Where Your Beliefs Come From and How They Can Hold You Back From Your Health and Wellness Goals

The way you think will have a direct link to the lifestyle you lead, whether it’s a sedentary one, or one that’s focused around healthy habits. Your thoughts are linked to your actions, behaviors and overall lifestyle. 

Taking a step back, your thoughts are closely linked to your beliefs. Understanding your beliefs, where they come from, and how to change them can have a profound impact on your health and wellness outcomes.

What are beliefs?

You beliefs are quite simply the things you believe. In terms of your health and wellness, you might believe such things as:

“Everyone in my family is overweight, so I’ll always be overweight”

“I’m no good at sport or fitness classes”

Your beliefs are a result of everything you have seen, read, heard and experienced right from a very young age. Over time, they can become more ingrained in your psyche. They are formed as a result of actual and virtual references. Actual references are things that have happened to you, or you have experienced first-hand. Virtual references are things that others have told you or things you might have read about or seen on TV.

For example, if we take the first belief above

“Everyone in my family is overweight, so I’ll always be overweight”

This belief could have been formed from actual references such as unsuccessfully trying a number of diets and virtual references such as hearing family members saying they’re tried everything to lose weight but can’t.

How your beliefs affect your health and wellness 

If you believe that you’ll always be overweight, you may be less likely to actively work towards long term weight loss solutions. If you believe that you’re no good at sport or fitness classes, this is likely to drastically reduce the fitness options that you allow yourself to participate in.

These types of beliefs are known as ‘limiting beliefs’ because they can hold you back from taking action. Therefore they can affect your ability to achieve optimal health and fitness.

Start forming new beliefs

The first step towards changing your beliefs is to understand what limiting beliefs you currently hold about your health and fitness. It’s likely that you’ll also have some positive and empowering beliefs about health and fitness. For example “making healthy food choices provides me with energy and helps me to stay healthy”. Hold on to these positive beliefs and instead work on the ones that are holding you back.

Once you know what your limiting beliefs are, try to understand where they have come from. If you believe you’re no good at sport or fitness classes that belief could have been formed from a variety of actual and virtual references. Maybe you always got picked last for teams at school and the other kids told you that you were no good at sport. 

These sorts of beliefs can take a bit of care and attention to turn around. You need to start forming new beliefs by creating some new ‘actual’ and ‘virtual’ references. For example, create new ‘actual’ references by joining a complete beginner’s sport or fitness activity that you have always wanted to try. Make sure the instructor is positive and encouraging and that the class is the right level for you. The positive experience will help you to change your belief that you are no good at sport or fitness. Slowly but surely you’ll open up more opportunities to take the next steps towards your goals.