How to Disempower our Limitting Beliefs Related to CEN
July 20, 2021
Click here to download worksheet
Hi everyone, this is Ludemia (aka, Mia), and welcome to Heart-Mind Equation.
This is Recommendation #3 of our CEN series, teaching you how to disempower your LB, related to your childhood emotional neglect.
I would invite you to go to my website heartmindequation.com to access the worksheets I have put in place to accompany you throughout this episode.
Once we have identified our LB related to our CEN, we can catch ourselves telling ourselves unfortunate stories. Since those beliefs are being reinforced by repetition, we suggest canceling our negative thoughts or change the narrative about our self-perception.
That process is called Cognitive Reframing. It’s a method based on psychological techniques ( from Neuro-Linguistic Programming ).
We can suggest a 5 steps process to disempower those limiting beliefs, that are born in reaction to the emotional neglect we have experienced growing up.
After we have recalled and acknowledged where our LBs come from, we need to:
- Demystify those limiting beliefs by dissociating ourselves from the thoughts related to them. It is to say that we get out of our heads and observe our thoughts – observe those LBs. This process is called metacognition. This is a way to become aware of what we are thinking, without engaging in the associated feelings. Indeed, we access those negative corresponding feelings only when we internalize the thought, not when we are only observing it. This process helps us detach from the experience. It helps us stay in the present moment.
- Imagination: Imagine the complete opposite beliefs from those negative thoughts. Write down those opposite beliefs if you can, or just verbalize them in your head, or under your breath.
For example, let’s say that at work, you feel like you are not getting the recognition you deserve for doing an amazing job. Your emotional need, at this point, would be: to be acknowledged, by your boss or coworkers. Consciously or unconsciously seeking that same validation that you were missing as a child ( if you have not healed yet from your CEN).
If your efforts or competence have not yet been validated at work, you might tend to believe that you are insignificant to the company.
The opposite belief, in that case, would be, to feel valued and important for the company. You need to talk to yourself, instead of letting yourself talk to you. Tell yourself how you positively contribute to the company’s growth and how you are an equally important coworker and employee. So imagine how an important employee-coworker would carry himself, how he or she would behave and even, feel about the company.
- Affirmations: It is not enough to remove negative thoughts or LBs about ourselves. As nature cannot sustain an empty space, we need to replace those beliefs, so they don’t creep back into our minds. We also need to change the negative emotions that our CEN has triggered, which led some of us to people-pleasing. We mean to change our limiting beliefs to positive ones, by writing down affirmations (using positive statements ). Let’s take, for example, 3 of my personal LB related to my CEN (those are the same LBs that I have shared with you in my previous episode).
Example of LB #1: My opinions don’t matter.
Change LB to:
Affirmation #1: My opinions are important and valued
Affirmation #2: Someone wants to hear what I have to say.
Example of LB #2: I am selfish if I think of myself first.
Change LB to:
Affirmation #3: I help people better when I take care of myself first.
Affirmation #4: I love myself to love others.
Example of LB #3: Making and keeping everyone happy is one of my responsibilities.
Change LB to:
Affirmation #5: I can contribute to someone’s happiness, without compromising mine.
Affirmation #6: I am responsible for my own happiness.
Generally, all affirmations must be expressed in the present tense.
- Visualization: It is the combination of steps 2 and 3 together. We use our imagination to visualize our affirmations. To embody the feeling with our 5 senses. While we are verbalizing our list of affirmations, we need to imagine and feel what we are saying. The embodiment of each emotion we feel or imagine gets printed in our brain of course, but also in every cell of our body. Indeed, we call it cellular memory, as our body has its own memory. It is to say that our intellect is to our conscious mind using our brain, and our emotions are to our subconscious mind, through our bodies.
Let’s say we make an affirmation that we don’t believe to be true yet, we need to say it with our eyes closed and imagine it as if it was true. When we keep our eyes closed during this process, we disconnect ourselves from the multiple stimulations around us to picture what we are saying and feeling. The power of directed imagination can make us feel a selected emotion (as our subconscious mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined).
Visualization can also be practiced with meditation. A moment in your day or your busy week, to be alone with yourself, in silence, away from the everyday world noises, to listen to yourself, to your intuitions, and God.
- Repetition is often used to change the subconscious mind, which we call the habitual mind. Need to read our affirmations every night when we are ready to fall asleep and every morning when we wake up, for 21 to 66 consecutive days. This allows our affirmations to be processed by the subconscious mind. You can even make a recording of your affirmation-list, using your own voice. It is the repetition of those positive thoughts or affirmations, that disempowers our LB.
I would suggest you check my Learning Self Love Podcast Series – Episode 4, where I explain how to change a negative thought to a positive one in much more detail.
You might have 2 major questions about this 5 steps process, especially regarding the affirmations. We can answer those 2 questions based on recent neuroscience researches.
Question #1 :
Why it is suggested to repeat our affirmations before bed or when we wake up, in the morning?
Answer:
It’s mainly because our brain waves change from beta to alpha and alpha to theta when we are already in bed, waiting to fall asleep. So, our brain activity slows down, to access the analytical mind, which separates the conscious mind from the subconscious mind.
This is the time where this door, the analytical mind, opens up, allowing the progressive shift, downloading things from our conscious mind to our subconscious mind. At that time, our subconscious mind is more receptive to suggestions, statements and, affirmations. The same process happens the other way around when we wake up in the morning.
When we print those affirmations in our subconscious mind, they become our TRUTH. Especially if we have strong emotions attached to them. Not only that our brain believes that new truth, but our whole body gets to believe it as well.
Question #2:
Why do we need to repeat those affirmations for 21 to 66 consecutive days?
Answer:
Because it takes a minimum of 21 to 66 consecutive days of repetition of an affirmation, to form a belief. Repetition also applies for behavior, to become a habit. The neurons of our brain stimulated by the affirmation or the new behavior wire together to form ‘’frozen circuits‘’ that can be activated on an auto-pilot mode. The possibility to change or wire new brain circuits is called neuroplasticity. That way, we have a New Self Conditioning.
To explore or dive deeper into this neuroscience topic, you can consult the Heart-Math Institute online, subscribe to John Assaraf Neuro-Gym YouTube channel, you can get a hold of Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Rewire Your Brain Program, or, access the online conference, called: From Chaos to Coherence hosted by Dr. Gregg Braden and Dr. Bruce Lipton.
In conclusion, here is a summary of the 5 steps:
- Observation of the thoughts (metacognition)
- Imagination (of opposite thought – Cognitive Reframing)
- Affirmation (positive statements)
- Visualization (of the affirmation using our imagination)
- Repetition (of affirmations with the associated emotion )
For some of us who have experienced CEN (childhood emotional neglect), we can relate to what the late author and philanthropist Maya Angelou said. I quote: ‘’We can forget what someone did or what someone said, but we never forget the way that someone made us feel.’’. And that’s why many of us still carry wounds from our CEN.
One way to help us heal those wounds, is indeed by changing those LB, to Empowering Beliefs. I know that this could be a long journey, but in the end, positive transformation is the reward.
Well, if this 5-steps recommendation was helpful to you in any way, feel free to like, share, comment, or subscribe, to get notified of each new episode.
In the next one, we will be focussing on Recommendation #4, which is: Addressing our Fears.
Until then, you can follow me on FB, Instagram, YouTube, or simply on my website: heartmindequation.com: To Unlock Hidden Potentials