“It is safe to live life with ease.” Say it out loud! How does it feel to say out loud? Chances are, it feels a little weird. You might feel tension somewhere in your body when you say the mantra out loud. There is good reason for that! Your conscious mind is saying, “Of course! Yes! I want to live my life with ease!” Your subconscious mind is saying, “Ohhh no you don’t. It must be a struggle.” Hence, tension in your body…
I did a free live training on limiting beliefs in my facebook group, Beautiful Mind Beautiful Life, last week. If you missed it, you can join the facebook group here and catch the replay!
Doing this training forced me to take a look at my limiting beliefs and common limiting beliefs of clients, friends, and other loved ones.
Remember a belief is just a thought we think over and over again (according to Esther Hicks and The Abrahams), and a limiting belief is a belief we hold that keeps us small. A limiting belief is a belief we hold that keeps us from our dreams. When we change these beliefs, we change our lives.
The bad news?
We all have limitings beliefs.
The good news?
We have the power to change our limiting beliefs!
Watch the video to learn more and/or keep reading!
In my facebook training, I talk about how to identify your own limiting beliefs and how to change them. Check it out for more on that, but today I wanted to talk about a common limiting belief that I run into all the time. It is a limiting belief I see in myself and also in others.
What is this common limiting belief?
“Life is Hard. Life is a struggle.”
Now first let me say that if you are going through a major challenge right now, such as the loss of a loved one, those times are challenging. I am not necessarily talking about those times in this post. I am talking about life overall. I am going to make the bold statement that I truly believe, “It is safe for me to live life with ease.” Try that mantra on for size.
Here’s the thing. We are taught in our society that life is hard. We are taught, in so many ways, that we must struggle and hustle and be miserable in order to be successful. But is struggle and hustle and making things happen all the time really success?
I have run into, and tried to get away from, this belief in every era of my life in one way or another:
Back when I worked as a school counselor, I felt a forceful presence around teachers, administrators, etc. A presence that I found it hard to not believe when it felt that everyone around me believed it. The people who left work on time were looked down upon. Most everyone acted busy and aggravated all the time. It was as if people were afraid to not act overly busy, and rightfully so! You did not want anyone to think that you had it better than anyone else. I tried to be okay with leaving on time, so I could make my workout class. I told myself, it doesn’t matter what they think. In truth, the culture caused me to feel guilt. I felt like I was doing something wrong if I left at the time I could leave. I felt like I had to sneak out the door.
Before working in the school, I worked in an office for an insurance company. It was the same thing there. People in that office were not happy, at least the culture was you better not act that way. You better be unhappy, overly busy, and over scheduled. If you weren’t then what were you getting paid for? To look busy? Sometimes it felt that way.
I actually think it got worse working as a psychotherapist! I was speaking to another therapist once about how I was leaving on vacation the next day, so I had all these clients scheduled until late the day before I had to leave. And I left myself no time to pack. She said, “Isn’t that just like us in the helping profession? Leaving no time for ourselves.” …Whoa, that hit home. I realized that I scheduled all those clients on the day before I left not because I had too, but out of guilt for going on vacation. I better hustle and work hard for my time off.
I am not ripping on or criticizing any of these jobs. I have great appreciation and gratitude for all my past jobs and experiences. I am just making a point that I am seeing this belief about how life needs to be hard not just at one particular job, but everywhere. My guess is it exists in most jobs, because it is ingrained in our culture. We must be busy busy busy.
And then I became an entrepreneur. I thought, I’ll leave that belief in the dust! Do you hear me laughing out loud? It was even worse in entrepeneurland…hustle, grind, girl boss, whatever! I kept on seeing things about how you better hustle and get up at 5am to do your morning routine which involves meditation, journalling, exercise, healthy breakfast, affirmations, mirror talk, so you can be hustling it and hunt clients down by 6am. OMG, ick. What did I get myself into? This was NOT what I wanted.
I must say I do see people (the minority) out there who talk about the opposite. One of my girls talks about how you don’t have to give up your life to be an entrepreneur. And my fave, Denise Duffield Thomas, wrote a book called Chillprenuer, which is about living a chilled entrepreneur life. Also, I know things in the workplace are starting to change as company’s are realizing that unhappy employees are not productive..duh. But my belief is that this is so ingrained in our society that it is very hard to change.
Now for the solution if you want to believe it’s safe to live your life with ease? The tricky part is, even if you consciously say, “Yes, I want to live my life with ease!” your subconscious will let that go for a bit, but after a while it will bring you back to the hard life. You will wake up one day with this uncomfortable feeling, something is wrong… I must make things difficult again. You won’t consciously be thinking that, but your subconscious will tense up your body and mind until you are forced to believe life is hard again.
My point in telling you this is not to discourage you from changing this belief, but to let you know that it will take consistency to change something so deeply ingrained. It’s hard work to believe that life is easy! HAHA! I’m kidding, let’s take the word “hard” out of our vocabulary. See how that can sneak right in there? Seriously now, it will be a challenge, but it is worth it.
I believe that somehow this belief has been passed down generation to generation. It is so ingrained in us that we feel fear in letting it go. What will happen if we get to believe we can live life with ease? Will we all become lazy? Will the world crash down and end? Will we survive such a thing? Maybe our ancestors would not have. But we will. Actually OUR lives will be better when we get to believe life is good. We will be able to do more when we stop thinking of everything as being challenging. We can help more people. We can make more money. We can be more a part of things. We will spread better energy. We will lift the vibration of the planet.
Okay now for the solution! And please, never take me as thinking I have all the answers. I am human too. I do not have this down perfectly, but I do have a start. Try actually writing out the answers to these questions instead of just thinking about them. There is power in the written word.
- Notice it and call it out. When you are feeling tense, ask yourself, am I making this hard? Is this about thinking life has to be hard? Then just call it out, “There is that pesky limiting belief about life having to be hard again.”
- Journal – What am I doing or thinking that is making life hard right now? What can I let go of in thought or action? What drama am I creating?
- Ask yourself, “Is there a part of me that does not feel safe living an easier life? What is that about?”
- New mantra – “It is safe to live my life with ease.” You need to repeat this to know that you are safe. It is okay to let go of old beliefs. Look around you and say “I am safe to live a good life. I am safe to be happy” whatever it is you want, tell yourself you are safe to have it.
- If you feel tension in your body with the new mantra, breathe into it and visualize sending it to your higher power. If the tension is in your chest for instance, breathe into it and picture this dark cloud of energy leaving your chest out your mouth into the nothingness from which it came.
Start noticing when other people hold this belief too. Once you are aware if it, you will see it all around you. This is not to judge, but just notice.
I am a huge believer in quiet time alone. You need time to reprogram your thoughts from the thoughts of the world. So notice when other people hold this limiting belief and spend sometime alone in quiet meditation after in order to choose what you want to believe again. Know that you holding the belief that you are safe living life with ease gives other people permission to do the same.
And if you want more help changing those pesky limitings beliefs, then check out my course From Fear To Love! OMG I have drastically reduced the price until this Thursday! It is too affordable to pass up! This course walks you through the path from fear to love and helps keep you accountable for the new beliefs you choose! It helps open your eyes and mind to what is possible for your life! It’s the next best thing to one-on-one coaching with me! Let’s do it!
Peace, Love, and It Is Safe To Live Your Life With Ease,
Elizabeth
www.yourhighestlight.com