Identifying Self-Limiting Beliefs

Years of self-limiting beliefs may be sabotaging you without your realizing it. These beliefs reveal themselves in patterns that keep coming up again and again in your life. For example, you attract the wrong kind of romantic partner: “I can't attract a good man because I always fall for losers just like my Aunt Milly.” Limiting beliefs are often so ingrained that they may seem to be at the heart of who you are, the very core of your being.

Self-limitingbeliefs hold you back from most personal and spiritual growth. You may harbor a fear of failure, a fear of never finding Mr. Right, or the fear of success. Perhaps you have engaged in self-sabotage, working hard to achieve something only to undermine your hard work with persistent, self-defeating inner criticism. Or perhaps you have always equated success with “no pain, no gain.” With the Law of Attraction, you can have success and abundance and you do not have to suffer to achieve it. You do have to recognize and release self-limiting beliefs.

If you feel stuck or trapped, set goals for various areas of your life — spiritual, health, family, work, personal. List specific reasons that keep you from reaching your goals, and include what has stopped you in the past. Know that you have the power to release even the most ingrained beliefs and turn them around into affirmations of unlimited potential.

FEAR IS A CHOICE....

Fear is a choice although it often doesn’t feel that way when we are experiencing it. It’s created by our thoughts. Some fears are necessary as they are anthropologically related to are ability to sense danger and react, but most fears are not related to real danger, but a created one
that stops us from achieving our full potential.

Sadly, often in our society we receive messages that support living in fear–just watch the news or the media in general. However, if you accept that FEAR IS A CHOICE, you will have control
of it rather than it having control of you.

Pay Close Attention For the Meaning of the Words....

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music, but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. - Peter Senge

Are you listening fully?

Barriers to Effective Communication

Barriers to Effective Communication

Knowing the barriers to effective communication is the first step in learning how to improve your communication skills. Although there are many kinds of barriers to communication, most are characterized by not being present to what's being said, or simply by not listening. So what is it that keeps people from listening and being present in a conversation? Here are some possible causes:

• Rehearsing what to say next - When you're too busy and too focused on preparing your response to what the other person is saying, you aren't being fully present to what's being said at precisely that moment.

• Being overemotional - Allowing defensiveness, fear, anger, love, disgust, or resentment to take control. Emotions are going to show up all the time, it's only when they overwhelm us that they become barriers to effective communication.

• Being distracted - by happenings in the environment: too noisy, too cold, too hot, etc. The more we pay attention to a distracting noise, the less attention we pay to the conversation at hand. It just takes practice to block distractions and remain focused on the conversation.

• Wearing a Mask - Pretending to be someone you are not. We go through life putting on masks to suit the needs of the moment. If we need to please someone, we put on our people pleaser mask. When we pretend that we are happy with everything other people are doing, we don't express anything that may be seen "not nice". We don't express ourselves freely, we fail to communicate.

• Having an agenda - When you have a hidden agenda it's unlikely you'll be able to stay focused on what the other person is saying. Most likely you'll be too busy thinking of how to convince them about something - or of ways to ask them for something, to be actually listening to what they're saying. You may argue that most people have an agenda, and you'd be right about that. One of the main reasons we communicate is to get something we want, either through control, manipulation or just influence. Having an agenda becomes a problem when you become too focused on fulfilling it; when you remain too attached to getting your way.

• Prejudging and Filtering -This consists of using our personal frame of reference to process any information we get. Our frame of reference consist of ideas, conclusions, experiences, preconceptions, values and beliefs that we have about life.

Actually, overcoming communication barriers is simpler than you think. Of all the barriers to effective communication, the one that causes the most problems is not paying attention. So, if you do nothing else to get rid of these barriers, do this: on an ongoing basis, take aside some time to do some mindfulness exercises. You will notice that you're going to start paying more attention to conversations, to people, and to life in general. This will go a long way towards helping you really connect with people.

As you overcome each and every one of these barriers to effective communication, you'll be able to enjoy closer and more authentic relationships with others in your life. You'll connect with people in ways you hadn't anticipated. But more importantly, you'll feel at ease in practically any situation, confident that you'll be able to handle it.

Effective communication helps you to avoid misunderstandings at work

If you can avoid misunderstandings, you will be able to know what others (your boss, your clients, or other people) are truly asking you or telling you.

If you can understand what others are saying, you will not come to the wrong conclusions or take the wrong actions about what you hear. You will make fewer unnecessary mistakes. By making fewer unnecessary mistakes, you will be more at peace, worry less about the consequences of your words and actions.

By worrying less about your words and actions, you will have more peace of mind, both at work and away from work. By having more peace of mind, you will lead a more satisfying life.

Improving Your Listening Skills

Listening skills are perhaps the most important communication skill one can acquire and master. By becoming a good listener, you open the door to good communication.
Before we delve into the subject of becoming a better listener, let’s answer a question that is usually asked. What's the difference between hearing and listening? To hear is to perceive with our ears the words that are being spoken. To listen is to pay attention with our other senses to help us understand the words being spoken.
We hear words with our auditory system and we listen to complete messages using our cognitive functions: attention, memory, thinking and reasoning. To become a better listener, the first step is to know what barriers stand in our way.
A person that knows how to listen is someone who enjoys the fruits of meaningful and close relationships with others. When you truly and actively listen to someone, you give that person a precious and sought after gift: attention. In turn, the speaker is more inclined to reciprocate with the gift of his /her attention.

What skills do you use?

Are you stockpiling your DREAMS?

Sam Grawe, Editor-in-Chief of Dwell Magazine says.

"Many of us stockpile dreams for years, cataloging and filing them away for later. Some of our heads are so full of them that it is hard to believe there is enough room for them all. If space does become a concern, one of the best places to store a dream is in reality. Once your dream has been realized, it is technically no longer your dream, but it may serve as inspiration for other peoples' dreams, in which case, it is still something of a dream. There is something of a dream in almost everything around us."

We ask: What dream are you tabling that you could be setting in motion? We have a responsibility not only to ourselves, but to the hopeful world of others, to set the example that a life of realized dreams is possible. What's holding you back from starting your journey? Start now. VC.