101. From Stuck to Success: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs with Mind Power

Hi, we're Cinthia Varkevisser and Michelle Walters, co-hosts of Mind Power Meets Mystic. Our weekly show is here to expand your mind to what's possible, uplift your spirits, help you move forward with confidence and joy, and create a space for your collaboration with the invisible. Welcome to Mind Power Meets Mystic.

I am Michelle Walters, and I am the show's "Mind Power" because I'm a hypnotherapist and coach. Usually, I'm here with my podcast pal, Cinthia Varkevisser, our show's "Mystic," but she has the week off. So today, you'll be hearing from me about limiting beliefs. One of the things I've realized in my practice is that a very large proportion of the people who come to see me, the people I work with, are limited in some way by a belief that is getting in their way of being all that they can be, being the person they want to be. And so I've realized that if I can help people better understand what a limiting belief is, what's going on there, and what they can do to set that belief aside, it is enormously powerful at helping people open doors, do things they haven't been able to see themselves doing, and really get on with life, if you will.

I have an upcoming five-day free challenge that I'm running this year, September 9 to 13th. You'll be able to sign up for it on my website. I'll also put the link in the show notes. It's under the "Classes" tab on michellewalters.net, and in this five-day program, I will be working with the group in a group fashion, to help people overcome their limiting beliefs. I'm really excited about this new program. This is the first time I will be offering it, and I think it's going to help people work wonders in terms of setting aside those limiting beliefs and getting on with living life to the fullest, which is why we're here, right?

So what is a limiting belief? A limiting belief is when you have a thought stuck in your head, a belief that is holding you back in some fashion. It is limiting you. Now, limiting beliefs can come from lots of different places, but the most common place that I have seen them come from is childhood. Now, this is not always the case, but often, things that get stuck in your head as a kid have a way of showing up in different ways as an adult, and for whatever reason, conscious or subconscious, people need to find a way to break through if they want to deal with this. And that's really what my talk and the upcoming five-day free challenge are all about.

Some of the common limiting beliefs that I've seen a lot of in the last couple of years include things like, "I can't manage time," or "I can't stop thinking about [blank]," where [blank] might be a person, an obsession, or a point of failure. Another common one I hear is, "I rely on alcohol, and I don't want to." I've also heard from quite a few of my clients things like, "I can't drive," "I'm not a good driver," or "I don't feel safe driving," so feeling limitations around being able to drive. And then, there's a more general form of a limiting belief, such as, "I'm afraid of [blank], so I can't [blank]." That shows up in different ways: "I'm afraid of needles, so I can't get a shot," "I'm afraid of bumblebees, so I can't go outside," and so on. That general form of "I'm afraid of [blank], so I can't do [blank]" is another form of limiting belief that I've helped lots and lots of people with.

So what does it take to get past a limiting belief? Well, I believe that most limiting beliefs require kind of a two-pronged strategy: both a conscious way of working on it, as well as a subconscious way of working on it. And as most of you know, the subconscious way that I like to work with most problems is hypnotherapy. It's just extremely effective and really can help to discern what's going on in the subconscious in such a way as to find ways to move past it.

So take a moment now—just, you know, 10 or 20 seconds—and think about what's going on with you. Do you have something that is just sitting out there, getting in the way of you doing what you want to do? I would say that probably most of us have some form of limiting belief, something that makes us think, "Oh, I couldn't possibly do this. I'm too old. I'm not qualified. I'm not a good speaker," whatever it may be. And think about, if you got some help with that, if you were able to crush that limiting belief, what your life might look like, right? Would you be able to drive somewhere you hadn't been able to drive before? Would you be able to apply for a new job that might be more thrilling or rewarding for you? Would you find that you had better time management skills so that you could do more of what you love and be on time to your appointments? It's really common to have these limiting beliefs, and when they come up, I would say that most of them are addressable.

There are some limiting beliefs like, "I live on Earth, I have to live with gravity." Well, yeah, I guess that's a limiting belief too, but that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm talking about the things that, in your heart, you know you could do something about, but you just haven't been able to get there. That's really what working on challenging limiting beliefs is all about. And that is, in fact, part of the process. A big part of the process in terms of breaking through on these limiting beliefs is figuring out how to challenge them. How do you start questioning, "Is this true? Am I just telling myself stories? Where are these stories coming from? Why do I think this? What evidence is there that this belief is real?" And then beginning to work through those challenges and objections to be able to see what parts of them actually are true versus what parts of them are something that maybe, if you changed your thinking about something or changed your practices, you would find yourself in a very different state. Oftentimes, changing the frame—changing the way you are looking at something—can do an absolute ton to make a difference in terms of what you are trying to achieve. And sometimes, you can make these changes independently, on your own, and that's what I'm trying to drive with the free workshop or the free five-day challenge coming up. Sometimes, people need a little bit of extra support—someone to bounce things off of, someone to ask good questions, or someone to help with a subconscious approach like hypnotherapy.

