The Breathing Prosperity blog

We hear a lot of talk about limiting beliefs: they hinder you, they sneak up uninvited when you least expect them, sabotaging your efforts to attract and create the life of your dreams.

Just exactly what are these critters, and what can we do about them?

Expand Your Financial Mindset – and Your Abundance – For Good!

This discussion came up recently on a Law of Attraction group I am part of, and since many people seem to struggle with this concept, I thought it might be good to go over some basics here.

First things first: realize that your own beliefs are very personal to you. They are not outside of you or so deeply buried that you are unfamiliar with them. Rather, they are whispered to you almost every day, by little voices in your head which are likely so familiar to you that you don’t even notice them. (If you’re wondering what little voice/s I’m talking about, it’s the little voice that said ‘What little voice?’)

This is why such beliefs are so insidious and dangerous – the familiarity factor. They may be so familiar to you that they feel unquestionably TRUE. This is the true danger.

Some common examples of limiting beliefs include:

• Any inner conviction which tells you you can’t do or have or be something, often based on such factors as race, gender, religion, economic status or other ‘outside’ issue. For instance, ‘I can’t be president of this company because a) I’m a woman b) I don’t have the education c) I’m not smart enough d) I don’t have the connections,’ etc.. Your mind may not deliver this belief to you in such obvious terms, and this subtleness is one reason you haven’t noticed it. The ego, or subconscious mind, is very good at convincing us in our own language and vernacular, of what we are not capable of.
•  Any feeling that someone is better than you are, or even that you are better than someone else. These types of beliefs can be instilled by parents or social conditioning, or can be gathered to us when we are kids due to insecurities we may have felt. These beliefs skew reality and don’t allow us to offer our passion and gifts to the world, nor to enjoy and accept abundance and the gifts of others.
• Being resigned to things being ‘just the way they are.’ This applies to your personal and business life and everything in between. Whether you live in a home or are in a relationship you don’t like, or you wish you had more money, or are in any other situation you feel powerless to change, this is a deep and powerful demonstration of limiting beliefs at play. Feeling like a victim or a small, helpless person is a big trap many of us fall into, and although it is uncomfortable, it is actually a common comfort zone. It is also the source of immense regret for many people as they move into the later years of their lives and wish they had found and exercised their personal power. As Marianne Williamson and Nelson Mandela tell us, “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light and not our darkness that most frightens us.” We are powerful, deeply creative beings, and if we’ve chosen to create victim-hood it can be difficult to admit this and move into another, more empowered, self-centered (in a good way) way of being. It is, however, imperative that we do so, for our own happiness and mental and physical health, and if we ever want to break free of limiting beliefs and enjoy the challenges of creating our dreams.

While our beliefs are complex, multi-layered, and often unconscious, the good news is they can be found and changed into more empowering, life-affirming, conscious beliefs.  Following are some ideas on how you can find and either and replace or purge your inner, limiting beliefs (note that finding them is a separate step, and sometimes sudden awareness of a belief that’s been holding you back is enough to trigger its’ release):

• EFT(emotional freedom technique) is a great and immediate way to bring up beliefs you’re unaware of and to replace them with empowering ones right away. For a great book on EFT with some fantastic explanations and exercises, try Carol Look’s Attracting Abundance with EFT. TIP: For purging beliefs specifically about money and to enjoy amazing expansion of your prosperity mindset, try the popular 30 Days to Wealth.
• Start a list of all the things you’d like to do, and think BIG. As you go, you’ll find niggling little thoughts that tell you why you can’t have or do something…they may seem entirely sane and reasonable. These are some of your limiting beliefs and it’s not likely they are based on reality – they are based on a complex web of things you’ve been told and conclusions you’ve come to over the past many years. Remember that you are no longer that person – you are NOW, and now is full of endless possibilities. Discard those thoughts that aren’t serving you.
• Do something out of your comfort zone, such as going to a dance class or attending a business networking class. Anything that comes up as FEAR is hiding a limiting belief. These are usually consistent over your entire life, meaning that similar thoughts likely hold you back in many areas of your life. For instance, if your mind tells you ‘I can’t do that, I’m so awkward, I’m not good with people, I am shy, I am not capable, I am stupid’ – whatever – that doesn’t mean these things are true! They are things you’ve been telling yourself for a long time (what kind of friend are you!?), and these thoughts probably stop you in many situations, both business and personal.
• Get around people doing what you want. Any thoughts which come up (and they will!) are limiting beliefs for you. In this way, you’ll immerse yourself in the lifestyle you want, you’ll enjoy learning from mentors, and you’ll find and purge limiting beliefs at the same time.

