THE UNINTENDED CREATION OF LIMITING BELIEFS

As a child, you may have been given many warnings by your parents and caretakers such as, “don’t touch that pot of boiling water, you will get burnt!”  Or,” don’t talk back to your parents, that’s disrespectful!”  Or, “You are getting too fat no one is going to be attracted to you!” and so on. So many of us have heard warnings and comments like these more.

            A parent’s role is to guide you, provide for you, teach you, make you feel safe and loved. When you become a parent, you are not given a hand book.  Ordinarily, as a parent, you trust that you are doing the best for your kid and hope you don’t mess them up.  However, sometimes it happens and do end up messing them up.  It’s a harsh reality of life, but must it always be so? 

            You see I have learned as a parent that words are truly powerful and that we need to be mindful of them when we release them to the universe.  Our children are always listening.  However, comments which may seem ordinary to a parent may create limiting beliefs that may take 40 plus years to replace with enabling beliefs. One needs to remember that children are terrible interpreters.  When a child hears “you are too fat”, they hear that I won’t be loved because I am fat or the child may grow up with body image issues and walk in life feeling ashamed, unhealthy and unloved. 

            Instead of creating limiting beliefs in a child, lets switch them to enabling beliefs.  Change the conversation to one that empowers your child and creates a healthy kid that doesn’t have to suffer years of shame.