With Udeme Archibong                                                                                                                    [email protected] 08035095243

A young eaglet was put in a cage and allowed to grow there while receiving nourishment and care. When the eaglet reached maturity and turned into an eagle, the ceiling of the cage was opened. Guess what! The eagle couldn’t soar out of the cage.

The reason was simple; he had the ability and potential to soar but was unable because he had been mentally conditioned to stay in the cage. The eagle’s problem was self-imposed limitation.

Therefore, many people are stuck with who they are and where they are because of past conditioning and not because of lack of ability, opportunity or fate. In fact, we see life not as it is but as we’ve been conditioned to see it. The belief we have of ourselves and our abilities will determine our performance.

Self-imposed limitations have its precedence on self-limiting beliefs. Belief is being persuaded about a particular thing. It is the conviction you hold about yourself and your world.

Self-limiting belief is a restricted view or perspective about who you are and what you are capable of doing; it confines not only your life but also your world view into your self-made “box”.

Beliefs set the boundary of your life experience. Your life can never rise above the set of beliefs you choose to uphold. Self-limiting belief has its premises on fear and doubt.

Fear and doubt is one of success most deadly enemies; it stabs creativity, cripples the power of the imagination, incapacitates ability and potentials and undermines your self-worth.

Doubt places limits on your intelligence, capability and confidence. Fear attracts the things you dread and handicaps your ability to take appropriate actions and control your life.

Negative beliefs originates from how you interpret your past experiences, your upbringing, childhood experiences, conversations you’ve had with friends, neighbours and the people you trust. The root of these negative beliefs is negative thought patterns.

And you can change your self-limiting beliefs by changing your thought patterns into a positive one. Examine your thought patterns: What are your beliefs about money? What are your beliefs around success and business?

What are your beliefs around love and relationships? Do you believe you deserve and can achieve your dreams? Are your beliefs in line with your goals? Replace negative beliefs or thought patterns with positive thoughts.

Frank Lioyd Wright reveals, “The thing always happens that you really believe in. And the belief in a thing makes it happen. And I think nothing will happen until you thoroughly and deeply believe in it.”

For thousands of years it was believed that it was impossible for human beings to run the mile in less than four minutes. But Roger Banister became the pace-setter; within a year of setting the pace, 37 other runners also did the “impossible”.

And the year after 300 runners performed the same athletic feat. Banister refused to be chained down by popular belief. One of the damaging things about self-imposed limitations is that we believe what everybody else believes in; we do not consciously choose our beliefs.

We tend to move along with popular opinion about ourselves and about what is possible; we are crowd driven rather than self-driven. Hence, our destinies become stunted because we do not maximize the potentials that the Creator had invested in us; we end up living a life of mediocrity.

Would you ever think that a person with infantile paralysis, whom the Doctors said would never walk, ended up being the World Champion high jumper? His story goes a long way to buttress the law of belief, “Whatever you believe with emotion and conviction becomes your reality.”

Walter Davis, ignored the doctor’s report and dreamt of becoming the best jumper in the world. He had a wonderful wife who seeing his painstaking effort told him, “The strength of belief; with that you will have the strength you need in your leg.”

He held onto those words, believed it and repeated those words to himself several times. He laid hold on the prize. The world is full with stories of great men who accomplished the impossible because they ignored the limiting opinion of experts and developed empowering beliefs that transforms destinies.

Many people have settled for less than they could be because they choose to misinterpret past experiences. We can take an experience and create empowering beliefs that can transform our lives into a masterpiece; we can also take the same experience and form an interpretation of it, which can lead to destiny wreckage or a miserable life.

Failing in the past does not mean that you will fail again in the future. Your past may be tainted but your future is spotless. Spilling a negative experience to affect every area of your life could be very damaging.

For instance, facing a financial crisis does not mean your world has fallen apart; it does mean you need to make adjustment and work on the solution. Your breakthrough may just be an idea away.

Therefore, break the ceiling of limitations and soar to limitless height by adopting empowering beliefs.