LegendaryLife Blog

Fear puts far too many people into a prison of their own making.

Fear and doubt have no place in my heart and they shouldn’t have a voice in yours neither!

Negative, self-limiting vocabulary

Few things astonish me as much as the number of people “out there” who try to find every reason they can come-up with to limit the joy and challenges they can experience in their one and only life. I can easily suggest that negative, self-limiting vocabulary is an epidemic around the world that is at its worse in developed countries which, to be honest, have the least to complain about. Words such as “I can’t”, “I shouldn’t” and “I’m scares” (and it goes on) should be banned from the minds of people, they would be so much happier for it!

Where do these thoughts come from?

Although some of these limiting words come from within, I have concluded that most of it is generated my media itself. Sadly, this has ruined far too many people, especially females who are told, constantly, on a daily basis that they are not desirable if they don’t have XYZ product, wear XYZ cloths or have XYZ on their face / bodies. Just look at your average magazine and you will see page after page after page degrading women for being too fat, ugly, wrinkled etc… and of course, the solution is the purchase of some useless trinket that will make everything OK again.

Why do we limit ourselves?

This is an incredible world that would take several lifetimes to explore, yet, with the advances that come with the modern lifestyle, few people take advantage of this! So, why do people, on purpose, limit what they can see, experience, taste and hear? The simple reason is FEAR. Fear of the unknown, fear of being stunned, fear of being killed, fear of being poisoned… basically, there are always more reasons NOT to do something than otherwise. I believe it’s in our human nature to explore and experience the world around us, if it wasn’t, we would all still be living in mud houses in Africa and never would have ventured past the Sahara desert those tens of thousands of years ago. It isn’t in our nature to stay in a little cocoon of safety but we have been taught to do this as we replace our emotional comforts with material ones. To put it bluntly, it’s too difficult for most people to leave what they have “accumulated” for any significant period of time as they have invested in things instead of themselves.

So what is the solution?

I have found the solution a long time ago, essentially ignore ALL media that is negative in any way. This is rather easy once you get the hang of it. For instance, I rarely read magazines and when I do, if there is something that is trying to sell me something I don’t “need”, I tune right-out. You do this daily already, how many TV commercials do you remember that you have watched today? I bet you can’t list more than a dozen and that was more due to repetition than impact. Another thing I do is watch NO TV. I get my news online, tunning out advertising is incredibly easy online. I get my video podcasts which have the added benefit of not having any commercials though my iTunes and even better, I am so busy working on my own businesses that I have little time to waste “vegging-out”. Throw-in a tough workout regimen to build-up self-esteem while burning off stress and life really can’t get any better. I am a firm believer that every year or two, you need to make some fundamental changes in your life to keep things interesting.

The Bottom Line

The link between self-esteem and limiting thoughts is a very powerful one that needs daily attention.