How Negative Thinking Can Stop You Getting What You Want by Paul Alexander Wood

Negative and self limiting beliefs can and very often do hold us back in life. These beliefs can stop us from achieving what we most want and need in our lives.

Our limiting beliefs more often than not have been learned as we have gone through life and very often we have bought them with us from childhood. While they don’t serve us well, they are still very personal to each of us. Many people form strong identities from their beliefs, limiting or not and so any negative beliefs can become a deeply ingrained part of their personality one that they carry around with them for years.

Beliefs are personal; they are important and have the ability to define our entire lives. Our beliefs have governed how we have lived in the past, they govern how we are living now and they
will govern how we will live our life in the future.

Examples of some negative and limiting beliefs:

I’m useless, I always have been
I am an idiot
I’ll never be a success
Everyone hates me at work
I won’t become rich
My Business will fail
I’m not clever enough
I’ll never be able to learn Japanese
I’ll never get promoted at work
I’m too fat

These negative and limiting beliefs ultimately serve no real purpose apart from to stop us from having what we want in our lives. They become so entrenched in our minds that we just accept them as normal, never really believing we can do anything about them.

Just one negative belief about yourself, your situation or anything else related to your life can dictate to you the action you take, the behavior you exhibit and the environment where you find yourself.

A negative belief can really make it difficult if you are looking to make a change in your life or accomplish some goal. It becomes your own personal roadblock that stops you dead in your tracks.

You accept it and it becomes the way your life is.

Of course everyone is entitled to believe what they want. We have a choice, and we can choose to not accept our limiting beliefs any time we wish. Do you really want to continue creating mind made barriers for yourself?

You may want certain things in your life, you may want more for yourself, your family and even for the world around you, but yet your limiting beliefs never seem to go away, they have always been there and they will always be there in the future. They will remain a fundamental part of who you are unless you do something about it.

Remember that beliefs can be changed, and this is great news when we know we have beliefs that limit us. You probably used to believe in Santa Claus but I bet you don’t anymore. Rest assured that if you want to really change a negative belief you have, it can be done.

One useful strategy to use is to step forward into the future and envisage what will transpire (or not) as a result of the belief you hold.

When we do this we can see just exactly where our negative belief will lead us.

Types of question to ask yourself when taking the negative belief into the future include:

What will happen later on in the future if you persist with this belief?
What consequences will occur as a result of this belief?
What results will or could arise from the initial set of results?

For example:

I’ll never be able to learn Portuguese.

With a belief like this, where will you be in 2 years time? Imagine instead if you start learning Portuguese now, how much of it would you be able to speak in 2 years time?

Do you realize the more you believe this the more this will prevent you from actually learning Portuguese. So eventually over time you will not be able to learn any new languages with a belief like this.

So I guess you can forget about conversing with any Brazilians in their own language when you visit Brazil then?

You could carry on asking similar questions based on what you will be able or not be able to do as a result. Try it with your own negative beliefs and see if your perspective changes.

Author's Bio
Paul Alexander Wood is a personal development and self-help writer, he is also the author and creator of www.createchangeinyourlife.com, a website dedicated to helping people who are looking to make changes in their life.