Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds. Franklin Roosevelt.

The Prison of Limiting Beliefs. Do you have limiting beliefs that are not serving you well? You know thoughts such as I cant / Im not worthy / Nothing ever works out for me. Any thought that feels bad when you think it disempowers you and blocks the natural flow of Well-Being that would otherwise be yours.

Your life experience is limited or expanded by the boundaries of your beliefs. Its not important or even helpful to try to figure out where your beliefs came from. Whats important now is to make sure that your beliefs are contributing to your happiness rather than undermining it. As you uncover limiting beliefs, you are then able to let them go and choose thoughts that empower and embolden you.

Learning from Elephants. Are you familiar with the way a circus elephant is trained? When an elephant is small and weak, one leg is tied with a rope to a wooden stake. Initially the elephant tries to break free but the rope is too strong and she is convinced that breaking free is impossible. Years later, when the baby elephant has grown to six or seven tons, despite her enormous strength, she is still easily constrained by a light rope and a thin wooden stake. The elephant learns her limitations when she is small and weak and remains convinced for the rest of her life that what was once true will always be true. She remains imprisoned by her limiting beliefs when clearly she has the strength to pull that puny stake out of the ground and free herself at any moment.

Lets think about that. In what ways are we like big powerful elephants who are convinced we are weak and powerless who are convinced we cant? The truth is that we possess absolutely infinite power but we sometimes allow ourselves to be limited by believing that we cant. This is never true. The power of the entire Universe is inherent in our lives. We can do whatever we believe we can do. It is never necessary for us to lose, settle, limit our desires, give up, or suffer. When we know we can do anything, we reclaim our power, we take back our lives, and life becomes an indescribable joy.

Learning from Fish. Experiments with fish are also enlightening. In an aquarium where fish have been allowed to swim freely throughout a tank, a transparent glass partition is erected to keep the fish on one side of the tank. After bumping into the partition for a while, they give up, and this failure leads them to conclude that it is now impossible to swim on the other side of the tank. Later, when the partition is removed, the fish will still only swim to the edge where the partition had been. They will not cross that imaginary line, that perceived boundary. Limited by their belief that they are trapped, they only swim in the half in which they have been conditioned to swim.

Learning from Bumblebees. If you have believed that life is about limitations, lack, and struggle, if you have been persuaded by others that life is hard and you cant really have what you want, if youve been taught to settle for less than you really want, consider the bumblebee. Physicists have proven that its aerodynamically impossible for bumblebees to fly. Fortunately, bumblebees remain unconvinced and continue to be happy little flyers.

Like the elephant, the fish and the bumblebee, we continue to prove our belief that we can or that we cant. So, make a promise to yourself right now that you wont let any one, any time, any where convince you that you cant. Escape the prison of limiting beliefs by realizing your strength, pushing through perceived limitations, and taking freely to the skies!