Well, in NLP we often say 'if someone else can do it, then so can you!'
And although that may be a bit of a generalization, there's also a lot of truth in it.
I mean, how many times do people limit their own experience through limiting beliefs?
I remember when I was about 16, I had a friend who was in his late 20s. Once he said something about wishing he had taken up running, but he was too old to start now!
I mean, being too old to start in your late 20s - what is all that about!
I wondered if that meant I would be past it when I got to my late 20s!
Some time afterwards, I was reading this great book - Zen in the Martial Arts - a really lovely book, even if you are not into martial arts. There was a story about a woman who took up Karate in her early 70s and by the age of 78 had her black belt!
I mean, how amazing is that!
So a friend of mine who was in his 20s thought he was too old to exercise, but this 70 year old lady could excel in an intense martial art!
People can really limit themselves in so many ways by the limiting beliefs they have.
Limiting beliefs are basically those beliefs that somehow limit us - they are like the boundaries that define the limits of our existence, capabilities or other things in some way.
People can have all sorts of limiting beliefs - things like - I'm too young to be successful, I'm too old to be successful, I'll never meet the right person, I'll never have the life I want, people will always let me down.....etc
And the thing is, these beliefs pretty much determine what they will experience.
You see, beliefs are like filters to our experience.
For example, if you believe that people will let you down, then you'll find examples of this throughout your life.
The weird thing is that other people have the same experience, but don't see people as letting them down because they don't have that belief.
But the belief causes us to distort the experience in a way that it has that other meaning.
I know someone who had a belief that people lie and would find cases of it all around him. In fact, when he was working with clients, he would keep experiencing them lying to him - even when it clearly was not the case.
For example, if he asked his client a question and they didn't know the answer, then he would automatically assume that they were lying to him.
It was such a major issue that he got into someone real problems.
Henry Ford once said something like 'whether you believe you can, or whether you think you cannot, you're probably right'
On a NLP training you learn a lot about changing beliefs.
Neuro Linguistic Programming is a key way to look at shifting beliefs - our next Practitioner training is March 20 - 26 and we are offering a special early rate at the moment!
Credit: datingforaverageguys.blogspot.com