These are just a quick few. Limiting beliefs are sometimes thought of as strange, enigmatic mysteries because we hear so much about them and about the need to get rid of them. This perception is part of the problem. Actually, they are very close to home – they are as familiar to you as your own face and you hear them all the time in your head. Find them and get rid of them, and enjoy the climb to your wildest dreams!

Good luck!

Well, the title says it all doesn’t it? Do you ask for things and then tell the Universe ‘no thanks!’? This morning on the front page of yahoo I read this story: “NYC cabbie returns bag of diamond rings” and instantly I thought ‘Did he just tell the Universe “No thanks!”?’

The story read like this:

NEW YORK – Never mind diamonds – a New York cabbie was a Texas girl’s best friend. The driver returned 31 diamond rings he found in his cab after dropping off the passenger, who had left him with a 30-cent tip on a $10.70 fare.

“All my life, I tried to be honest,” said Osman Chowdhury, a native of Bangladesh. “Today is no different.”

But the 41-year-old cabbie from Queens did have a message: “I’m proud of what I did so that people know New York taxi drivers are honest.” What he did started on Monday evening, when he picked up the woman at a hotel in midtown Manhattan and drove her to an apartment building several blocks away. She gave him $20 to pay the fare and asked for $9 back.

The woman, who said she was a jeweler, got back the gems on Monday when she arrived at the alliance office around midnight — incredulous at her luck. She offered Chowdhury a reward — a check for $100.

“I cannot take a penny for being honest,” he said, but he reluctantly accepted the money to cover the fares he lost while trying to track her down.

He said it never occurred to him to keep the diamonds.

Now while most of you reading this are going ‘Wow! That’s nice of him’, I’m going ‘Really horrible message you are sending to the Universe!’ Here is why: The Law of Attraction is always in action - every single minute, day, night, weekend, and holiday, and you can only attract into your life the things that are inline with who you are. Your thoughts create your experiences.

Now that we’ve got that covered, it’s really great that this guy gave the diamonds back to a jeweller and the jeweller tipped him a whole big fat check of $100 bucks but what was he doing to attract these diamonds being left behind in the first place?…

I can imagine he drove his taxi everyday and he picked up people to and from and he got bad tips like this lady was giving (30 cents – wow you can buy your lunch with that tip alone). Now I can imagine that at the end of the day this guy goes home to his wife and thinks ‘Man I need to make more money…God/Universe send me more money. My kids need tuition, we need a new car, the mortgage needs to be paid, we need new coats, my wife is pregnant…it’s cold out here, wish I could have a different job’…Every day he thought ‘I need a way to get more money, maybe I could work more hours, put my life at risk driving all hours of the night and day.’ So this guy thinks the thoughts, starts doing the actions he believes will help…So because God/Universe always gives us our heart’s desires, he sends along this lady – who makes jewelry for a living – to get in his cab and leave 31 and I repeat 31 diamonds in his cab.

Now the jeweller probably wanted to make less money or had some thought about losing money in 2007 or some other thought, because really, who has 31 diamonds rings at a point where you can leave them in a cab? (You and I would have it in a bag, then in a box, then in a bigger box – You get the idea!)

So if you truly believe in the Law of Attraction then you have to believe that both these people are attracting to themselves these events and circumstances through their thoughts. Now if you had driven up to this man and said ‘Here is a wad of $100′s’ he would have still told you ‘No thanks!’ He is in reality telling the Universe how the money he has asked for can be delivered to him – he is basically saying if I get this money any other way except working hard my answer is no!

“I cannot take a penny for being honest,” he said, but he reluctantly accepted the money to cover the fares he lost while trying to track her down.

We hear about this every day – someone finds money in a coat pocket with no name, no number and they turn it into the police. We are restricting how the Universe can deliver what we have asked for! We tell people and you hear it all around ‘Write it down, visualize it, act as if you have it’, but you hear very few things about when the Universe sends it to you. If you’ve asked for a car, are you open to someone giving it to you today? If you are asking for money, are you open to finding it on the back seat of your cab, in the lost belt, in a briefcase at the side of the road?…Or are you only open to getting it by hard work and a bonus on your paycheck?

The other problem is we are programmed that is better to give than it is to recieve. If you keep doing that you will end up with nothing left to give and having recieved nothing either. If you read this story and all you could think of was to say ‘Wow, honest guy!’ you may need to rethink your programming and consider have you really been turning away the things the Universe has sent because you don’t like how it was packaged?!

Are you asking for things then telling the Universe ‘No thanks!’?