Unmasking limiting beliefs: how your brain holds you back

"You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.", James Allen

Neural pathways are how your brain processes information, and they form through your experience. The structure of the pathway is built from connection to past similar experiences through memory. Your brain chooses the well-worn path of past conclusions for ease in decision-making now. This is by design.

A well-worn path in nature is created by repeated travel toward a certain destination. The resulting path is a structure that directs you which way to go. Your brain operates the same way. Repeated negative thoughts create neural pathways that become structures of limiting beliefs, and those structures generate the avoidant, resistant behaviour that walks you toward an undesired destination.

Repetition becomes belief

What is a belief but a thought you think over and over. The thought becomes belief, strengthened by evidence found in your experience to support and confirm it. These pathways become webs of complex emotional structures, connected to a myriad of past experiences, and they determine which actions you take now.

These structures are not changed by the logical, linear, conscious brain. They are not permanently changed through psychiatry, traditional coaching, affirmations, meditation, psychology, hypnosis, personal development, plant medicine, NLP, EFT, IFS, Reiki, or psychedelics.

The unconscious moves first

The unconscious brain responds through the well-worn path of beliefs almost seven seconds faster than the conscious brain. The unconscious is designed to find the well-worn neural path with the least resistance, fast, to keep you safe.

The main job of the unconscious is survival, and that includes hiding any stressors, including the painful emotional experiences from significant emotional events (SEEs in neuroscience) during early brain development. They are now safely out of your current awareness, in the unconscious. The unconscious does not care what you want. It has to keep you alive and stop the painful feelings from those events from being felt again.

Past pain, present limits

Significant negative emotional events create powerful, lasting memory imprints. They act as chain and anchor on your boundaries, unconsciously limiting your current possibilities by spinning up protector and controller programs that keep you away from anything that might activate the original feeling.

Neuroscience has documented that the unconscious does not know the difference between past and present. The PRE-SENT is, quite literally, pre-sent information from the past. Painful memories of childhood criticism can lead to a fear of punishment or reprisal, and can result in failure to launch. Your unconscious program won't let you go anywhere near a similar experience that could trigger the old feeling. The perceived threat is read in the amygdala and activates fight, flight, or freeze.

How the programs run

The painful memories are stored in the unconscious awaiting processing in maturity, when you no longer need them to survive. These complex emotional structures become your operating programs. Programs are resistant to change, causing recurring cycles of reach and return, or strive and collapse back to the comfort zone of the familiar.

Fight: anger, hostility, defensiveness, excuses, criticism. Flight: ignore current reality, isolate, endlessly distract. Freeze: confusion, stalling, hiding, feeling stuck, repressed, depressed, anxious, pessimistic, cynical.

Confirmation bias: the echo chamber in your mind

Confirmation bias reinforces existing beliefs, both positive and negative. The brain seeks out evidence that confirms what's already there, strengthening the neural pathway for it to keep existing. If you've gathered enough evidence to know you can or to know you can't, either way, you're right.

Your soul believes you. Your limiting beliefs do their job and show you more of what they're tuned to. What you focus on expands. 'I'm not good enough', 'I'm a screw-up', 'I always get rejected', 'I'm not lovable', 'I'm always broke', 'I can't trust anybody', 'the world is dangerous, I'm not safe', on and on, holding you back, like being on a leash.

I am beliefs structure identity

A belief is just a thought you keep repeating, deepening that neural pathway. Another word for strong neural pathways is ingrained. Limiting beliefs become ingrained in self-perception, connecting to identity through 'I am' statements. 'I am not deserving of money, love, success' leads to decisions that avoid or resist the very activities that would create what you want, and that justifies the dossier of why you are always broke, failing, or lonely.

I am beliefs structure identity. Identity structures personality. Personality structures your current reality. To change the outcome, the structure has to change.

Why breaking free is hard

The brain naturally resists change. It prefers what it has already concluded it knows: familiar patterns. Limiting beliefs create a structure of operating in the world, even when detrimental, because the program was created for survival. Behaviour change requires brain change, and limiting belief structures must be rewired. They do not believe you can survive without them and they resist at first, until new evidence is gathered to support the new direction.

Neuroplasticity: rewiring

Proven neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change and rewire neural pathways, to create a new desired identity by clearing the I am limiting beliefs. Empower yourself to be the predominant creator of your life experience. Radical responsibility is required to take back control of your trajectory and transform your energy to be, do, and have the life you actually want.

Through the QSSM we work in the unconscious field directly. In each alchemy session you become more liberated, more available to experience life as the creative force you actually are. Creating an unlimited identity is yours for the asking. This is 5D quantum healing.