The Creative Instinct

At the end of the previous post, Changing Your Creative Destiny – Understanding Personal Self Belief – I ended with the thought that your own personal reality was significantly affected by the way you thought about yourself and your world.

The part that concerned me most was the idea that negative (and usually inaccurate) perceptions about ourselves limited our potential for achievement and fulfilment. These negative perceptions are the so-called Self Limiting Beliefs.

Now, if the first step to liberation from your self limiting beliefs is accepting they exist and understanding the impact they can have, the second has to be identifying the darned things.

My Own Self Limiters

There are many useful ways of spotting your self limiting beliefs and I’ll look at some of the best in part 3 of this series. My intention was to address these methods now, but compiling them stirred up a lot of personal thoughts and memories, which I thought it might be useful to cover first (with the added bonus of clearing them from my head).

So here are some of my own self limiting beliefs – both past and present. They are, or have been relevant to both my creativity and wider life.

• Money is hard to come by (for me, but not necessarily for others)
• Success is for others
• I have to learn things ‘by the book’
• I’m a late starter
• I’m a slow starter
• Something will crop up to stop me being successful

Remember that I’ve dealt with most of these, but I’m definitely still working on the first!

A Bag Full of Positives

On the other hand I have a pretty healthy bag of positive beliefs, many of which are direct opposites of the self limiting beliefs I used to carry around. Here are just a few.

• I am imaginative and creative
• I am intelligent
• I am a good communicator
• I am tenacious and don’t give up easily
• I am a good husband, father, son, grandfather, uncle, brother
• I am a good and loyal friend
• I am a self starter

I guess that, like everyone, I’m something of a work in progress – and as we do progress in life, as we take on new challenges, there is always the chance that we will come up against previously unsuspected self limiting beliefs.

Impact on the Creative Instinct

Doing stuff that pushes your comfort zones will certainly reveal self doubt. For instance, although I have a clear vision for this blog, I also feel doubts about how successful I can actually make it. And I’d be kidding myself if I said that some self limiting beliefs didn’t play a part in those doubts. They do.

It is my (much stronger) positive beliefs that are shaping my blogging destiny, though that destiny is undoubtedly held back to some extent by the remaining self limiting beliefs that I still carry around (and which have been brought to my awareness by writing this series). I’m now working on them.

So what are the points that I’m making in stating all of this?

1. Don’t feel ashamed at having self limiting beliefs – we all do
2. Eliminating them is not a cut and dried process. Our beliefs are complex and intertwined. Solutions tend to be ongoing and cumulative
3. But you can change your self limiting beliefs – and often replace that belief with its powerful and positive opposite

Gradually Raising the Bar

One way that I’ve dispelled self limiting beliefs in the past (way before I knew anything about them) is by simply trying to do something anyhow – despite harbouring the thought that I’d probably fail or do poorly. Gradually, after unexpected but consistent successes I had no choice but to alter my self image and adjust my self limiting beliefs – at first making them less limiting and then transforming them into empowering positives.

For example, in my early thirties I resumed my very basic education (GCSE English). My original aim was to improve my written English enough to write and craft the stories I was making up for my children. I did much better than I believed I could. I raised the bar of my limiting belief to accommodate the next rung on the educational ladder (A levels) – but I didn’t believe I was capable of going further than that – even though I didn’t doubt that I was intelligent. Self limiting beliefs don’t have to make sense.

Then as I completed A levels it became glaringly obvious that I could do a university degree. However, it was far more obvious to others than to myself and I’m forever grateful to my tutors for the help and encouragement they gave me in recognising and accepting my abilities. I did my degree in English Studies, and an MA in Writing followed fairly quickly.

So going for something you don’t believe you can achieve can have profoundly positive effects, providing you do it in stages and are able to adjust as you progress.

Doing things as if you do believe it (even though you don’t) can make all the difference too. One example of this from sport is (Dame) Kelly Holmes who won Olympic golds in the 800 and 1500 metres in 2004. Much has been written about her lack of belief prior to the Olympics – and she didn’t enter the 1500 metres race until 48 hours before the event.

What she did do though, is work and train as if she believed it – with the determination that regardless of the outcome, she’d give it her best shot.

Blitzing the Belief First

Many self-help professionals argue that what I’ve described just isn’t possible – that you simply cannot achieve beyond your self limiting beliefs, and that the first step has to be changing the belief. In my soul I know that they are wrong, but only partially. There are clearly also times when you simply cannot achieve beyond your self limiting beliefs and have to deal with the belief first.

That’s because our minds can find ways of keeping us in line with our limiting beliefs, even if that means unconsciously self sabotaging our best efforts. I’m not sure what the difference is between ‘going for it’ without belief yet succeeding, and ‘going for it’ and self sabotaging – but self awareness certainly has a role. That’s why identifying your self limiting beliefs is so very important. In part 3 of this series I’ll look at some of the ways you can do that.

The Most Deadly Self Limiter of All

In the meantime – just keep these thoughts in your mind and get used to the ideas I’ve talked about. Because the self limiting belief that’s at the base of all the others and can stop you moving forward at all goes something like this:

• that you actually don’t have any self limiting beliefs
• that your perceived truths are actually unchangeable fact
• that you are what you are and that’s the way it’s got to be

Never accept that.

We are creative people and we can shape our creative destiny.

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See part 1 of this series:
Changing Your Creative Destiny – Understanding Personal Self Belief