How To Overcome Limiting Beliefs
A complete guide to overcoming the negative thinking that is holding you back.
Our preconceived, limiting beliefs about ourselves can stop us achieving greatness in life. Whether it’s convincing ourselves we are not good enough - or talking ourselves out of something that is risky - our thinking can be our single worst enemy when it comes to striving for our most ambitious goals.
The good news is, most of these beliefs aren’t real. We just think they are real.
In this complete guide to overcoming limiting beliefs, performance coach Oliver Hill breaks down the issues with this thinking and how we can implement positive change to be more successful in life and in business.
Chapter 1: How To overcome negative thoughts
The negative thoughts in our head can disrupt and sometimes completely derail our progress, make us less effective and less productive, and undermine our health and relationships. Sometimes they can lead to self-sabotage and, in the worst cases, extreme depression.
Even the seemingly most confident and successful people experience negative voices. They often appear just when everything’s going well; you’re on track to accomplish your business goals, you’re sticking to your good habits, you’re feeling like everything’s falling into place. But then, as soon as you think you’ve got all this good stuff nailed, the negative voices mug you from seemingly out of nowhere: “You’re not good enough. Why did you think you could do this? You’re a failure. No-one wants what you’ve got. Don’t embarrass yourself. Give up.”
Negative voices are more than self-doubt, they’re psychic self-harm. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve already achieved, or how capable and accomplished you already are, they can leave you feeling like a deer caught in the headlights.
Read on to see examples of this type of thinking and how you can overcome negative thoughts.
Chapter 2: How to stop procrastinating
The comedienne Ellen DeGeneres said, “Procrastination isn’t the problem, it’s the solution. So procrastinate now, don’t put it off.”
If only it were that easy.
We’ve all heard the old saying, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today”, but how many of us consistently follow that advice? After all, putting something off until tomorrow means not having to think about it for at least another 24 hours, which is especially welcome if it’s something you’re not looking forward to doing. But therein lies the problem, because you’re eventually going to have to do it anyway, and the longer you avoid doing it, the more significant an obstacle it usually becomes. You might even find that you can’t enjoy the time you’ve taken not to do the thing you’re procrastinating about because knowing it’s still waiting to be done will always be lurking in the back of your mind. It’s one of life’s annoying Catch-22’s.
The ancient Greeks had a word for procrastination. They called it Akrasia, or ‘acting against your better judgement by doing one thing when you know you should be doing something else.’
If that rings any bells with you, I hope this chapter will help.
Chapter 3: How to Stop risk aversion from holding you back
Risk aversion means different things to different people. It can keep you or your business safe and protected, or it can severely limit your ability to embrace new opportunities and take the chances that could boost you or your business to the next level.
If you’re risk-averse, you’re in good company. Neurophysiologists believe the roots of risk aversion go as far back as prehistoric times and it’s not only limited to humans. Risk aversion has been observed in everything from animals to bacteria, especially in situations when the inherent need to survive or reproduce must be carefully balanced against the risks involved. In those cases, it’s called bet-hedging. If you’d like to find out more (and get blinded by some fascinating science along the way), take a look here: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep08242#Sec2.
In many ways, our tendency to be risk-averse is very similar to the fight-or-flight response, when our body automatically reacts to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to our survival by placing us on a kind of physiological ‘red alert’. But, just as chronic activation of our fight-or-flight mechanism can be harmful to our health, being unduly risk-averse can have its dangers too.
In this chapter, we will explore risk aversion and how to overcome it if it is holding you back.
Chapter 4: How to Stop catastrophic thinking
It’s easy to get trapped in the web of catastrophic thinking, mainly because there’s always something to think catastrophically about.
Let’s take this year, for example. We’re barely three months in and Brexit and the Coronavirus have already pushed our catastrophic thinking alarm buttons. Even many of the people I know who said Covid-19 was nothing to worry about have sounded a lot less confident since Italy put up the ‘Back in Two Weeks’ sign. If you want a measure of how widespread Covid-19 catastrophic thinking is, check out the empty toilet paper shelf in your local supermarket. Why are people bulk-buying toilet paper? Who knows, but I bet the Andrex puppy has just gold-plated his doghouse.
Of course, catastrophic thinking doesn’t have to be about anything as significant as Brexit or Covid-19. The pressures of running a business coupled with day-to-day living can also send us mentally running for the hills. But what causes catastrophic thinking, why is it so hard to break out of, and what can we do about it?
In this chapter, Oliver Hill explains all.