Limiting beliefs from our childhood E42

May 17, 2022

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Today we are going to investigate the beliefs that we collected throughout our childhood. How they can suddenly limit us now when we are adults. I am going to give you one example where I discovered a limiting belief. I even found out how it was formed during my childhood. Stay tuned to find out more.

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The world around us keeps changing quicker and sometimes it´s hard to understand what to still believe in and what not. This is the perfect reason to get to know our beliefs better. To leverage that knowledge to adjust them to our benefit. It can be scary for us to change something we have believed in for a long time. We highly cherish our belief system or our beliefs. Some even believe that their whole personality is based on their belief system. That what they believe in is truly who they are. But we are so much more than what we or a group of people believe in. And for us to be able to start to let go of some of our beliefs we need to understand what they actually are.

A belief is just a thought. A thought that you keep having.

When you have thought it over and over again, it turns into a belief. Something that sets itself into your subconscious and influences your actions, feelings and your life automatically. It’s like software that was programmed to run in the background, like a virus scan. That’s why we are not even aware of a lot of our beliefs. But even if we are very much aware of them and hold them very close, scared to let them go, we give our own power away to a belief. A belief which just stems from a thought that you or someone had at some point. That´s all it is.

A lot of our beliefs are very helpful. They let us run our lives quite automatically and they hold our society together. But what if there is a belief inside of you that is stopping you from moving forward? It stops you from reaching your purpose and an easier way of living? Would you not want to discover and dismantle it? I bet you do.

Why limiting beliefs from our childhood

Let me briefly explain why this episode is about childhood and why our childhood is so formative. When we are young all the information, activities and impressions go straight into our subconscious. The reason for that is that our analytical mind is not yet developed until we are about 7 years old. Our analytical mind is a gate that decides what comes in and what does not come into our subconscious mind. To a certain degree. If we don’t want to believe something or it’s absurd to us, the analytical mind just won’t let it through the gate.

But these gates were not there when we were young. So everything around us, everything we saw and observed, everything we heard, and everything we experienced went straight into the subconscious and got stored. A young child’s mind does not yet have a full understanding of the world, of the roles of people in their lives. Not on the same level of understanding we just really get once we are adults. So a lot of information collected in our young life might be filed away weirdly.

A child takes everything for the truth and as the only truth – especially when their parents say something. A 2-year-old does not understand a lot of the meaning of the words, they don’t have background knowledge or stories. They don’t understand slang, sarcasm or banter.

Discover limiting beliefs from your childhood

Everything that we heard and experienced at that time, went as the truth of life into our subconscious – in the way we captured it. It’s like a snapshot we took. So the filing system might be a bit off-kilter if we would be able to look at it as adults. If you have ever worked with a coach or therapist and looked for a reason behind a certain situation or behaviour you probably have come across a belief that is the cause. And you might be very surprised what you discover. As an adult, you would never believe this statement. But you will have collected it as a young child and stored it away. And now you are highly surprised what comes out of the woodwork.

Now that we know what beliefs are and how they are created, we want to dig deeper into the beliefs that are limiting us and are hidden from us. Limiting beliefs are thoughts you keep having that are holding you back from moving forward. If you want to achieve something in your life and you have a belief that is working against this goal, then it is a limiting belief. (Episode 6)

A few examples are: Your wish is to become a world-class actor and star in Hollywood movies. But you keep having doubting thoughts like: Who am I to be famous? I am not special to be famous. Maybe someone in your childhood told you that you are not special. And this belief got stored in your subconscious as a truth. You might not even be aware of these thoughts anymore They might be programmed beliefs in your subconscious that you carry around with you for a long time.

But this belief that you are not special enough to be famous is going to sabotage your success in the film industry. Your path to becoming famous is going to be a struggle. And you potentially will not achieve it because deep down you think you are not worth it.

My example of a belief created in my childhood

I had one of these limiting beliefs in my life for a long time. And to some degree, it’s still with me but now I am aware of it, so I can manage it. It took me a long time to realize it. When I did and discussed it with a business coach I found out where in my childhood it came from.

So let’s start with the first time that I really got the message. Because the first time I truly realized this within me was not the first time I was told about it. But when I realized I then looked back and saw all the other signs and opportunities for me to realize it. Which I did not take.

The belief that I came to realize was my view of hierarchies. My thinking and behaving have been always very hierarchical. Which means that I put more senior colleagues in the corporate world on a pedestal. On the one side, I respected them and followed their guidance and there is nothing wrong with that. But then I criticized them as well if they did not live up to my hierarchical standards. I thought that if you are more senior, a leader and get more paid than me then you have to be better than me.

“And if you are better than me then you have to perform better than me and be a specialist in everything.”

I realized this the first time when I received feedback from my boss after a leadership meeting. It happened in the meeting to explain a new compensation system for our sales employees. I was the specialist as I attended training on this. I had to explain in that meeting to the German leadership team what changes are going to come and what the impact is going to be.

In that meeting, my boss observed me and told me afterwards that I did not play the role of the expert. If someone from the leadership team had something against what I was telling, they just overruled me and pitched their idea or understanding. And I let it happen – because of my hierarchical thinking. They are more senior so they will know better. But what my boss told me is that I was the expert. I should have guided the conversation instead of letting some of the LT members take it over.

What to do with the knowledge of this belief

That was the first time it clicked for me that I have a belief in myself that is holding me back. Earlier in my career, it might not have been such a problem. But I was now in a manager position where I needed to stand up for myself. Where I had to lead in the areas of my expertise. So when I visited then a few weeks later my business coach, I told her about my discovery and the feedback I received. We talked it through and I started to realize that this belief has hindered me potentially in previous areas of my career. I did receive similar feedback before but it just never clicked for me.

My coach took me through an exercise to look back into my past especially my childhood to see if I can find out where this belief came from. And there I discovered it. I got my hierarchical thinking from my days practising Judo. If you have never come across it, Judo is a Japanese martial art form that uses a gentle way of fighting. What comes with martial arts is high respect for your trainer. You are trained to be very respectful and subordinate to your trainers. And I spent nearly 10 years practising Judo so it makes sense that it had a huge influence on me.

Still, it was a huge surprise for me to uncover that my childhood sport had installed beliefs inside of me that suddenly hindered my career progression. It was so powerful to discover it because it helped me to manage this belief and to put it in relation to my current life. To become aware that I can show subordinate behaviours in certain situations. And with that awareness, I can wake myself up and decide to behave differently. What was right when I was a child practising Judo, is not useful anymore in my current life as a manager.

Discover your limiting beliefs

I hope this example shows you how something from your childhood can influence your current life and growth. And you don’t always have to find the root cause of a limiting belief. The most important part is that you discover the limiting belief in itself and work on letting it go. If it hinders you. You don’t always get to find the time and place this belief was installed. Or find out who or what situation gave you this belief. It’s nice to find it out as it can help you to let go of it even quicker but it is not necessary.

Uncovering a lot of these beliefs, these stored impactful moments and sometimes unravelling any kind of trauma we had when we were young is called working with your inner child. We have these formative years that form what we like and what we don’t like. Who we are attracted to and not attracted to.

But that does not mean that this has to stay like that. It does not mean that certain beliefs that were formed when you were young cannot be changed. You don’t have to keep living with something for the rest of your life just because it happened to you 20 years ago.

You can start seeing your memories as snapshots from the past like you have a camera inside of you that captures a full experience with all the senses and all the feelings you had at this moment. But it is still just a snapshot from a past event. It’s gone but you decided to keep it inside of you. And if it is limiting you now, then you can decide to let it go now.

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