Whose fault is it anyway?

If you have participated in any kind of personal development work in the last 10 years, you’ve probably heard the term “Limiting Belief”.

A Limiting Belief is a belief or program stored in your subconscious mind that influences your thoughts and behaviors and therefore, your outcomes in life. These beliefs are formed from childhood experiences normally by the age of 6, and they are deceptively effective at holding us back from greatness.

I actually have a very popular webinar that details where these beliefs come from and how to banish them from existence. I’m sure this is why limiting beliefs are popular in questions that flood my way through email.  

Today, I wanted to address a common theme I have been noticing in people’s reaction when they discover Limiting Beliefs exist for them. (They will be referred to as LB’s for the rest of this blog post.)

The normal reaction usually is something like this:

“My life is a mess but, after watching your webinar I now know why I’m where I am in life…it’s not my fault, it’s my childhood experience. No wonder I can’t make money or meet the perfect guy or lose those extra pounds! It’s my subconscious programming. Thank you explaining this to me!”

Then, that’s it. It’s like it is the LB’s fault and somehow it’s okay to stay where they are in life. So, if I fail it’s okay it’s because I have a LB.

A LB is not an excuse to keep playing small. It’s an explanation and a big fat sign to do something about it!

Just because your mum and dad divorced when you were 5 or your grandma didn’t show you love, that doesn’t mean it’s “hands on heads”, and you’re helpless to improve your life.

Now, I am being a little dramatic here and please, understand I am in no way diminishing how deeply your childhood situations have affected you. We all have them, and we are all operating from these “truths” that aren’t true and sabotaging ourselves in some way.

My point is that, as freeing as it is to know why we just can’t seem to break that “financial freedom barrier”, awareness is just the first step.

We have to identify this old programming and eliminate the negative thoughts attached to them by choosing new, empowering thoughts, and changing the story to one that actually serves us.

You see, for every childhood experience that was difficult, or actually, any life experience, there is always a gift that came from it. 

For example, I am very grateful for my upbringing. My mum and I had a…let’s call it, challenging relationship when I was growing up.

I would attribute this to a personality clash and difference of opinion…on nearly everything. And, the fact that I was born with 10 people’s quota of confidence was also not the ideal scenario for either of us.

This was one of the reasons I moved out of home at 17. It was the first time I ever had a bedroom all to myself. [ I grew up with 8 kids in a 3-bedroom home and I think we all moved out at that age.]  It was also a factor in me moving to Sydney from my hometown at age 18, even though I didn’t know a soul there.

I just made the decision and went.

My most dominant thought was: “I’ll show her. I can succeed without her. I don’t need her.” You may have thought the same thing about your parent/s, or even a past partner.

So, even though my burning motivation in my 20’s was to “show my mother”, this actually manifested as independence, strength, resilience and ambition.

My friend Jeffery Van Dyk holds workshops on the last Thursday of the month in Santa Monica called NLC - Next Level Calling, where he helps people with a message discover how they can clarify their bigger calling. He truly does some amazing work and these sessions are very, very insightful.

When I attended his last workshop, he told the participants how each bad past experience has a behavior we adopted that we use to fuel, or motivate us to cope and move forward in life. In my case, it was what I referred to as the “stick it to my mum” fuel.

The only problem is that this fuel has a shelf life. If it is born from a lower vibration emotion like revenge, it isn’t healthy to keep operating from this energy.

My fuel ran out when I was 25, and I finally realized what an incredibly tough job it would have been for mum and dad to raise 8 kids. I seriously don’t know how they did it! I mean, I don’t even have 1 child! Can you imagine raising 8 kids?

So, after waking up to myself and stepping out of the pity story I told over and over, on one of my trips back home I expressed my immense gratitude and respect to mum for everything she sacrificed and did to positively influence me the way she did.

It was the turning point in our relationship.

So, even though I relinquished the “stick it to my mum” motivation, I still kept the gifts this experience gave me – strength, independence, resilience and ambition.

At another recent event I attended where my friend Betsy was doing a presentation, a woman also identified a motivation for everything she did similar to my “stick it to my mum” motivation. This woman was so attached to this, she even asked: “If I let that go, then it will leave a big hole. Who am I without this anger, and what do I fill it with?”

The answer is only one thing…LOVE.

Love should be the only motivator we fuel ourselves with. Love for our family, our partners and ourselves. Actually, love for everyone involved.

Keep the gifts and smear everything with love.

Honestly, there are 20 sides to every story. We have the power of choice and, even though we can’t change the actual past event, we can choose the version of the story that serves us best.

So, what are you using as an excuse?

How can you change your past stories, and change the energy and emotion around it every time you re-tell the story therefore, eradicating your limiting beliefs?

Hhhmmm, maybe that does change the past!