Last week, I talked about the 7 things that can keep people from finding a good partner and creating a healthy, thriving relationship. Today, I will focus on the first and biggest area that can keep people stuck: Their beliefs. We have beliefs about everything. And often the hidden and mostly false, beliefs we have about love, ourselves, and other people are the biggest factors that can get in the way of finding love.
Beliefs about self.
Your belief about yourself is often referred to as your Identity. Who are you? This tends to shape how you view yourself, your capabilities, your success, and your interactions with the world and others. People are generally not that aware of the way they see themselves. But it runs in the background of their mind and controls almost everything. For instance, let’s say someone has a deeper belief that they are not enough. How do you think they would act when they were meeting new people? Or on a date? How do you think it would affect the way they put themselves out there or not? It would most likely cause some sort of insecurity and lack of confidence. Let’s say this person ends up in a relationship, how do you think the “I am not enough” belief would affect the way they behave with their partner? They might work really hard to prove that they are worth the love they are being given. Maybe they would start to give too much to their partner. Maybe they would lack boundaries or the ability to ask for their own needs to get met. Why would you feel like you had the right to ask for what you want if you are not enough? That “I am not enough” belief would be like a filter on everything that happened and it would color reality. The brain would find evidence everywhere to make it true and anything that happened would be more evidence that they were not enough. For example, their partner doesn’t call one night. And guess what the brain would automatically make that mean? There are many different limiting identity beliefs out there. No two people are the same in the way they hold these beliefs. Here are some other fun examples: I am not loveable, I don’t deserve good things, I don’t belong, I am different, there is something wrong with me, I am not valuable, I don’t matter, the list can go on.
Where do these beliefs come from?
The beliefs we form about who we are most often come from our family and things that happened or did not happen when we were young. The identity beliefs are usually formed already before we are 5 years old and then the rest of life just becomes more evidence for that belief.
What are your beliefs?
If you want to try and figure out what some of your hidden beliefs are about yourself, here is a trick. Look at your life, the patterns, the emotions that you feel most often, especially in relationship, and ask yourself: “What must I be believing about myself to be having these experiences over and over?” Gut instinct and wild guesses are often pretty accurate.
Can these beliefs change?
Beliefs can feel pretty unchangeable. The root word for belief is liefde, which means dear or love. We hold our beliefs dear and we shape our entire world around them. Because of this, it feels as if they could not possibly change. However, they ARE changeable and in the NLP work I do with my clients, I have seen over and over these “dear” limiting beliefs change and then more and more things become possible for them. Especially Love! Healthy, thriving love!
Stay tuned for next week when we talk about the next layer that can help you find the love you want.
Recent Comments