Limiting Beliefs

Happy Women’s Week to Everyone!

Women are breaking barriers in every sphere of Life. They are taking care of finances besides looking after the household. I have an analogy that needs to be shared when talking about Limiting Beliefs. It is more applicable to women.

Do you know how elephants are trained to stay in control of their master in spite of being such gigantic creatures? This is how, When elephants are just born, they are tied to a rope to keep them in the vicinity of their owner. The baby elephant cannot free itself from the rope because they are fragile but Slowly and steadily these giant creatures come to their full size. The strange thing is even when they grow up they never think of breaking off the rope which is as easy as standing up and starting to walk for them. Why? Because they think the rope cannot be broken as that is what they had believed all along since they were born. They are tied down by their negative beliefs about themselves.

Women often behave in a similar way like that of a giant elephant; unaware of their potential. Often ignorant that the time has changed and they can move out of the rope!Let’s take a lesson from this and take the first step to believe in your own self and be everything that you are and leave everything that you are not. We will get into it step by step:

Step 1: SWOT ANALYSIS

Knowing yourself is the first step to any change that you wish to bring in yourself or your life. A shortcut to that is through SWOT. Locate the traits in yourself that you might label as “Strengths”, and “weaknesses”. And find out your “opportunities” and “threats” in life at present. This will give you a picture of the mountains you have still to climb and the resources that will get you there.

Step 2: Identify your negative thoughts

Journal on a daily basis for a week all those negative thoughts and things you say to yourself. Write down verbatim in your journal and try to find out a theme, you will find a thought that dominates you in most of the sentences. Think critically about these recurrent thoughts. Are they true or have they been taught to you by the society and family? Always check what you speak to yourself.

Step 3: Evaluate the negative thoughts

Once you have identified the negative thoughts, evaluate them under the categories of real and imagined or perceived threats. Some of your negative thoughts are actually your weaknesses and simply motivating yourself will not help. You need to do some rectification.

Step 4: Take small steps

Now, that you know what rectification you have to make; take small steps towards the new way of behavior and thought. Take calculated risks in areas of your weaknesses and increase the degree of difficulty progressively. For example, If You find it difficult to travel alone, start taking solo trips to a place that is 50 km away from you and then increase the distance and go!

Step 5: Extrapolate

You are aware of your inhibitions now and are also aware of the fact that most of them are just negative beliefs that you fed. Do one thing each week that you just believe that you can never do. Put this newly learned lesson to all areas of your life; Personal and Professional.