What Are Your Limiting Beliefs?
The Conscious VS Subconscious Mind
To truly understand yourself, you have to know how your subconscious mind works and the limiting belief it holds. A lot of people try to understand or change themselves on a conscious level and fail.
The reason they fail is simple. All of your emotions, beliefs, core values, habits, and desires are not stored on a conscious level; they are stored on a subconscious level.
The Conscious Mind:
The conscious mind is your active awareness of something at any moment. You can consciously look around and be aware of your environment. Your mind is consciously absorbing all the information you are focusing on.
In short, your conscious mind is everything you can see and are paying attention to or thinking about. It is the decisions you make, your ideas, and the problems you solve.
The Subconscious Mind:
This is the powerhouse of your mind. It is like your own personal filing system. It files all the information absorbed by the conscious mind, thus helping you live a more efficient life. Once information is stored in the subconscious, you don’t have to think so hard when tapping into that information.
For example, when you first start learning to ride a bike, everything you do is “conscious” action. As you are learning, you are consciously aware when you brake or go faster. However, after a certain amount of time, you stop needing to think about every action as all the information is now stored in your subconscious. You can now break or go faster while your focus is elsewhere.
Your subconscious is also in charge of controlling your body-related functions. This means you do not have to actively think about breathing or any functions because your subconscious is taking care of it.
This all sounds great, right?
It does when it comes to the body, but when it comes to the filing part, it is only amazing when you fully understand the way your filing system was set up.
Important things to know about the subconscious:
It prioritizes safety
It has no concept of time (if you think something sad you will feel sad; your subconscious mind will react as if the experience is happening in real time)
It takes everything as literal (it cannot tell the difference between a lie and the truth)
It doesn’t work on logic
It holds your belief
When it comes to your filing system, your subconscious is kind of like your mind’s auto-pilot mode, and for auto-pilot mode to work, it first needs to get programmed.
So your subconscious relies on programming from your past for the auto-pilot functions to kick in. It is important to note that the subconscious cannot come up with its own thoughts and ideas; it has to rely on the programming it is provided from the conscious mind.
How does programming work?
Programming refers to any sort of habit, belief or behavior that you developed throughout your life that now impacts your day to day thoughts and actions.
If you have a programmed belief that is negatively impacting your life, this would be known as a limiting belief.
For example, a limiting belief can be “I am not good enough”
Let’s say you grew up in a house where your parents were always busy and no matter what you accomplished it was never acknowledged. As a child, you may interpret the actions or absence as “I’m not good enough”.
Now this belief is then stored in your subconscious mind, remember your subconscious mind treats everything as a fact and therefore, you have now programmed your mind to believe that you are not good enough.
If you are not aware of your programming and have not changed it, then your mind will continue to stick with that belief.
Your subconscious programming can be a belief you created as a child. There does not have to be any logic behind it for it to be programmed in your mind. This can be a little concerning when you think about it, but it highlights how important it is to be aware of your subconscious mind because that is the part of the mind that runs the show.
How aware are you of your previous programming?
If you are not aware of your programming, then you are not in control of your mind. If you are not in control of your mind, then you are not in control of your emotions, behaviors, and life.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate” - Carl Jung
As you take time to think about this quote, what comes to mind? Are you thinking about the filing system that makes conscious decisions? Are you realizing that your foundation might not be as solid as you thought? These beliefs are not concrete; your mind has the ability to reprogram.
You can reprogram by digging in deep. Look into what has shaped your beliefs and bring awareness to that belief that you are operating with. Whether it’s the belief that “you are not good enough”, once you identify with the core problem you will release the old and integrate the new belief of “I know how to be successful and I know I am enough”.
Once you learn this process the work isn’t over. The most important part of this is your experience. You have to apply this learning into your day-to-day life.
Your rewire and reprogram of thoughts will produce results, but it can be easy to fall back into old patterns. Remember your subconscious attracts situations that it is comfortable with so the real challenge sets in when you must make a choice, to either fall into your comfort zone or have the courage to change your pattern.
Instilling new beliefs is rewiring your subconscious mind by replacing the old pattern and continuously embedding the new learning.
Next time you face a situation instead of asking yourself why is this happening to me? Ask yourself, why have I attracted this situation and what are the beliefs that have caused this? How is it serving me?
