You have to speak in public and you feel incapable, your hands sweat and you have tachycardia, you keep repeating that you will not be able, that you will be blank.
As much as you tell yourself that you have it well prepared, the feeling of failure is still there. There is an internal voice that is telling you over and over again that it is going to go wrong, that you will make a fool of yourself, that they will laugh at you ... does it sound familiar? Has something similar ever happened to you?
In these cases, we are before our limiting beliefs which are interpretations or perceptions about ourselves or reality that condition us, preventing us from achieving our goals, growing as people and being happy.
In most cases, we are not aware of our own limiting beliefs and how they affect us, even self-sabotaging.
I remember the case of a person who was very prepared, had a bachelor's and a master's degree and passed all the personnel selection processes until he reached the personal interview. Over and over again he was stuck and couldn't get the job.
When he decided to start a coaching process, it became clear that he did not feel capable of expressing and defending his opinions, felt inferior and insecure in dealing with people.
As a child he was very shy, his classmates laughed at him at school and his father told him that being so shy, he would never become anyone in life. He had grown up with an image of himself as a shy and insecure person and with the limiting belief that he could not aspire to a brilliant professional career and good personal relationships.
And the list could go on and on, there are countless limiting beliefs that we have internalized and that are part of our mental patterns..
Therefore, if our mind believes that it cannot do it, that it is not capable or that it does not deserve to be happy, it predisposes us to it and we sabotage ourselves.
Therefore, what we feared so much would happen, will happen, which will confirm our limiting belief, giving it more power and keeping us in a vicious cycle of helplessness, frustration, dissatisfaction and victimhood. This is closely related to the Pygmalion effect also known as self-fulfilling prophecy..
This mental pattern is what Eric Berne, founder of Transactional Analysis, calls life scripts. Berne claims that what happens to a person, the decisions they make and the roles they play have their origin in their life script that originates from childhood.
Since we are little we receive a series of messages from our parents, relatives, teachers, about ourselves, others and the world around us that help us form an opinion both of ourselves and of society.
As we receive messages from our earliest childhood, this mind programming is unconscious and it determines the role we adopt in our lives and in relationships (transactions) with the people around us.
People are born princes and princesses until their parents turn them into frogs. (Eric Berne)
With this phrase, Berne wants to illustrate how a wrong programming of the mind leads us to personal failure while limiting beliefs prevent a person from developing their full potential and living a full and happy life.
Let's take an example, if a child grows up with typical messages; "You are a disaster", "you will not achieve anything in life", "no matter how hard you try, you will not achieve anything", incorporate limiting beliefs about himself that will lead him to adopt a life script of not successful.
Generally, limiting beliefs are not formed by direct messages but are also have their origin in the attitudes that we see our parents adopt towards life.
If we grow up in a depressive environment with parents afraid of the future, who do not risk to pursue their ideals, who always complain about their bad luck, who blame their problems on the economic crisis, politics, globalization and they see money as dirty, we will be adults who hardly believe in our ability to progress and to undertake.
We will settle for a mediocre job because we will think that we cannot aspire to more because we have limiting beliefs that keep us on a life script of mediocrity.
Therefore, limiting beliefs have their origin in our childhood, in the mental programming that we have been building through the messages we have received and the transactions we have had with our parents and reference adults..
Eric Berne affirms that mental programming and life scripts condition our lives but they are not necessarily deterministic, because if we become aware of our limiting beliefs, we can redefine our life script and reprogram our mind with captivating beliefs.
Coaching helps you to be aware of your limiting beliefs and to realize how this mental programming is conditioning your life, your success and your happiness because it keeps you in a life script of non-achiever,
From this awareness, coaching gives you tools to redecide your life script, inviting you to reflect on what you really want for yourself and for your life and enhancing your self-esteem and your autonomy.
Only from there, you can review your limiting beliefs and change them for others that enable you and allow you to develop your true talents and skills to lead the life you have always wanted..
The key to both personal and professional success is develop our full potential and not lead life and have the work that others have decided for us, only then will we be happy and feel comfortable with ourselves.
Limiting beliefs condition you but they are not deterministic. Changing them only depends on you, on your decision to want to reprogram your mind and bet on you.
In this sense, the Transactional Coaching has as a philosophical principle that everyone has great potential and has the ability to change their destiny.
Therefore, if you want to end a non-achiever life script, if you want to stop living the life that others have programmed for you, you just have to make a decision to change and start writing your own life script.
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