Life is often filled with light and shade. Sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we don’t. It feels amazing when everything turns out just how we hoped and not so great when events take a turn towards what we didn’t expect or want. Today, I want to explore why some people get a lot of what they want whilst others get less than that.
The crucial element here is one of personal power versus self-sabotage. People who take responsibility for their results and embrace their personal power tend to take action and create what they want. On the other side of the equation, some people submit to self-sabotage and find themselves constantly bumping up against barriers of their own construction.
Standing in your own way isn’t generally a consciously made choice. Let’s face it, why would you sabotage your own success? No, when you find yourself standing in your own way, it’s more often done unconsciously and without reason that can be explained logically with your analytical conscious thinking.
The ultimate value of NLP is that the new thinking embedded within its very foundations allows you to begin to communicate with your unconscious mind and to open up your thought patterns in very unique ways. Using NLP methods, you can discover the chains that keep you rooted to the spot, standing in your own way and preventing you from getting what you want. Those chains can then be broken and you are released to run with energy towards your compelling future.
Your most unconscious and tightly binding chains come in the form of limiting beliefs.
Let’s consider belief for a moment. It may surprise you to discover that beliefs are not true. Beliefs are not true and we act as if they are, therefore beliefs act as self-fulfilling prophecies. If we believe something to be true, then it will be true in our personal model of the world, our own reality. This concept is nicely illustrated by the quote attributed to Henry Ford, ‘Whether you believe you can or you can’t you are absolutely right.’
Beliefs are related to our values and every individual belief is linked to a certain value, which is held in our minds at the unconscious level. Beliefs make generalisations about our actions, about what we are doing or what we need to do. Beliefs form our Model of the World and by that we mean, how we believe the world is. One of the presuppositions of NLP is, ‘The map is not the territory’, meaning the representation we make of our own reality doesn’t accurately describe reality itself because everyone forms a different map which fits their values and belief systems. So, what we believe is our truth and guides our perception of reality and our outward and inward behaviour.
Positive beliefs are extremely powerful contributors to our success. If we believe something is possible, then it is possible in our model of the world. Beliefs can also be limiting. If we believe something about ourselves, all of the time, then we behave as if that belief were true and so become the product of our limiting beliefs. For example, if a person has a limiting belief that ‘I’m not good enough’, then they will behave as someone who is not good enough. If a person believes that they can’t make enough money, then they will behave accordingly and never make enough money. So what we believe generates our model of the world and dictates our behaviour.
Beliefs are very powerful creators of our results and changing a limiting belief can transform your life entirely. The good news is that it is easy to change your limiting beliefs and replace them with powerful positive beliefs, using the technology of NLP.
During our Enhanced NLP Coach Practitioner Certification Training, we will show you how to remove a limiting belief and replace it with an empowering and compelling new one. Having this capability means that you will no longer stand in your own way, instead you will congruently move forward towards any future that you choose to create.
A question for you to reflect upon today. What would you do if you no longer stood in your own way?