Limiting Beliefs

Hi. It is Andrew from the Foolish Couple. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving last weekend. For us, we didn’t actually had a turkey over the weekend. Minna and I went to Vancouver to visit our family during Thanksgiving. And since Canadians don’t celebrate Thanksgiving the same day that we do, well, we didn’t have our Thanksgiving dinner.

But we are thankful that our parents are always there for us and we are thankful that in general our family members are living quite well.

But, our Vancouver trips are always a little stressful trip for us. Let me explain.

Lately, we have been really focusing on confirmation bias, and how we can raise our awareness on confirmation bias and probably even to debunk it. Because, like everybody else, we also have our own confirmation bias.

So this week, our topic is about the limiting beliefs on your health situation, and the lies that you tell yourself through confirmation bias.

First of all, what are limiting beliefs? In a nutshell, limiting beliefs are the stories that you tell yourself that is preventing you from getting to your dreams and goals.

Limiting beliefs are lies  that you tell yourself;  you cannot achieve this and you cannot be that because you are too short, too long, too fat, too skinny, too rich, too poor, too old, too young, bad genes, bad parents, bad teachers, and bad schools.

And the list goes on and on and on. You tell yourself stories that you cannot be a basketball player because you are not 6 feet tall. You cannot find your soul mate because of how you look. You cannot be a boss because your parents are not very smart and you think you have that stupid gene also.

And if you tell me that you don’t have any self-limiting beliefs, well, I bet you do. You are just not aware of it. Anytime you use the phrase

I am too (fill in the blank) to be (fill in the blank with something good for you) – that’s your belief limiting you to go get that good thing.

Let me give you an example.

You have been feeling a little low on energy. You have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, you feel tired walking your dog, and you have no energy to play with your kids. And that is frustrating for you. You want to have more energy, more vibrancy, and more fun in life.

 But then you tell yourself, you are too old, too weak, and too busy to go and find that energy and vibrancy. You are too busy to work out. You are too old to go play sports. And the weather is too cold and rainy to walk outside. You are trapped in your own mind.

Or let’s go with another example. Your blood pressure is a little high, and you want to lose a little bit of weight. But you tell yourself that because you have diabetes, you can never lose weight and that it is causing your high blood pressure.

 Well, no wonder you have high blood pressure. All that negativity presses down on you, and you feel depressed, unsatisfied, unhappy, and underachieved. If your diabetes is keeping you from getting that dream body that you’ve always wanted, go do something about it. Diabetes does not have to be with you forever. You can ask any functional nutrition practitioner and they will tell you that you can absolutely, undoubtedly, reverse your health situation.

We came up with the 4 main factors that makes up your limiting limits on your health. 

The 4 factors are:

1. Genetics – Ever heard of people blaming their bad teeth, bad skin, bad hair, height, weight, or whatever because they have bad genes? Well, there you have it. They are blaming their parents and grandparents for their own problems. Use Minna as an example. She had eczema as soon as she was born and throughout her life, her mother told her that there’s nothing she could do because she got it from her grandfather. Well, guess what? She got rid of her eczema because she believe she can and she took massive action to get rid of it. Eczema never came back to haunt her. Her sister and nephew, well not so lucky.

2. Exercise – Many of us sits in an office chair 8 hours a day, and then we go home and sit on the couch for another 3 hours. That lack of movement will affect your health tremendously. Your body needs to move, your blood needs to circulate. Your body is never designed to sit for long periods of time. Just remember, sitting is the new smoking!

3. Mindset - Whether you have a positive or negative mindset will determine whether you are healthy or not. Without calling out anybody in particular. We know someone who is perpetually sick. One sneeze, one sniffle, and they believe that they have the flu. For some people, staying out in the cold for even just a minute and they would absolutely catch the cold. Look. Cold and flu are viruses. You don’t catch it just because your skin feels a little cold.

4. Nutrition – Nutrition is a big one because, according to many research and even the American Journal of Medical Association, almost every adult in the developed world cannot get their daily needed nutrition from their foods. We have talked a lot about how the nutrients in our foods has depleted and that is causing chronic health issues such as diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s and others. More and more autoimmune diseases are popping up because nowadays, we are eating food additives, preservatives, and roundup which stays inside our body and causes a lot of harm over the long run. So the lack of nutrition is probably the biggest factor that is affecting your health.

