In last week’s post, I shared the eight steps to dismantling limiting beliefs and provided a worksheet to help you do so.
In this follow-up post, I give you tangible steps to replace your limiting beliefs in order to tap into your full potential.
To recap briefly, limiting beliefs are ingrained patterns of thoughts that drive the narratives we construct about ourselves.
Similar to last week, embedded in this post is a free worksheet you can download to help you systematically construct new thoughts to replace your limiting beliefs. I encourage you to save it to your device and print off a copy to fill out as I detail the steps below. Enjoy!
The Replacing Limiting Beliefs Worksheet
The above screenshot previews what’s in store for you. Click here for the PLMD – Replacing Limiting Beliefs Worksheet. (You can also click the screenshot).
Step 1: Copy Your Thought That You Dismantled
If you haven’t yet filled out the Dismantling Limiting Beliefs Worksheet, then this may be tough to do. Download that worksheet and complete it first. It will truly help you start to shine light and reflect on your thoughts.
Jot down here that same negative, protective, or overtly limiting thought here to remind yourself what it was. At the end of the last worksheet, you gave yourself permission to let go of the old thought.
Step 2: Choose a New Empowering Thought!
Now write in your replacement thought. This is the most enjoyable step in the entire process.
You are in control of your thoughts and your resultant narrative. So choose something awesome—why wouldn’t you!?
Remember: the limiting belief you are supplanting was not a truth, even if it felt (or still feels) like one.
Yet you came to believe it to be a truth. Recall the power of story and narratives like I discussed in this post.
This is your story—your “choose your own adventure.”
But this time you’re not stymied by two choices, like punching the tiger and turning to page 98 or running away from the tiger and turning to page 12.
No, you can choose to hop on that tiger and ride it to glory! (Ahem, that’s actually page 59).
Step 3: Explore This New Thought with Curiosity
Only for you, Alice. Only for you.
Just sit there with this new thought. Repeat it in your mind. Let it stew there a while.
This is like trying on a new set of clothes in the changing room of an apparel store.
What feelings come to the forefront when you think this thought?
They should be different compared to those evoked by the prior, limiting thought. If not, then you need to go back to Step 2 and try on another thought (i.e., go and find another outfit to try on)!
Step 4: How Does This New Thought Serve You?
Reflect on how your new thought can move you forward and help you show up like the badass you are.
This is why it’s important to select empowering and enabling thoughts.
Step 5: What Actions Will You Take Because of This New Thought?
List out the specific actions driven by the feelings caused by this thought.
They may not all be related in terms of the end goals for those actions. For this exercise, that’s okay.
At other times (i.e., not in this post), I’ll reference building an intentional thought model starting with the results you want to create and working back up to a thought that could serve that result.
Step 6: What Results Will This New Thought Create for You?
Next, what can you achieve if you believe this new thought?
Anything is possible if you put your mind to it. So what is your “anything?”
Step 7: How Will You Practice This Thought to Make It a Belief?
In my post entitled “The Space Between: Part 3 – The Transformation,” I explored the idea of setting reminders and cues to help remind me to think my new thought.
After all, a belief is a thought that you have thought countless times that to you has perceived truth or validity to it.
So you need to find ways to train your brain with the thought over and over again. Repetition is key.
This serves to ingrain it in your neural pathways as the first thought that springs to mind when that subject comes up.
Now you have your new thought with all of its feels as well as the awareness of where it can take you! And you have a plan to rehearse it into belief!
Get on with it!
I hope you found this post to be a helpful guide to tackling your limiting beliefs. Moreover, I hope you use the steps outlined to do this important thought work. Let me know how the process works out for you in the comments section below.
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