Step Ten: YOUR CLEAR PATH
Clear the beliefs that limit happiness.
Limiting beliefs keep you from new levels of happiness. They get in the way of what you think is possible for yourself and keep you from living your happiest, most fulfilling life.
If you are ready to clear the limiting beliefs that keep you off your best path, then look no further than this guide.
You have this profound understanding of why you are here and what your work is about.
There are 3 sections to this Guide:
What Are Limiting Beliefs?
Everyone has them. How do we resolve them?
Limiting Beliefs Exercise + Worksheet
Take action on your limiting beliefs
The List of 101 Limiting Beliefs
There are two tools for this step: The Clear Your Path Worksheet and The Invitation CD.
Additional guidance on clearing limiting beliefs is offered in the video that accompanies this step.
At the end of this step, you’ll find one last video with a final message and instructions!
Let’s dive right in.
Table of Contents
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What Are Limiting Beliefs?
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Limiting Beliefs Exercise + Worksheet
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The List of 101 Limiting Beliefs
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The Clear Your Path Worksheet
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Your Clear Path Video
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The Invitation CD
1. What are Limiting Beliefs?
Limiting beliefs are exactly as they seem.
I define limiting beliefs as
“beliefs that limit what you believe is possible for yourself or what you will allow in your life.”
There are amazing things that want to show up in your life, but...
When you have self-limiting beliefs, those things often struggle to show up because, for a variety of reasons, you won’t let them.
Whatever your limiting beliefs are, they restrict the scope of how you see the world.
Limiting beliefs keep you from seeing a big, expansive world.
Think about how the world looks when looking through the peephole in a door.
The scope is limited, and you can’t see all that there is to see.
If you were to look at life through that peephole 24/7, how much of life would you miss?
Limiting beliefs act like that peephole.
Limiting beliefs keep you from seeing what is possible for yourself.
Maybe you see your dream job and think, “I am not capable or qualified enough for it,” so you don’t even apply.
Maybe you have let society trick you into thinking you are bad with numbers, so you don’t even try to manage your money.
Maybe you have been hurt in a relationship, so rather than try again, you say to yourself, “It’s not worth it.”
Limiting beliefs keep you from seeing the different possibilities in the world.
Limiting beliefs can also keep you from taking action to be your most authentic, happy, and powerful self.
Your limiting beliefs can lead to what is called change blindness.
Change blindness keeps you from seeing anything inconsistent with your current reality, or the reality created by those pesky limiting beliefs.
When you have limiting beliefs, you only see what you are prepared to see, nothing more, and nothing less.
The good news is you can change your limiting beliefs with the techniques provided in this guide!
Where do limiting beliefs come from?
Limiting beliefs come from the different things that happen in your life.
Many limiting beliefs develop in childhood when you aren’t always able to process what happens to you.
When something traumatic happens, the feelings from that moment can remain stuck in your psyche.
It then becomes like a skip on a record, stopping you in the same place over and over.
Whatever choice you made to remain safe at that moment, you play out over and over as you grow up. That choice was authored by your brilliant and amazing protection mechanisms. I honor the role those choices have played in getting you to this moment.
If you don’t address what happened in your childhood, you might find yourself in your 50s, letting what happened when you were a child dictate your significant life choices.
Limiting beliefs can also come from your family.
Your family’s belief system plays a significant role in how you view and interact with the world.
Sylvia Lafair, a family therapist turned expert leadership consultant, writes in her book Don’t Bring It To Work: Breaking Family Patterns that Limit Success:
“Your family belief system influences how you look at and interact with the world.
We don’t always tailor our actions to the actual demands of a situation.
Instead, we fall back on old ways of responding that are emotionally laden and sometimes horrendously counterproductive.
Adopting behavior we first encountered in our families, we do the same thing over and over again - even if it kills us. We remain imprisoned by our pasts.”
Your family system, for better or worse, powerfully shapes what you believe about life and how you interact with the world.
Within your family system, there are expectations of who you should be and the role you should fill.
It means something different to belong to a farming family, a religious family, a family with roots in a foreign country, a wealthy family, a military family, a pro-union family, and so on.
Maybe you have always been expected to care for the other members of your family.
Maybe your parents always said or showed it’s not safe to stand out.
Family members’ expectations of who you should be can shape the way that you think about things, both in your family and beyond, if you don’t address them.
Family beliefs and expectations can impact the way you think about money, relationships, work, how happy you think you deserve to be, and more.
Limiting beliefs can also come from relationships with friends or significant others, experiences at work, or random interactions.
These beliefs tend to build upon the ones already coming from your family system and your childhood. It’s a double whammy.
