[Book Review] “The Unlimited Self: Destroy Limiting Beliefs, Uncover Inner Greatness, and Live the Good Life”
Do have your own limiting beliefs?
Or perhaps you struggle with an area of your life and not sure why you just can’t seem to move forward? Limiting beliefs could be what’s standing in your way…
One of the biggest challenges many people face when creating their best life is their own set of limiting beliefs.
While we can have hopes and dreams, and try to create a wonderful life for ourselves, our limiting beliefs can stand in the way of our greatness. They can set the ceiling and hold us back from truly expanding.
I’ve had my own personal journey with limiting beliefs, and have spent much time working through them. And it can be a tricky process – to dig deep and identify them. And then, find a way to reframe them and create a new and more abundant way of being.
Finding this book – “The Unlimited Self: Destroy Limiting Beliefs, Uncover Inner Greatness, and Live the Good Life” by Jonathan Heston was instrumental in helping me move forward.
This book is jampacked with useful and inspiring information to implement into your life. As well as many extra bonuses.
And while I could write an endless list of insights and AHA moments, here are some of the gems that I took away from reading this life-changing book. Also included, at the bottom of this post, is a gallery of pix to give you even more inspiration to buy this book 🙂
This limiting beliefs book review contains Affiliate Links, which means I may get a small commission when you purchase a product. Please note: There is no extra cost for you, and, I only recommend products a genuinely approve and love.
It’s the inner work that makes the biggest difference
I’ve been deeply passionate about self-improvement and living my best life for a long time. And when I think back, my journey started with the external stuff – the food I was eating, or the amount of exercise I was doing, or the job I had. Now, in recent years, it’s turned inward.
This book reinforces the importance of doing the inner work. Because it truly does have the power to change everything.
Your outer world is often a reflection of your inner world. And once you start really working on your inner world, you’ll experience this firsthand.
A great place to start is by taking the dive into this book. It takes you on a journey of self-discovery and really makes you think about your life journey and the belief systems you carry around with you. And, when you consider the logical chain reaction called TFAR – thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions lead to results – you start to realise how your thoughts and beliefs have a massive impact on your life and the choices you make.
And so, I encourage you to do the inner work. From there, the outer experience will come.
We are not our thoughts
I loved the first chapter of the book. It made me realise that I am not the thoughts that pop into my mind. When a thought pops up in my mind, I can choose if I want to believe it or not. This was a game-changer.
We collect thoughts along the way, from the time we come into this world. We start to think they’re true and are a part of our identity. For example, something I’d often think is “I have low self-esteem”. This was something I just thought for years and took at as a truthful extension of who I was. This book made me realise that I can choose whether to believe this as my truth. And, since reading it, I’ve chosen not to. Instead, I choose to believe the opposite – I choose believe in myself and am full of confidence!
Just this chapter alone was big for me. For a long time, I’ve been pro taking charge of your life and being the master of your own destiny. This book took it a step further… to be the master of your own thoughts too.
He explains the concept very well in the book, but here is an excerpt:
“Your mind is not to be trusted. Because our minds are so powerful and refer to ourselves in first person, we think we are our thoughts. We believe our thoughts originate from our identity. So, if we are thinking something shameful, we think we are shameful. If we are thinking something hateful…we think we are hateful. If we are thinking something stupid…we think we are stupid.
This is ridiculous. Remember, our mind’s main job is to give us thoughts. Its job is to create plausible scenarios or possibilities. Its job is to make sense of everything happening in our world. And it will use anything from our past, the present, or our imagination as ammo. Our minds have no concept of time. If something was accepted as truth at age three, it may still be accepted as truth at age thirty or ninety.
So, I’m inviting you. Instead of believing your thoughts are your identity, think of them as little bursts of organized energy. Simply think of them as ideas being produced for you to consider, organize, and direct for your benefit.“
Our emotions are not the enemy
In the book, he talks about how emotions play a pivotal role in our lives.
