How to deal with resistance to acknowledging limiting beliefs

Madame CJ Walker created a beauty empire in the early 1900’s that made her the first female self-made millionaire in the US. She started from humble beginnings as the first free born child of parents that had been slaves until the end of the US Civil War. As a young woman, she lost her hair due to a scalp disorder. To fix this, she tried everything available. Eventually, she cured herself with a treatment that got to the root of the problem.

But when she tried selling her products, she at first met a bit of resistance

No one knew who she was or if her product would work for them. To get through this resistance, she organized events in which she demonstrated that she could solve women’s hair problems. When you work with clients, or even try helping yourself, you may run up against resistance to acknowledging limiting beliefs. If you try fighting it head on, you’ll run into trouble. Instead you’ll get more success by demonstrating your case with the following three ideas.

A: Disagreement with beliefs

B: Skipping a belief

C: Awareness blocking beliefs

A: Disagreement with beliefs

Maria said “I don’t have that belief either” this was the third belief she said she didn’t have. She was driven by perfectionism but beliefs such as “I’m not good enough” and “I’m not important” that perfectionists usually have didn’t seem true to her. When this happens, it’s often useful to explain to a client that you can disagree with a belief that you have.

Have the client say the words of the belief out loud and notice how it feels

They will often have some uncomfortable feelings. Then say “We know the belief isn’t really the truth but does it feel true at all on any level?” Often the client will be able to notice that the belief is in fact there.

B: But sometimes you need to skip to another belief

One facilitator had a client named Gerry who wanted to handle his fear of public speaking. This facilitator thought the client had the belief “Mistakes and failure are bad” and when he disagreed she spent much of the session trying to convince him that he did. He was understandably upset by this and decided not to work with her after that.

He did acknowledge other beliefs so in this case it would have been useful to skip that belief and work on the others he did acknowledge

We don’t need a client to acknowledge every belief they might have in the first session. And after eliminating a few beliefs the client may be open to looking at others later. This leads us to another barrier to noticing beliefs.

C: Uncovering awareness blocking beliefs

Maria, whom I mentioned earlier, was not able to acknowledge any of the beliefs that I suggested to her. So I started looking for beliefs that would keep her from getting in touch with her beliefs. So I asked her if she believed “If people know something bad about me, I’ll be rejected.” She said yes. Once we eliminated that belief, she was able to acknowledge the other beliefs and stopped being driven by perfectionism.

But isn’t it possible that some people don’t have any negative beliefs?

Maybe. If you meet a person who doesn’t have any unwanted feelings or behaviors, then you may have found the person whose mind has no limiting beliefs. I’ve certainly met some pretty incredible people who were happy most of the time but when I got to know them, they would share with me their personal struggles. I’ve yet to meet anyone who didn’t have at least a few limiting beliefs.

So to sum up, we’ve covered three points to keep in mind when it’s hard to get in touch with a limiting belief

First, there’s the idea that we can disagree with a belief that we’ve formed. Second, you can skip beliefs that a person is not in touch with and work on them later. Third, you can look for beliefs that block the awareness of limiting beliefs.

Resistance to acknowledging limiting beliefs can be overcome but not by using blunt force

You do it the way Madame CJ Walker did, you demonstrate, you persuade, you discover what’s in the way and address that. When you do that, you’ll make it real to your clients that they have a belief and they’ll be willing to let you transform their lives through the Lefkoe Belief Process.

Next steps

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