Some examples of limiting beliefs that can impact the way you see the world include:
If you had a partner who cheated on you or betrayed your trust, maybe now you do not trust a new partner/relationship because you will only get hurt.
If you had a bad experience with a bank or financial advisor, maybe now you do not trust these professionals.
If you struggled in school as a child, maybe now you do not think you are smart or worthy of success.
In my case, I was born deathly ill with a learning disability. No matter what I did, I always felt like I wasn’t good enough.
My experiences throughout the years just piled on top of that belief.
They kept me from stepping into my most powerful and happy self until I recognized the limiting belief created by that childhood experience.
2. Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs:
Exercise & Worksheet
Overcoming limiting beliefs is easier than you think.
The way that you clear limiting beliefs is by recognizing them and letting go of them.
This section offers you clear steps to use to change limiting beliefs with one of my favorite techniques.
Clearing Limiting Beliefs Exercise
The limiting beliefs exercise shown is a powerful tool you can use to clear limiting beliefs in any area of your life.
The five steps identified in the worksheet are simple and take you in a deep dive. Consistently and frequently using the steps leads to a light, fulfilling, and happy life.
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Step 1: Pick a topic.
Maybe you want to stop limiting yourself at your job. Maybe you want to stop limiting your finances. Maybe you want to stop limiting how happy you can be in your relationship.
Any choice is acceptable as this technique can be used for any area of your life. Best suggestion, though, is to choose the topic that first comes to mind.
Let’s take money as an example.
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Step 2: Write down a list of limiting beliefs about your topic.
Write down all your beliefs about your chosen topic on the worksheet in the space provided. It is essential to get the information out of your head and onto paper. It can be impactful to see all those different thoughts you have been having and how limiting they are.
With the money example, I had no problem coming up with a list of limiting beliefs running through my head:
→ There is never enough
→ Save a penny earn a penny
→ You are always going to run out
→ Taxes are your worst enemy
→ The government is after your money
→ You can’t trust anyone with money
→ You never get paid back when you loan money
→ Money is the root of all evil
→ Money doesn’t grow on trees
If you need any help identifying limiting beliefs, the last section in this guide has 101 examples of limiting beliefs you might have in different areas of your life.
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Step 3: Thank these beliefs for how they have protected you.
It may seem counterintuitive to thank these beliefs. After all, they limited you, right?! It is important to honor these thoughts.
Your limited beliefs have been your companions for a long time. They developed in response to the things that have happened in your life.
At some point in your life, that belief served a valid purpose. It most likely no longer serves a legitimate purpose other than to keep you playing small.
In the money example, maybe the reason you think you can’t trust anyone with money is that you got burned once by someone with money.
That belief developed to keep you from getting burned again!
Thank that belief for protecting you. Recognize that you are big enough to move past that belief, not allow it to repeatedly consume your thoughts, and make the right decision in this moment.
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Step 4: Forgive yourself and others for your different beliefs.
It’s tempting to look at your limiting beliefs and think about how much they have kept you down all these years.
That negativity can stick with you if you let it.
You need to forgive yourself and others for the events that caused these beliefs.
Forgive yourself for letting them in your life, and forgive others for being the cause of them.
Holding on to the hurt and feelings that can be tied to these limiting beliefs will only keep you playing small.
Forgive yourself and get ready to soar.
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Step 5: Give yourself permission to honor your limiting beliefs and move past them.
You have honored your limiting beliefs and forgiven yourself and others for causing them and living by them.
Next, you have to give yourself permission to do what is right for you beyond these beliefs.
You are amazing, and the possibilities in front of you are limitless.
Give yourself permission to tap into those possibilities. Give yourself permission to move beyond these limiting beliefs. Give yourself permission to reach new levels of happiness!
As you complete this limiting belief exercise, you should feel the feelings associated with these different beliefs change.
You might even feel lighter energetically.
You can repeat this process with any area in your life where you have limiting beliefs.
As you go through this process, you will start seeing all of the different possibilities available to you, and you will be ready for any opportunities life presents to you.
You don’t have to replace these limiting beliefs with new ones. You just have to sit in the possibilities of each moment and see what’s there for you.
Then, when fantastic opportunities present themselves, take action, and feel empowered that anything is possible for you!
Consider starting each day by inviting the field of infinite possibilities to show you what it’s got.
I do that each morning by saying, “Show me the magic!”
Another good one is to wake up and say, “What else is possible?”
These statements invite your mind to expand its vision, so the peephole keeps getting bigger and bigger and you keep getting happier and happier!
