Breaking Through Barriers

How often have you procrastinated about starting something important, creating unnecessary anxiety and worry, when it would have been a lot simpler and less stressful to just do it and get it out of the way? For many people the answer is probably more times than they care to remember.

What causes us to know what we should do and yet we seem almost incapable of taking that first step towards accomplishing it? The answer is that our conscious mind is like the tip of the iceberg, with the vast majority of our patterns and beliefs residing in the 90% of our mind that we term the subconscious. Most of these patterns and beliefs are established in early childhood, when we have limited coping strategies available to us, and these limiting patterns are then replayed over and over each time the subconscious mind perceives a similar event to the initial one in which the pattern/belief was established. We get stuck in a groove that just keeps getting deeper and deeper, unless we learn to view our behaviours objectively and break free of our limiting patterns and beliefs.

In the procrastination example above, common subconscious reasons for not starting something include:

- Fear of being adversely judged
- Fear of Failure
- Fear of the Unknown
- Perfectionist tendencies, and interestingly enough
- Fear of Success
Some people are even very talented subconsciously at manifesting illness as a way of avoiding responsibility or as a subconscious excuse not to challenge themselves.

CLUES you can get about those limiting beliefs, patterns and behaviours still operating repeatedly in your subconscious mind since childhood include:

1. Your relationships with other people

Do you repeatedly draw the same kind of people into your life, for instance, ones that don't value, respect or nurture you? Hard as it may be for you to accept, the mirror is being held up for you to look at yourself and see how you are not valuing, respecting or nurturing yourself. Each of these painful relationships that you draw into your life is an opportunity to reflect your inner beliefs about yourself. Usually the buttons others push in us the most are indicating what we most need to change in ourselves. For instance, if you say to your partner, "I deserve someone better than you", then consciously you may believe that, but subconsciously you have attracted exactly the partner you deserve according to your subconscious belief system about yourself.

Sure it is easier to blame and shame others for our own inadequacies and to be in denial that we need to work on ourselves, but this will just keep us stuck repeating the old destructive patterns.

What you accuse the other person of in the heat of an argument is often the very thing you need to look at in yourself. "But, but..." I hear you protest. Just try to observe yourself objectively next time you argue with someone. Often the mere act of being the observer is the trigger you need to become aware of your subconscious beliefs and the ridiculousness of the argument.

2. What you say to yourself when you are feeling really down

Sometimes when we get to the point where it all becomes a bit much to cope with, we lose our emotional equilibrium and start to berate ourself, liberally pouring out limiting beliefs from that reservoir of the subconscious mind. In such a situation write these down, as these are the core limiting beliefs we still have about ourself, no matter how much we might try to deny it. Common subconscious beliefs that come up at such times may include, "I am useless / worthless / a failure. I'll never be any good at anything." These are the Biggies that subconsciously sabotage our efforts to move forward in life and reach our full potential.

3. Negative self-talk

Ever caught yourself thinking "What an idiot!" after you made a simple mistake? This is an example of negative self-talk, which is a reflection of your beliefs at the subconscious level.

Once again, intend to be the observer and notice when you spontaneously have one of these negative thoughts. You may then like to view yourself as a gardener, pulling out the negative thoughts like weeds from your mind so that more positive thoughts can flourish. Practising this technique consistently will dissolve a whole lot of previously subconscious limiting beliefs.
AWARENESS THROUGH OBSERVATION is the key to breaking through and dissolving limiting and outmoded beliefs, habits and patterns. You can do much of this work for yourself. To make the process even quicker and easier you may like to try Hypnotherapy to identify limiting subconscious beliefs and patterns and their origins and then experience a powerful resolution of them.