If you are like me (and most other people on the planet), you have many beliefs that serve you well. Beliefs that help you accomplish goals, contribute to others, and guide you in difficult times.

 

But if you are really like most people, then you also have a whole bag full of beliefs that get in the way and hold you back…otherwise known as “limiting beliefs”.

 

Most of us know what at least some of our limiting beliefs are, though there are always some we haven’t become aware of. Sometimes our best approach is to focus on the beliefs we know about. The trick is in how to change those limiting beliefs so that they not only don’t get in the way any longer, but also actually transform into beliefs that help us.

 

I had a personal encounter with this very issue today.

Like you, I’m a personal growth enthusiast, so I’m always seeking new experiences and greater self-understanding. To help with that, I’ve been working with a coach who is helping me look specifically at self-esteem – my self-esteem. I wish I could tell you it has all been fabulous and fast, but it seems that shifting some of those long-held and hidden beliefs can take more than a little bit of nudging and nurturing in order to shift.

 

My coach and I believe that language plays a significant role in how we make meaning and interpret events. So, at my coach’s suggestion, we were brainstorming phrases/affirmations/incantations I could use to help shift some of the low self-esteem beliefs.

What happened was very interesting, and a tad bit disturbing.

 

My coach suggested I use the phrase “I’m wonderful just the way I am.”  

 

Innocent enough. Maybe even inspiring.

It’s certainly a lovely thing to say to oneself, right?

 

However, what happened for me let me know it wasn’t the phrase for me. As soon as I said “I’m wonderful just the way I am”, another voice inside began pointing out the reasons why that wasn’t always the case.

 

The purpose of affirmation is to change our default way of thinking – a sort of re-wiring process. The idea is that through repetition, eventually you begin to wear a new groove in your brain, create a new pattern, so that it becomes automatic.

 

What people sometimes misunderstand, though, is that emotion plays a critical role. Anything you repeat over and over again, in an emotional state, digs a deeper groove. This is true whether it is a positive emotional state or a negative one.

 

When the other voice in my head started telling me that my affirmation wasn’t true, it was doing so from an emotional place. Like many people raised in the United States, I had stronger emotional connections to “not” being good enough, than to being wonderful.

 

In other words, this exercise in using language and though repetition in order to gradually open up a new perspective, was actually having the reverse effect. Each time I said the affirmation, I also ran through a litany of anti-affirmations.

 

This experience reminded me of one of my clients.

My client had a habit of saying “I don’t know” whenever I asked her something about herself. She realized she did this, and knew from her own study of personal growth, that the more she said it, the more it would always be true for her. Obviously we needed to come up with a sentence to replace the habitual “I don’t know.”   

 

Together we came up with the phrase “I’m figuring it out.”

At first we thought this was a strong replacement. It didn’t have the same doubt or negativity of “I don’t know”, and it left things open to possibility. It also gave her permission to “not know”.

 

But after a few trials of it, she realized that she was coming up with negative responses. She realized she just simply didn’t believe she was figuring it out.

 

So we needed to back up and design a phrase that was believable, but also made room for possibility, as well as making it OK if she didn’t know quite yet.

 

The phrase she landed on was “I might be figuring it out.”

The words “I might” were exactly what she needed to make it believable. After all, there was always the chance that she might be figuring it out.

 

After a week of “I might be figuring it out”, she was able to transition to a slightly more empowering statement – “I am figuring it out most of the time.” And eventually she believed that she was figuring it out.

 

By stair stepping her affirmations, making sure she could absolutely believe what she was saying, she was able to shift her thoughts, and ultimately her behavior and her results.

 

In case you’re wondering what new affirmation I came up with, here it is:

 

“It’s healthy to believe I’m wonderful just the way I am.”

 

Silly study in semantics? Perhaps.
Negative consequences? Not a one.

 

I can totally believe it, and I know that soon it will make way for the next stair step.