''Our beliefs sometimes hold us back and prevent us from making decisions or succeeding in taking actions that benefit us. By challenging our limiting beliefs we draw them out into the open and weaken them. In this way, we can change them and become more confident in achieving our goals.''

Self-Talk Interrupt Cycle Exercise

One of the ways of changing a limiting belief and enhancing your success in future outcomes is to interrupt your negative self-talk cycle of beliefs by swapping the negative self-talk sentence with a positive self-talk sentence containing an opposing view. 

For example, if you had the limiting believe that, 'I’m unsure of myself and I don’t say much in meetings’, just decide that from now on your believe will be, ‘ I am good at saying what needs saying in meetings’. ‘The process’ below gives a step-by-step guide for doing this exercise. This exercise needs to be practised often to enhance the process of improving your self-image and success in future situations, such as participating well in meetings.  

The box below outlines some more examples of replacing old limiting beliefs with new positive beliefs: 

You are within a closed loop cycle (see diagram below), in which some of your limiting beliefs have taken your whole life to acquire and have affected your self-image and behaviour. To interrupt the cycle with your new beliefs may take some practice and so the new positive belief must be repeated continuously. This constant repetition will increase your confidence in succeeding in future events or situations.    

                                                                   SELF-TALK

           BEHAVIOUR           SELF-IMAGE  

‘The Process’ 

Choose your new positive sentence to replace the old negative sentence. Your new sentence should contain three essential components; make it personal by using the word ‘I’, make it in the present tense by using the word ‘am’ and include a positive action like, ‘ I am a great singer’. The new sentence doesn’t have to be true yet. 

Whenever you find yourself thinking the old belief say to yourself ‘Stop, delete that thought’!          You can even visualise a computer screen with these words appearing on it to assist the deletion process. Now repeat your new positive version to yourself.

At this point, create a mental image of yourself successfully carrying out the new positive behaviour to reinforce the whole process. 

Repeat this exercise continuously so that your new positive belief becomes firmly installed in your  thought processes. In this way, you will improve your confidence and success in future outcomes.