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If you too are the ones who, over the years, have used limiting words and phrases for yourself, then you are not alone. All of us have been doing the same in our lives. It is so common to hear phrases such as, ‘I can’t do it’, ‘I can never solve maths properly’, ‘I don’t have the fluency over a language’, ‘I am not made for this’, ‘This is not possible for me’ and so on so forth.

Limiting beliefs about ourselves:

If, however, we ask ourselves why we use such phrases before even attempting to do something, we would be amazed to know that sometimes such limiting beliefs have no background or feedback from earlier attempts. Even before doing something, we sometimes come to believe in our inadequacy and shortcomings.

Beliefs are unreasonable:

We can fully understand that someone who had attempted to do something earlier and didn’t get the desired results, has such conclusions about himself. Surprisingly though, a deeper dig would reveal to you that the earlier attempt, on which the opinion was based, was half-hearted, unprepared, or circumstantially difficult. However, we are quick to form limiting beliefs about ourselves.

The point I am trying to make is, as simple as prevalent that we are too critical about ourselves, and won’t leave an opportunity of self-flagellation and we do it through the words that we use to communicate with ourselves and this is what is called Self-Programming though negative.

We are the results of the programming that we receive:

We are a sum total of the programming that we receive, either from others or from ourselves. So far, we are living in a society, we would continue to receive such programming. The problem is when we start believing in them and making opinions about ourselves.

Change the way we talk to ourselves:

I, as a trainer for language and IELTS exams, have constantly been insisting upon my students to rather use words that are positive than negative. If we can be programmed to be limiting, we can, on the contrary, programme ourselves to be winners and achievers, and use this important insight to come out of our limiting beliefs.

I, so often during my teaching, keep repeating sentences such as, ‘English is such an easy language.’, ‘English is so interesting, ‘It is logical and easily understandable’, ‘I am enjoying learning it, etc.’  I do this to counter the phrases that students keep receiving about this language and starting to believe phrases such as ‘English is a funny language’, ‘It is illogical and hence, difficult to learn, ‘I am not sure if I will ever be able to learn it.’ 

Well! It is important for us to understand that if we ever want to live a fulfilling and contented life, we should first change the way we interact with ourselves and subsequently bind ourselves to our limiting beliefs.

Be rational in accepting failure:

Change the way we talk to ourselves, don’t say that you cannot do something, unless you first try, and even if, after trying you have failed, don’t accept the result as a reflection of your inabilities, on the contrary, we should analyze the result and see if other factors worked against us. The logical process will stop you from taking every failure as a reflection of your shortcomings.

To take a step further, make some positive affirmations and phrases or those skills, abilities, or traits that you wish to bring into your personality and keep repeating them with all fervour and enthusiasm. To illustrate this, I tell my students to keep repeating the same sentences about learning English and the English language, per se, such as ‘English is such a beautiful language’, ‘I am enjoying learning English’, ‘it is so easy and logical and my English is improving every day.’

Such phrases, if repeated regularly, create positive affirmations in ourselves and then the process of learning actually becomes easy.

I would thus reiterate, that use positive self-talk, which is a powerful technique and has been researched and written thoroughly about, to empower yourselves and live fulfilling lives.