Mindset Minisode – Self-Limiting Beliefs

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What Are Mindset Minisodes?

I’ve been hosting the Phoenix Helix Podcast for over 8 years, and there are now over 200 episodes in the archives! The long-form interviews you know and love will continue every 4 weeks. In between, I’ll be sharing short episodes inspired by my book: Healing Mindset – A Guide to the Mind-Body Connection for People With Autoimmune Disease. Stress is a powerful trigger of inflammation and autoimmune activity, and most of us have experienced stress-induced autoimmune flares. That’s the power of the mind-body connection working against us. However, we can also make the mind-body connection work for us! Simple techniques can help us relieve stress and send an anti-inflammatory cascade through our bodies instead. That’s my goal with these episodes. In each one, I’ll teach a simple technique you can start using right away.

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What Are Self-Limiting Beliefs?

When our mind convinces us something is impossible before we’ve even tried, that’s a self-limiting belief. It’s common for autoimmune disease to trigger them. Googling your diagnosis can lead to scary visions of the future. Symptoms can dramatically change our lives, taking away activities we used to love. With the flare-based, unpredictable nature of autoimmunity, life becomes more uncertain, and it’s hard to make peace with that. The brain feels safer with certainty, so when it’s possible you might fail, your brain may convince you not to try. Hope starts to feel dangerous.

The problem is that this keeps your life smaller than it needs to be, not only cutting you off from failure but also success. We don’t need perfect health to live a fuller life. We can expand our skills, activities, accomplishments, and relationships, and we can start with small steps. We may not be able to do everything, but we can do some things. The key to overcoming self-limiting beliefs is to focus on progress and possibilities, not perfection. Life isn’t an all-or-nothing game.

Technique: I Can’t, I Can, I Can Try

  1. Without editing yourself or judging yourself, very quickly make a list of things that follow the phrase, “I can’t….”
  2. When the list is complete, go back through those and challenge each belief. Is there proof that’s true? Is there a small way you can do something in that category? If your mind is still telling you that everything is impossible, ask an encouraging friend to look at the list as well and see what they think.
  3. Finish by writing a list of things that follow the phrase, “I can….” And it’s okay to include things on the list that begin with, “I can try….”

My Book: Healing Mindset

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