Create The Life You Want (Pt 2 of 3)

Uncovering & Overcoming What’s Holding You Back

What happens when, despite knowing what you want, you feel stuck—like something invisible is holding you back?

That “something” is often a mix of fear, limiting beliefs, and self-sabotaging patterns—many of which operate beneath the surface, controlling your decisions without you even realizing it. These fears create internal resistance, causing procrastination, self-doubt, and hesitation. The good news? These are just thought patterns, not truths.

Rewiring Your Mindset for Success

If your mind has been conditioned to expect struggle, doubt, or failure, it will resist change—even when change is exactly what you want. The key is learning how to shift from a mindset of limitation to one of possibility. Changing your thoughts isn’t just about replacing old ones with new ones—it requires ongoing awareness and practice.

Here are a couple of techniques to help you make this shift:

1. Observing Your Thoughts in Real Time

Throughout the day, start paying attention to the thoughts that arise, especially in moments of doubt, frustration, or hesitation.

Ask yourself:

• Where did this thought pattern come from?
• Is it based on fact or could it be just a habitual response?
• What would be a more empowering way to think in this moment?

By catching these limiting beliefs as they happen, you can actively interrupt the pattern and replace them with more supportive thoughts.

2. Understanding the ‘Cause and Effect’ of Your Thoughts

Our external world is a reflection of our internal beliefs. If we believe we are unworthy of success, we will subconsciously make choices that prevent us from being successful. For example, if we believe relationships always end in pain, we might sabotage intimacy without realizing it by avoiding developing close relationships.

Ask yourself:

• What recurring patterns exist in my life that I would like to change?
• What beliefs might be driving these negative patterns?
• What belief can I strengthen that aligns with the life I truly want?

This level of self-awareness will help you see the connection between how your inner world of beliefs shape your outer world. This new insight can help you to rewrite a new script that empowers you rather than holds you back from what you’re truly capable of.

Letting Go of Old Patterns

One of the biggest barriers to transformation is the attachment to old identity patterns. If you’ve spent years believing your not “good enough” or “capable enough,” letting go of that belief can feel unsettling.

But what if that version of you was never truly you to begin with?

Here are two ways to start letting go of old patterns that hold you back:

Question the Story You Tell Yourself

We all have internal narratives that shape our identity. For example, if you’ve always told yourself something like, “I’m just not a confident person” or “I never follow through on my goals”, challenge that narrative by questioning its validity. Doing so will begin to loosen its grip.

ACTION STEP:

Breaking Free: Explore where your disempowering thoughts came from by investigating and questioning their validity.

• Identify ONE recurring negative belief you hold about yourself (e.g., “I’m not good with money” or “I’ll never be in great shape”).
• Where did I first learn this belief? (Parents, past experiences, society?)
• Is this belief the absolute truth or something I adopted and reinforced over time? (Challenge it. Where’s the proof?)
• What would my life look like if I LET GO of this belief and replaced it with something supportive?

ACTION STEP:

Rewrite Your Beliefs: Last week, you wrote down your ideal life. Now, you are going to make a list of your new beliefs that support you to create the life you want. This list not only reflects who you are now choosing to be, but can also act to strenghten empowering beliefs within yourself. This is an especially powerful technique if you read them often with feeling and also use to replace their negative equivalent when you become aware of them.

Here are a few examples:

• I am a strong and capable person.
• I am intelligent and know that I can accomplish anything I set my mind to.
• Through my preserverance and abilty to seek out the help I need, it’s only a matter of time before I achieve my goals.

When you embody these new beliefs to the point where they become your truth, your actions will naturally align with your goals.

Summary & Takeaway:

Your beliefs shape your reality. The thought patterns you repeat daily are not just harmless words in your head—they are subconscious instructions that create your life one-day-at-a-time. By upgrading your instructions, you change the outcome.

Starting today, observe your thoughts, challenge limiting beliefs, and take one small step to disprove an old identity pattern.

In Part 3, we’ll dive into practical action steps to build momentum that will help you create lasting change.