We all experience limiting beliefs in our lives.
There is an old allegory about a baby elephant tied to a fence post. As the baby elephant tugs and pulls, he fails to break the fence or break the rope. Eventually, he gives up and makes peace with his fate. The baby elephant is stuck. But eventually, the elephant grows up and becomes a big, adult elephant with gargantuan legs and a huge tusk and swirly trunk and he could easily walk away from the fence if he wanted. But believing the fence to be some immovable thing, the adult elephant remains tied to it, falsely believing he can never get away.
We live within and operate out of a complex set of beliefs that define us and the world in which we live. Beliefs are the way in which we process the flood of information that comes in through our five major sense organs every single moment of every single day. Our beliefs organize our world. Without them to help us interpret the bombardment of daily stimuli, we would become overwhelmed from the moment we wake up.
That which we believe to be true, we tend to perceive and experience as being true. We rarely question what we believe or why, which is why beliefs tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. If a belief remains unchallenged, it shapes our perceptions and directs our actions at a subconscious level.
Because our reality is governed by our beliefs, beliefs can influence our perceptions, define what is good/bad, right/wrong true/untrue, real/unreal and possible/impossible, skew our perspective in positive or negative ways, limit actions we take, affect relationships, influence or shape the path we follow, shape our character, free or constrain our passion, and can determine our health!
Some limiting beliefs unnecessarily hold us back from who we want to become. Like the elephant that stays stuck to the fence post, these limiting beliefs keep us in place without us even realizing it. Fortunately, each moment, each breath holds the potential to break the spell an unconscious belief may have cast over us.
