one occasion. But I also know that Hank’s mom was 100% correct when she passed on those words of wisdom to her daughter.

I want you to think for a moment about the conversations you have had with yourself today. Did you tell yourself you were phenomenal, successful and talented or did you tell yourself you were unorganized, forgetful, and lazy?

Most of the time we don’t even realize that the negative thoughts are playing like a tape over and over again in our head.  They have found a place in our mind so comfortable that we accept them as true rather than what they really are, an unproven self-limiting thought.

Your mind is an incredible tool that believes what you tell it, so why not challenge the self-limiting beliefs you currently hold as true.  What if you discovered that they were not true and could finally discard them and create true direction instead of a misguided story line?

When you banish self-limiting thoughts, you can make significant changes and begin to live life with joy, power and clarity. That clarity will allow you to see things differently.  It is a wonderful experience to be free of those negative beliefs and to make room for positive thoughts that move your forward!

As a business coach, I hear these negative beliefs from my clients all the time. We work through them by having them challenge their thinking and replace them with a new belief that is true or truer than the original.

Author Byron Katie, has done a phenomenal job in addressing limiting beliefs in her book titled The Work. I suggest you read the book to get the full understanding on the methodology. In part Katie suggests that we challenge each limiting belief by asking four questions:

1. Is it true? The answer is a “yes” or a “no” only.  If your answer is “no”, continue to question three.
2. Can you absolutely know that it is true? What proof do you have that it is true?  It most cases you will find it is not true.
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought? Close your eyes and drop your story just for a moment and notice, who would you be without that thought? Who would you be without your story? How about if you were not capable of believing that thought.  Turn the thought around. Reverse the thought as many ways as you can and ask yourself if these reverse versions seem as true as or truer than your original thought.  http://www.thework.com

By challenging those negative thoughts you are now free to replace it with thoughts that empower you and move you forward into the business and life that you want.

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