And God said, Love your enemies, & I obeyed Him & loved myself. -Khalil Gibran

We all want to be successful in our lives. Of course, no one likes to fail. But, in this process, we become our own enemies. How? Because we lose the vision of the best abilities we have within. We start comparing with what others have. And we feel we are blessed with nothing.

This is what truly makes us losers and failures. The real success is in identifying and using our potential to the maximum level possible. But yet there are times when we are unable to move beyond certain thoughts and beliefs. Why does this happen?

Our DNA is a sum total of all the experiences our ancestors went through. There may be times when they succeeded with flying colours, and there may be times when their hard work did not pay off. If the DNA has a lot of beliefs like:

No matter how hard we work, success does not come easily.

Success comes to those who are rich and wealthy.

Failure runs in our family.

I am my biggest enemy; hence I always make wrong choices.

These are just a few examples of limiting beliefs which do not allow people to move forward in their lives. They act as a barrier to make better choices in life and allow themselves to flourish and thrive.

How do we understand if we have such limiting beliefs and thoughts?

1. Gathering Information from the Family

One of the ways of identifying limiting beliefs and thoughts can be listening to your elders and gathering their beliefs and thoughts on success and failure, on winning and losing.

You may hear your grandparents telling you their own stories of how they struggled in life or perhaps how easy was life in their days. Sometimes, you may even get to hear the stories of your great grandparents on their struggles, or how they were cheated.

And yet another times, you may listen to your parents passing on their own life stories as well as of their parents and grandparents. This will help you identify patterns running in the family.

For example, I remember a client of mine telling me that her parents always complained about their childhood struggles when their parents also ran pillar to post just to meet the ends meet. And likewise, her paternal grandfather always complained of working so hard and yet unable to get the desired results. She observed that there was a constant pattern of struggling and the same reflected in her life too.

2. Reflecting on your own Life

Another way of identifying limiting thoughts and beliefs is reflecting your own speech. Meaning, reflecting on whether you speak the same limiting statements just like your parents or grandparents. This will help you see if you’re repeating them in your life too. Writing a journal and noting your daily thoughts and beliefs can help you in this reflection work.

Another important element to be noticed is that there are people in your Family System content enough with their achievements. Or do they have an attitude of being a constant critic and looking at themselves being least blessed?

There are times when achievements and success is present in the DNA, but often overlooked. This is the time when you can make a conscious choice of celebrating each achievement in your life. And change the pattern towards appreciating success. Patterns can be changed, when they are identified.

Small acts of making a conscious choice to change can bring about a revolution in your own DNA. To change the pattern, you need to be the change. Someone needs to start digging deeper in life.