Get Over Yourself

Grillin’ Time

Our thoughts are everything. They are always with us, and they drive our feelings and behaviors, NOT the other way around. Even when a feeling seems instantaneous, it’s always provoked by a thought. Always. The thought may occur in a nanosecond in the supercomputer that is our brain, but there’s some form of information processing that occurs before feelings and behaviors show up.

A self-limiting belief is a particular type of negative thought with painful emotion attached to it that we use against ourselves like a weapon to limit ourselves. Self-limiting beliefs are based on old scripts we’ve developed over time. They live in the subconscious. They are what I call the “Subconscious Bubble Gum” that serves as rules to live by in our minds. To add insult to injury, self-limiting beliefs drive the negative automatic thoughts (NATs) that live in the conscious mind, those pesky thoughts that pop into our heads and keep us from greatness or accomplishment.

Self-limiting beliefs come from our core beliefs, so it’s very important to discern what your core beliefs are. The purpose of core beliefs is to make sense of our early experiences. Unfortunately, core beliefs are generally absolutist or black-and-white statements that are often not helpful.

So, why are these experiences so powerful? How do they have such a hold on us? Because they generally first occur during childhood, these experiences are some of the first ones we have, which means they set the standard for our view of the world and ourselves in it.

Early experiences are particularly powerful if they occur between the ages of 2 and 6 when we spend most of our time in a brainwave cycle known as Theta, which is the same state that a person is in when they are hypnotized or meditating. This is a state of hyper-learning, wherein we are very open to suggestion, which means we are easily influenced by information coming in from our environment. That information can turn into programming over time, especially if it’s reinforced by our experiences.

DISCLAIMER: Material is for informational purposes and not intended to be a substitute for evaluation or treatment by a licensed professional. Material is copyrighted and may only be reproduced with written permission of Dr. Bellingrodt.