Back to our trip to Vancouver. Whenever we tell our friends we’re going to Vancouver, they always say ‘Oh what a beautiful city’ or something like that. But to us, it is a stressful trip.

It is stressful to us because although we dedicate our lives to educating and teaching so many of you on how to live a healthier life, we just cannot seem to get the message through to our families. It sucks to see your parents deteriorate every time we see them, and they just refuse to listen to other people’s opinion. In their minds, they are deteriorating because they are old. And that just drive us bonkers.

Age does not determine whether you are healthy or not. If you take care of your body, on a cellular level, if your cells are healthy and regenerating and staying alive, you will stay young and healthy.

But for many people, it is all about limiting beliefs and confirmation bias. Confirmation bias means that you find the answers that reinforces your beliefs. They may not be the right answers, but as long as they support your limiting beliefs they are true and right to you.

It pains me to see my older brother suffering from kidney damage. I have been making special trips to visit him and help him manage his problems and try to stop further damage. He didn’t understand why he has kidney damage and why it is happening to him.

 But if you look at his lifestyle, you can predict that he would eventually have kidney problems. He has been overweight for much of his life, he has high blood pressure and he has been diabetic for the past 20 years. So the big three, overweight, high blood pressure and diabetes over a long period of time equals disaster. 

 But to him, he believes that because his own mother was diabetic, that’s why he is also diabetic. And that his diabetes caused him to gain weight and raise his blood pressure. Putting the blame on bad genes is convenient, but also lazy. For the past 20 years, he chose to take diabetes medication rather than changing his lifestyle. And because of his limiting beliefs, this inflammation, this stress to his body over 20 years has caused damage to his kidneys.

 Some people make drastic changes when they face death. For my brother, because he is afraid of going to dialysis, he actually made some lifestyle changes and that has helped him lose some weight and lowered his blood glucose, essentially helping with his diabetes.

 But after seeing the specialist who prescribed him a new drug, he is back to his old habits. He doesn’t believe that his kidney problems can be cured. Instead, preventing further damage seems to be enough for him. He is back to the belief to accept life that was dealt to him and that he will live the rest of his life that way. 

For Minna, watching her mother wither away to almost nothing is difficult. She blamed her immobility on a hip replacement which she got a couple of years ago. And to be honest, we saw that her mobility actually got better after the hip replacement. But she is also showing early signs of Alzheimer’s and for that, she blames, again, her father, Minna’s grandfather who had Alzheimer’s for many years before he passed away. It is extremely common for people to blame their health problems on genetics. But now we know more. Now we know that many of our brain issues, including Alzheimer’s, is directly related to gut issues. The gut brain relation is now widely studied and more and more research is coming up to support the theory that your gut health directly affects your brain health. So we know that her Alzheimer’s is due to her gut issues and her lack of nutrition and exercise. But she won’t get better unless she believes that also.

But for you who is watching this. We know that you are special. The fact is, 95% of the people will find something to blame for their problems. But not you. You are that elite 5% who strive to live a good life and live life to the fullest.

So our message to you is this. Remember that genetics only account for 20% of your health problems. The other 80% is all about nutrition and lifestyle.

Focus on an active lifestyle which includes strength training exercises, optimal nutrition, positive mindset, and restorative exercises and meditations. Get a lot of good quality sleep and stay hydrated. Control only the controllable and forget the rest.

Because limiting beliefs will cripple you. When I was 18, after my car accident, my orthopedic specialist told me that when I turn 30, I will be as feeble as a 70 year old man. If I had believed him, I wouldn’t be living my life as happily and fulfilled as I am now.

We know that you are looking for more information, more guidance on living a healthy, good life. So we are working on creating 2 new courses that will be provided to you, free of charge. As a Christmas present to you all.

 These 2 courses, “Dymystifying Fats” and “The truth about sugars”, will help you manage these Diabetes and Alzheimers and other chronic diseases and in some cases even reverse the symptoms.

Till Next time, Love what you live and Live what you love!

We believe that healthy relationships start with health and we help couples achieve total success in health and in relationships through nutrition, exercise, mindset and lifestyle. If you know someone who can benefit from this blog, share with them. Let them know that you care about them. And of course, leave us any comments below. We love to hear from you.

PS: Our ebook ‘Gut Matters’ goes deeper into the issue of our gut and the action steps that we can take to repair our gut and bring our bodies back to an optimal, healthy state.

This ebook is free for you to download and all you have to do is follow the link below and we will send you a copy.

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