It analyses the dysfunctional relationship many people have with their emotions. Some people suppress their emotions, to the point of feeling numb. Whereas others express everything they feel all the time. Some suppress their emotions until they explode…
Chapter two talks about how our emotions are such an important part of us and that forming a healthy relationship with them is vital in moving forward and growing as a person.
Here is a quote from the book:
“Instead of viewing emotions as something foreign to be suppressed and ignored… or viewing them as something to fear or feel guilty about…or viewing them as your identity…Consider this. Emotions are an advanced warning system within the body. They are simply energy in motion. We’ve just never been trained to use them properly. Emotions simply want to be acknowledged, their warnings noted.
Imagine your emotions as a part of your body, raising their hand (like in a classroom) and saying “Excuse me! I’m a little bit worried about doing that because of XYZ!” Simply recognizing and feeling an emotion that is present, opens us to deeper wisdom. Emotions are not the enemy, and they are not undesirable. Emotions are a significant barometer of life, designed to give us important feedback about our circumstances and decisions. I’m not saying emotions are always the master. But they supply important data we cannot afford to ignore and suppress.“
Use our past to get context, but don’t be a victim of it
Johnathan explains so well how limiting beliefs are formed. He goes into detail, covering the different ways that can be formed, which is so interesting.
“Different moments in our lives offered extreme emotions that didn’t feel very good. These emotions, triggered in an extreme event, were probably handled in one of three ways.
1. A deep-rooted belief was built (often on stories centered on what other people thought of you, your personal failures, or what you thought of others).
2. A strong inner vow was made to avoid future pain. This was a strong self-promise, made out of deep anger, sadness, guilt, or shame, which led to future suppression of that same emotion.
3. The negative and painful emotions were suppressed (and then continually felt throughout life).
Any of these scenarios will cause limiting beliefs.“
He goes into more detail about each of these points. Personally, this is where I started to really dig deeper within myself. I started to realise how certain beliefs I had about myself and my life were connected to each of these 3 scenarios. And, just by creating that connection I felt a sense of relief.
But, while it’s good to go back and identify past trauma and events that may result in limiting beliefs, we shouldn’t get stuck in feeling like victims of the past. Instead, by delving into our past and getting the context of our past experiences and the limiting beliefs we’ve formed, we can empower ourselves to work through our stuff and move forward.
He goes into much more detail in how to identify limiting beliefs and next steps to take.
We all have one common desire – to feel better
As human beings, we are united by a common foundational desire, to feel better. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we do, everything we do is our best attempt to feel better.
“It’s important to realize this drive is foundational to who we are. Seeking to feel better is what got us to our current success. It has also made us vulnerable to limiting beliefs.
Because we always want to feel better, and we’re not sure how, we constantly seek reasons we don’t feel better. Our brain will give us two fairly consistent answers to that question.
First, we believe we aren’t able to feel better, because we have something wrong with us…and once we are fixed, we think we will feel better.
Second, we think we aren’t able to feel better, because we are missing something external in our life…and once we obtain it, we think we will feel better.“
This gives much more clarity as to the processes in our minds that can lead to limiting beliefs. I can definitely relate to both of these 2 points above – the times where I’ve felt like there was something wrong with me. Or, the times where I’ve felt like there was something external missing in my life. And only if these things were fixed, I could be better…
Can you relate? Have you ever felt that way?
Loving ourselves is a pivotal first step to living a wonderful life
This struck a chord.
One of Live the Wonderful’s 4 fundamentals of living a wonderful life is self-love. Many people don’t truly love themselves and treat themselves far worst than they’d ever treat anybody else. This is such an important point – to learn to truly love yourself for who you are. This act of self-acceptance is so empowering and have the power to change everything.
From the book:
“Most of us, honestly, don’t know how to live with ourselves. Sure…we have the basic things figured out. Like our favorite food. Or we may know a few hobbies we enjoy and our political or religious opinions. But we probably don’t know our deepest gift to the world, so we have no vision for our life.
