2 exercises to reprogram your limiting beliefs

Dernière mise à jour de l'article le 17 October 2024

In this episode, I suggest 2 exercises to help you reprogram your limiting beliefs.

We’re going to focus on limiting beliefs, because they paralyse you from taking action: you put all your energy into these beliefs to convince yourself that you’re not capable of doing something without even trying.

At last! We’re going to work on beliefs!

How can you reprogramme the limiting beliefs you identified in previous episodes? Today we’re going to focus on these limiting beliefs, not on the ones that help you achieve your life goal.

The aim is to introduce you to two exercises that will enable you to work on them.

The basic premise to remember to help you reprogram these limiting beliefs: every belief has a positive intention.

Whether you believe you can do something or you believe you can’t do something, you’re right in both cases.

– Henry Ford

Reprogramming our limiting beliefs : Introduction

In this episode, I’m going to focus on the limiting beliefs that I explained to you in the previous episodes on beliefs. I think you’ve probably realised by now that it’s these limiting beliefs that are paralysing you from taking action. You put all your energy into validating these beliefs, finding excuses and convincing yourself that you’re not capable of doing what you want to do and you don’t even try to take action.

So the aim is to reduce the hold these limiting beliefs have on you to help you take that first small step towards taking action and starting to transform your life.

First of all, if you haven’t already done so, you need to identify your limiting beliefs. Don’t hesitate to listen to the previous episodes if you’ve just come across this one. And remember that even if your belief is limiting, it can still be useful at some point in your life.

Beliefs are not always universally limiting. Some can be helpful and others limiting, depending on the context, and sometimes they can be useful in certain cases.

So be careful to identify a limiting belief that completely paralyses you from taking action or making a decision. I’m really repeating this because I don’t want you to change a belief that helps you move forward and achieve your life goals!

Reprogramming our limiting beliefs : Questioning

Let’s start with the first exercise.

This is a simple exercise that you’ll come across regularly in the world of personal development and coaching: it’s an exercise in questioning. I’ve already talked to you about this in the episodes on managing internal and external conflicts. Questioning is a really powerful tool that will help you to open up your consciousness.

The aim is to find alternatives to your limiting beliefs. It’s about opening your awareness to other possibilities, other possible paths that will enable you to move forward and not limit you in your actions. Because if you can identify other possibilities, it means that your belief is not completely true all the time.

With this questioning exercise, the aim is to change the meaning of your belief to help you represent the situation you are facing differently and make you aware that your belief is not always true, whatever the situation.

Little by little, if it’s not always true whatever the situation, it will crumble and you’ll be able to create other beliefs that will help you to take action.

These questions are there to create doubt in your head about this limiting belief, and if you don’t feel at ease when you do this exercise, that’s normal because you’re challenging a limiting belief that may have been present for years.

Take a pen and paper as usual, set aside some quiet time to do it, at least 15 minutes, and try to isolate yourself so as not to be disturbed. Put on some relaxing music to help you do this exercise and think about the following questions:

• How do you know this belief is true?
• Could you envisage moving forward differently with this belief?
• What if you were wrong from time to time in holding this belief?
• How does this belief serve you today?
• In what way does this belief no longer satisfy your deepest values?
• What are the other possible alternatives to this belief? Find at least five alternative beliefs.

Once you’ve done this exercise and identified these five alternative beliefs, I suggest you try them out to see if they could be true for you and help you to take action.

Observe your daily environment to validate that these five other beliefs are also true and that they can be applied to your life.

Reprogramming our limiting beliefs : Present-Future Realignment

The second exercise is a little more difficult, because it’s not necessarily easy to do on your own. But I wanted to suggest it anyway, because it might help you to think about this belief in a different way.

The idea is to use the movement of your body to anchor this reflection in you and allow you to reshape the way you perceive this limiting belief. This exercise is called “Present Future Realignment”. You’ll need a bit of space for this, but don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to dance on a table 😉.

You take three pieces of paper, writing “present” on the first, “future” on the second and “neutral” on the third, and place them on the floor to create a timeline.

Then, as usual, set aside 15 minutes in a place where you won’t be disturbed, and if you wish.

You can use this relaxing music to help you with this exercise:

Now place yourself on the “present” paper and express a goal that you want to achieve.

Write it down on a piece of paper and place it next to the “future” paper. As you read this goal for a minute, observe what’s happening inside you.

Then stand on the “future” paper and imagine that you have already achieved this goal. Describe everything you see and do, identifying the limiting belief you had in the present that could have prevented you from achieving this goal. Also identify a supporting belief you had in the present that helped you to achieve this goal.

Next, stand on the “neutral” paper and ask the limiting belief what its positive intention is and how it has helped you so far.

Do the same with the helping belief, asking how it has helped you so far.

Finally, go back to the “present” paper, reread your objective and observe what’s happening inside you.

Then thank these two beliefs for protecting you so far and for working together today to change the limiting belief into a helping one.

Then take a few minutes to feel what’s happening inside you.

Challenge of the week

Practice at least 1 exercise of your choice on one of your most limiting beliefs today.

To help you with this exercise, you can download the Reprogramming Your Limiting Beliefs Challenge sheet.

Links and tools mentioned in this episode

If you haven’t yet identified your limiting beliefs, don’t hesitate to listen to the following episodes:

• E040 – What is a belief?
• E041 – Beliefs – The 5 Drivers that influence our lives
• E044 – 9 limiting beliefs that prevent you from living your life
• E045 – Values and beliefs – what a mess!