Does Paying Attention to Limiting Beliefs Reinforce Them?

After The Three Levels of Leadership came out in 2011, readers followed up with questions on leadership, leadership psychology and self-mastery – all of them interesting.  So interesting, in fact, that I’m releasing my answers here as they supplement the “Three Levels” material and others may find them useful.  Here’s the seventh in the series.   I’ll post the others over the coming months…

Q7. I’ve heard it said that paying attention to ideas and habits only strengthens them, so won’t I only strengthen my limiting beliefs if I unearth and examine them?

“There’s a difference between paying continued attention to limiting beliefs and simply defining and examining them in the process of letting them go.

Let’s define our terms.  For me, ‘continuing to pay attention to these beliefs’ means giving them the energy of your consciousness (your pure self-awareness), causing you to believe they are so true that you identify with them.  And because you identify with them, you habitually act on them.

Now if you identify with your beliefs and act on them repeatedly then, yes, you will reinforce them.  For as neuroscientists teach us, you’ll only strengthen the neural pathways in your brain that represent the habits.

However, the idea of working on your limiting beliefs is to see them clearly so you can learn to realise they are not true and stop identifying with them.  But of course it’s impossible to do this if you don’t first surface them.

The truth is simple: you can’t disidentify from a belief until you’ve first understood what it was you were identifying with.  Putting it another way, you cannot give away what you don’t first own.

So the key point is this: surfacing, defining and examining your limiting beliefs isn’t the same as continuing to sustain them.

If you think about it, hundreds of years ago we didn’t know about the dangers of germs and bacteria.  Indeed, they didn’t exist in the consciousness of people in the Middle Ages.  But that didn’t mean they weren’t there and it didn’t mean they weren’t causing problems.  So ignorance wasn’t bliss for people of that era.  But then Louis Pasteur discovered bacteria and our world began to change.  We learned to pasteurise milk.  And surgeons learned to wash their hands and clean instruments before surgery.

Now would anyone argue that because we’re recognising germs exist we are making our health worse?  No.  The truth is, now we are aware of them we can deal with the germs.

So no, accepting a problem exists is not the same as continuing to feed it.  And indeed, turning a blind eye to reality is an excellent way of letting the problem continue.  If you want to achieve self-mastery, grow your leadership presence and be the best leader you can be, you’ll have to become aware of and deal with your limiting beliefs.”

 

The author of this blog is James Scouller, an executive coach.  His book, The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill, was published by Management Books 2000 in May 2011.  You can learn more about it at www.three-levels-of-leadership.com.  If you want to see its reviews, click here: leadership book reviews.  If you want to know where to buy it, click HERE.