How to Help Clients Let Go of Their Limiting Beliefs
Everyone holds limiting beliefs, and whether your coaching client knows it or not, the liming beliefs that they hold can actually limit their success and ability to live a full and happy life. Many of these limiting beliefs are formed in childhood and are based on what they’ve been told about themselves and the world in general.
If your client finds that there are specific areas in their life in which they aren’t getting what they want, it may be because of their limiting beliefs.
Limiting beliefs are a common challenge that coaching clients have when trying to reach goals. It prevents them from seeing opportunities in order to attain success. It is what they’ve been told their entire life and it shapes everything they do.
To help your coaching clients they must first be able to identify the belief before they can let it go.
Here are a few basic steps you can use to help your coaching client today.
1. Write Down the Limiting Belief
Your client will have to play detective to follow their thoughts and emotions to discover their limiting beliefs. In the coaching session, have them write the beliefs down on a piece of paper and analyze them. Have them spend some time noting how strong each of the beliefs are and what emotions they elicit from them.
As a coaching assignment, they should start journaling. They will need to find time every day to sit down and write about their current situation. Then they need to think about how they got to “this point.”
Journaling will help them discover their limiting beliefs, which is the first step to overcoming them.
2. Acknowledge They are Beliefs and Not Truths
Acknowledging that these are beliefs and not truths is the hardest step in letting them go. The beliefs your client held their entire life, seem real. It is fundamental for them to understand they are not set truths. Your client has the choice to either continue to defend these limitations or let them go so they can begin reaching their goals.
3. Consider Different Beliefs
Have your client use their imagination. They can consider different beliefs that are more in line with what they truly want out of their life. It might be something like, “Now that I’ve been in an unhealthy relationship, I now know what to look for in a loving and happy partner.” The trick to making this work is going beyond merely saying it. They have to be able to feel how this new belief feels. When they can do this, the first two steps will go a long way to dismantling their current limiting beliefs.
4. Take Different Actions
Doing things differently can be a little bit scary, but in order to release old beliefs that have been limiting your client’s potential, they have to act as if this new belief is true. If they avoid taking any steps toward their new belief, they will merely be feeding their old limiting belief and will continue to fail to reach the goals they set. Making even the smallest step will help to solidify their new beliefs and destroy the old limiting ones.
If your client allows limited beliefs to continue to dominate their life it will only continue in their disappointment in not being able to reach the goals they set for themselves. Following these steps will allow you to help your coaching client to begin thinking in a different, more productive way and eliminating the self-limiting beliefs that have always held them back.
In our Transformational Coach Training program , we go in depth on Mindset Coaching plus you get access to additional techniques and tools you can use with your clients. To learn more visit any one of our Transformational Coach Training program to learn more.