Project Description
You may have heard of neurolinguistic programming before, but perhaps you aren’t quite sure what the term means. Neurolinguistic programming (NLP) comes from “neuro,” which is to do with the brain; “linguistic” to do with the language; and “programming,” meaning that we can train our brain to support us by filtering our beliefs. Beliefs are powerful, but what I would like to relay in today’s article is that we write the script for our beliefs and we are in control of them.
It can happen that a belief slips past our awareness and starts to affect our life in ways we don’t want, but ultimately, we are the masters of our own thinking. This is where the idea of limiting beliefs comes from; limiting beliefs actually hold you back from functioning. For example, some people will fear going outside and suffer with agoraphobia because they fear that things outside are bad for them. So that is a belief, and that belief has triggered something in their unconscious to make them so fearful, so alert that they cannot function outside of their safe space.
These beliefs don’t only influence phobias but also our daily behaviour and attention. We can either be someone who believes we can achieve and do what we want in life, or we can believe what we want is forever out of our reach. We also can have tendencies to more positive beliefs or more negative beliefs. For example, you might hear someone say, “that’s never going to work,” or “that can’t happen,” or “of course that’s going to fail.” In the sense of NLP, what that’s telling you is that if they hold that as a belief, they’re already setting out to fail before they even start. Since they have set out to fail, the mind and the body work together in order to fulfil that wish.
But if we take it down a level, if you were to believe that you weren’t clever or that you were clumsy or that you would never be a success, how might these beliefs affect your life? How many people, at school when speaking to the careers officer, were told that you couldn’t be an artist or a doctor or a writer… whatever it might have been? There are stories like that where the careers officer had seen a test score and held a limiting belief, and then planted that belief in a young person. Many, if not all of, our beliefs come from somewhere outside of ourselves, and they can take some time to root out.
“I’ll never be successful. I’ll never be able to run my own business. I’d never be able to afford enough money for a holiday, for another property. Nobody will ever love me.” All of those can be little sentences that have been fed in to your unconscious so that you are often unaware of them until you do some form of counselling or neurolinguistic style work.
And they’re fed into and make a little nest in the deeper part of your brain. So then, if your brain believes that no one will ever love you, it will never look at people as potential partners for you. If you believe that you will never be successful and run a business or invest in property or have money, the unconscious part of your brain will never notice the opportunities that are all around you.
Never fear, you can get over these limiting beliefs if you are holding any. But the point that I want to make here is that we are fed these limiting beliefs through our atmosphere; social networks, media, and social media. You’ll often hear the phrase “bad news sells.” People don’t want to read about people being happy. If that is what you are being fed through the media atmosphere, the thought atmosphere that is around you, if you are not conscious that this is being fed into your automatic programming then this can be very dangerous. There’s so much going on in our lives, and so much of that needs to be automated in order that we can simply function.
If you do not control the programming at that unconscious, subconscious level, then when you have taken care of business and you are now looking in the world in a conscious way, if you’ve got a filter in there that says “don’t bother noticing this, because you’ll never be successful. Don’t bother noticing this because no one will ever love you. Don’t bother noticing this because you’re always destined to be fat or ugly,” or any other belief that could be in there. that if you are not conscious of this, external forces could be shaping your future without you knowing about it.
I want you to imagine flipping the script. What might life be like if you believed you deserved a faithful, loving partner? What if you believed you were capable of learning to run a business and achieving success? What would it feel like to know that who you are and what you’re worth is not at all based in how you look; receiving respect, love and joy is not conditional upon what you weigh? Believe in your worth and in your potential and you will see your life transform. Treat yourself they way you want to be treated. Plan and prepare your life for the way you want to live it. Dream bigger and watch how you yourself make it happen.
So, I think the key takeaway here is that your world, your life and your self are what you think they are. Your beliefs are powerful and constantly shape your life, both consciously and unconsciously. But you are more powerful than your beliefs and you are in a position to filter out the negative ones and hang onto the ones that serve you. I learned these truths by studying neurolinguistic programming, and they have served me immensely for over a decade. One key to a wealthy life? Believe you can live it to the fullest.
If you are interested in learning more about creating a wealth plan, make sure you listen to my podcast A Wealthy Life, and look at the free resources I offer like the Readiness to Retire Wealthy Audit. Mastering your mindset and beliefs takes time and effort, but I am always happy to help you filter through the noise. For more impactful wealthy life tips, please visit my website www.vickiwusche.com, listen to my podcast here and here, or schedule a free call with me.