When we are very young we believe we can do anything. We can fly, dance, sing. We are a ninja, superman / woman, astronaut. There is virtually nothing that we believe that we are not able to do. Then shortly we begin to be influenced by others, society and the stories we tell ourselves.
These beliefs are created in many ways. Much of the time they are learned from others, but we create our own beliefs from our personal experiences. But the funny thing about them is that most of them are not true and the only reason we think they are true is because we have decided or agreed that they are true.
For children they may feel they are not old enough or big enough to make a difference. For adults they may feel they are not enough, do not have enough or do not deserve to have success. Our goal at Balanced Life Skills is to help every student to have the awareness that through determination we can accomplish whatever we set out to do. First we need to realize that many of our beliefs are influenced by what others say and we have decided to agree. Then if we choose to stop agreeing with beliefs that are limiting us and test out a new belief by taking actions toward our goal we will soon see that we are overcoming what was seen as a “limitation”.
The hard part now is that after making these decisions and taking a few steps – we must not give up – we must be determined to reach our goal. Putting limitations on ourselves is one of the most common ways of lowering the amount of happiness and joy we get out of life. If you just read this and thought to yourself that might be true of this, but it does not apply to me in this situation – you are limiting the amount of success you can have. Respect for ourselves begins with not limiting ourselves.
One final example: So many students we have had at Balanced Life Skills have come in lacking confidence in their ability to do physical acts, to perform skills, to learn to speak up or to jump rope as the kindergarten and first graders practice. Once they Think they can do it, Feel they can do it, then they just Go Do It!