We don’t trust our own decisions, so we seek outside evidence to rationalize them. We don’t understand our emotions, so we resist them. Ultimately, we don’t love ourselves, so we stagnate.
This all perpetuates thoughts like: I’m not worthy of success. I don’t deserve “the good life.” I have nothing important to say to others. I’m not worthy to bring value to the world. I’m not worthy of an amazing partner.
Pretend your best friend is feeling similarly to you. Imagine you say to him or her what you say to yourself in your head. Are you shocked at the verbal abuse? I know my self-talk is often harsh. I’m not nearly as loving, graceful, or respectful toward myself as I am toward others.“
It all starts with accepting, respecting and loving yourself friend…
“This is a direct cause of limiting beliefs. Because we aren’t often respectful and kind toward ourselves, it is easy to accept the stories our minds feed us. You know the stories. The ones that tell us we don’t have what it takes, it won’t work out, and our very identity is the reason our life sucks.
Our minds can only feed us these stories, because we do not love ourselves. So the first step in hacking these limiting beliefs is to build a context and foundation for understanding our self-worth.“
This part of the book made me a lot more aware of how I treat myself and inspired me to show myself a lot more love and compassion.
Just the act of self-love and acceptance is huge. From there you can start to be kinder to yourself, to stop with the negative self-talk, and to become your biggest supporter instead of your biggest critic.
It’s okay to be vulnerable and accept the reality of our weaknesses
This was a beautiful reminder.
Oftentimes we feel that we need to be perfect and strong, and never show weakness. Wow, how I can relate to this! So often I portray this strong woman and keep my struggles to myself. Perhaps it’s because, if I acknowledge my weaknesses, I’ll be weaker… Perhaps it’s because if people know I have struggles, they will see me as lesser than… these are the limiting stories we play in our heads…
Johnathan unpacks this thinking a lot more and inspires you to be real about your struggles and weaknesses. Because from this place you can truly grow.
“By admitting and working from our true place of reality and not fighting that reality within ourselves, we will find the emotion or weakness holds much less power than we feared. And once
accepted, we have more clarity and strength to decide how to get to a better place. This is much more effective than pretending we are not weak in those areas, while our subconscious mind is continually demonstrating the truth to us. Accept the reality of your weaknesses. They are your best feedback about where you can grow.“
He also talks about how your vulnerability can be your superpower and how “Sharing our current reality with the world is quite freeing and de-stressing, once we get comfortable doing it.” I loved this part of the book, and this was part of my inspiration to be vulnerable and do a 30-day Face Your Fears Instagram Video Challenge.
It is possible to break through deeply-rooted limiting beliefs and turn your story around
I’d been working on my limiting beliefs for some time. And, honestly, at some point, I was feeling a little despondent.
But then, this book came along.
As the book goes on, Johnathan takes you through the process of breaking out of your limiting beliefs step by step, with some great exercises.
One of my favourites is the Freedom Hacking Exercise. This is a step-by-step exercise of separating from your “inner stories, limiting beliefs and emotions”. The process goes through six phases: Uncover a belief, Write down the belief, Challenge the belief, Change in and out of the belief, Shift the belief and Evolve. Each step is unpacked in detail, making it easier to work through.
While you’ll need to see for yourself, I found this one of the best exercises to work through my limiting beliefs. It made me feel inspired and excited because I could feel my beliefs and emotions shift.
Recently I also came across this article sharing a Five Step Process for Releasing Limiting Beliefs. It’s worth a read!
Are you ready to break free of your limiting beliefs and uncover your inner greatness?
I hope that this book review has given you some insight into what this book is about, and how it can help you. I invite to go and check it out – read its description and its many raving reviews.
There is so much in this book that I want to share, but honestly, I’d end up pasting the entire book in here! Check out the gallery above for some excerpts.
Honestly, if you’re serious about breaking out of your limiting beliefs, then you just need to read the whole thing. It is a journey of self-discovery and well worth the read.