So that's the general gist of it. I'm going to take a moment now and remind everyone that you are listening to Mind Power Meets Mystic. This is a solo episode with me, Michelle Walters, talking about limiting beliefs this week. My podcast pal, Cinthia Varkevisser, has the week off. We also wanted to remind you that we are running a very exciting contest.

Back in Episode 89, we talked about our new offering. Cinthia and I have teamed up in a new way to offer something to our clients, friends, and listeners. We are offering what we are calling Mind Power Meets Mystic: The Project. This project is a paid Zoom call with the two of us. You get on a Zoom call with both of us, and Cinthia will do an intuitive reading for the first half hour or so, answering your questions about what you want to bring more of into your life or less of. And I can tell you, I've known Cinthia for years—she is just an expert at this. So the first half hour is with Cinthia, and I just listen in the background. You'll know I'm there, but I usually go off camera and just sort of listen to how that conversation turns out. Then, in the second half of the call, Cinthia says goodbye and signs off. I usually ask a couple more questions and dive right into creating a special hypnotherapy session for our client, and I record that session so you get a copy of the Zoom call that you can rewatch. You'll also get a stripped-off MP3 that you can listen to at home afterward in order to repeat and continue to imagine and visualize success with whatever's going on with you. We are very excited to be offering this now to our friends and listeners. If you are interested, you can reach out to one of us immediately to sign up, or if you're not so sure about it but want to put your name in the hat, we have a contest going. So between now and Episode 111, we are asking people to give us ratings and reviews and to send them in via a little form that's in the show notes. For each entry, we will put you in the contest, and we're going to pick a winner on Episode 111. If you would like to get some extra entries in the contest, refer your friends—have them tell us that the review is from them because of you, and we will give you extra entries into our contest to win a free session of Mind Power Meets Mystic: The Project with me and Cinthia Varkevisser. So exciting!

Okay, a few more words on limiting beliefs. As I've seen them, limiting beliefs are best handled when we approach them from both a conscious and a subconscious level. I've seen a number of my clients where success really depended on having some new habits and being aware of doing things very differently. For example, one of the clients I had who came to me with time management problems—we realized that a big part of the problem wasn't that she didn't want to be on time or that she had any childhood trauma about this. The issue was that she needed better tools. She had calendars that were excessive and needed to be tidied up, and once those things could be put in place, boom! Time management problems went away, and her limiting belief of "I can't manage my time" resolved. It’s so fun to see my clients making progress like this.

I've also seen a number of clients who've come to me saying, "I'm afraid of [blank], so I can't [blank]." In those situations, sometimes it's more of a conscious issue, needing a logical approach, but sometimes it's something deeper, rooted in the subconscious. For example, I've seen this often with procrastinators—people who want to do something but just don't get it done. When you really dive into why, you might find that they get some kind of satisfaction from delaying, like the thrill of doing it quickly at the end. You have to look at each situation on a case-by-case basis to see what's going to be best for helping to get past it. But breaking through these limiting beliefs is so fantastic. I just thrill at being able to help people with them, and that is why I'm so excited to be doing this upcoming five-day free challenge on it in early September.

So I hope you have a better idea now of what a limiting belief is and how you would identify one. If you have one that you're trying to work through, please don't wait—sign up in the show notes today for my free five-day challenge. You can't go wrong. It's free, it's only five days, and in this program, there will be a daily video from me, a workbook that takes you step by step through all the different pieces you need to work through, and some support in terms of group hypnosis and a take-home MP3 for you to listen to. It's my hope that this limiting beliefs challenge can really get a lot of people going on how to set aside those limiting beliefs. Because, you know, if we all could do the things that are troubling us and standing in our way now, just think—just think of how much more exciting, fun, and fulfilling this Earth journey would be.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Mind Power Meets Mystic. We encourage you to please rate and review the show, send in your submissions so that you can be a contest winner—because somebody is going to win Mind Power Meets Mystic: The Project on Episode 111, and it could be you. Thank you for listening today, and be sure to join us next week. Bye-bye.