The Invitation CD that accompanies this step includes inviting statements and inviting questions that you can use to clear limiting beliefs.
My friend, Kelly, used the CD. Afterwards, she sent me a note saying, “There is some powerful stuff on that CD!” Yes, there is. It’s ready to help you move past limiting beliefs whenever you are ready.
You can read more about The Invitation in the complimentary copy of What’s Your Superpower included in Step 2.
Happiness is calling… to answer the call, you have to think bigger than ever before!
3. List of 101 Limiting Beliefs Examples
Limiting beliefs can come from many sources.
It can take a while to recognize your self-limiting beliefs.
To help you get better at identifying self-limiting beliefs, see the list of examples shown below.
This list of common limiting beliefs is grouped by topic.
Limiting beliefs about Money and Abundance
Save a penny, earn a penny.
I never win free things.
I will never get my big break.
There is never enough.
Everyone else gets all the good stuff.
My spouse/the government is after my money.
There is never enough to go around.
I have to protect what I’ve got because there just isn’t enough.
I will never make enough money to support my family.
Money can’t come to me easily.
Earning money requires working really hard.
Money is the root of all evil.
Money doesn’t grow on trees.
You just can’t trust others with money.
Taxes are evil.
I just don’t know how to manage money.
I am bad with money.
Money is made to be spent!
We/I will never be rich.
Rich people are bad people.
Money turns people rotten.
You can’t trust someone who has a lot of money.
Money just doesn’t matter that much to me. I don’t need it!
As soon as I make it, I have to spend it!
Money is always on its way out the door.
The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer.
Making lots of money requires sacrificing who you are.
I am not worthy of being happy.
Why does this always happen to me?
This is too much for me. I just can’t do it.
The world is cruel and not nice.
I can’t be trusted when things are going well.
To earn money, I have to work very hard.
If I had a better education, I could earn more money.
Limiting beliefs about relationships
I will never find love.
I am not worthy of being loved.
I always get hurt, or dumped, or betrayed.
All the good ones are taken.
No one wants me.
You just can’t trust anybody in a relationship.
My relationships just never work out.
Why don’t I know how to make it work?
I need someone in my life at all times.
I am useless on my own.
I need someone to take care of me.
Putting yourself out there only results in getting hurt.
Why am I so bad at this?
I need to be someone else other than myself for others to like me.
There just isn’t somebody out there for me.
I am not enough on my own.
I need somebody else in my life to make me feel useful.
My family is always trying to keep me down.
Doing something besides what my family wants is betraying them.
I can’t do what my family doesn’t want me to do.
I just have to put up with what I don’t like.
Even as an adult, I have to do what my parents say or else.
Others are going to hate me if I stand up for myself.
Others are just going to step on my toes, and I will deal with it.
I need someone to complete me.
Love never works out for me.
I hate rejection.
Limiting beliefs about work
I don’t deserve to make money doing what I love.
It’s impossible to make money doing what you love.
It’s impossible to make money in the arts.
I have to be a starving artist to maintain my integrity.
I am not talented.
I have no special strengths.
I am not good enough.
I am not worthy of that promotion.
I just don’t have enough experience.
Who would want to hire me?!
I just don’t know how to manage big projects.
I can’t be trusted with responsibility.
Whenever I manage things, it just turns out awful.
Everyone else gets the good jobs.
I never get opportunities to take on big projects.
No one listens to me.
I will never find the right job.
All bosses are crappy.
My supervisor is never going to listen to me.
My opinion isn’t important.
Working for the man is soul-crushing.
You’re not supposed to like what you do.
No one appreciates me.
Everyone expects too much of me.
I got passed over for a promotion again - it’s just not fair.
My co-workers don’t like me.
Limiting beliefs about self-worth
I am a failure.
I can’t make things happen.
I don’t deserve a better life.
Things just don’t work out for me.
It’s all my parents’ fault.
People look right through me.
That’s just my luck!!
Who am I to have everything I have ever wanted?
Limiting beliefs about good health
My body just heals slowly.
Getting sick is unavoidable.
I don’t deserve to be healthy.
Everyone else in my family is overweight.
Losing weight is the biggest battle of my life.
I am helpless to heal myself.
If any of these beliefs hold true for you, you can now use the limiting beliefs exercise to clear them.
You can also come up with other limiting beliefs that may be holding you back and clear those too!
Now that you know how to identify, clear, and overcome self-limiting beliefs, you are on you your way to living your best life!
Final thoughts.
You’ve made it!
You have completed all ten steps in the 10 Steps to Happily Ever After. Allow me to leave you with these final thoughts and instructions: