How to Release Limiting Beliefs: A Simple 3-Step Practice

Welcome to the Align Yogi podcast, where the ancient teachings of yoga meet the modern principles of mindset, manifestation, and business growth. I’m your host, Autumn Adams, yoga teacher, retreat leader, and business mentor with over a decade of experience leading retreats and helping yogis transform their lives. Each episode brings you powerful insights, practical tools, and stories from industry experts to help you create a thriving heart-centered life alongside a yoga career that feels authentic and deeply aligned with your purpose.

Welcome back to the podcast, friends. Today, we’re diving deep into something that affects all of us at some point, our limiting beliefs, those sneaky little thoughts that whisper, I’m not good enough, or it’s too late for me to start. They can be quiet, but they can also be incredibly powerful, shaping the way we live, the opportunities we take, and the joy we experience.

Here’s the thing. Those beliefs, they’re not true. Today, we’re going to talk about how to release them so you can step into the life you truly deserve.

Limiting beliefs aren’t just random thoughts. They’re deeply rooted stories, many of which we didn’t even choose for ourselves. These are those little thoughts that seem to pop up out of nowhere.

Again, they often sound like, I’m not smart enough. I need more training before I can do X, Y, Z. I don’t deserve happiness or wealth, or it’s hard to make money, or if I try, I’ll probably fail. Here’s the tricky part.

They don’t always show up as obvious doubts. Sometimes they’re more subtle, like the hesitation you feel before speaking up in a meeting, or they’re that nagging discomfort when someone compliments you. They’re made up of experiences and things we’ve heard or were taught and societal expectations that we accepted as facts along the way.

They’re stories from our lineage, our parents, and their parents, and their parents. They’re beliefs we accepted as truths before we were able to know any better, before we had the tools to look deeper. And they’re sneaky because they’re familiar, and they often run so quietly in the background that we barely even notice them, but they’re powerful.

And they shape the way we show up in life, how we love, how we pursue dreams, and even how we see ourselves. When you become aware of these subconscious patterns in your life and you commit to awareness, you can’t unsee them. And you’ll notice the same belief influencing different behaviors across different areas of your life.

This is where the transformation begins. Psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck, an author of the

book Mindset, shares that we have the power to shift these patterns. Her research on growth mindset proves that our abilities, our self-worth, and our potential are not fixed.

They are just as malleable as our beliefs. But we first have to see those beliefs for what they are. Illusions.

Illusions that we’ve accepted as reality. For me, one of the biggest limiting beliefs I used to carry around was I’m not good enough or qualified enough to share my message. I always felt like I needed to have one more training.

If I did this training, I would be a better teacher. Even in the creation of this podcast, every time I thought about starting this podcast, I’d freeze. I’d worry, what if people think I’m not good enough? What if they think I’m a fraud? What if they don’t like my voice? What if I make a mistake? And you know what happened? I avoided it for years.

I let fear and self-doubt take the wheel. And that doubt was like an invisible wall, keeping me playing small. But then I realized that voice, it wasn’t my own.

It was a recording, a story on repeat that I could change. And this is not uncommon. It’s not a story that’s unique to me.

According to research published in a journal of personality and social psychology, when we don’t believe in ourselves, we unconsciously create obstacles. Psychologists call this self-handicapping, where we make excuses or avoid situations to maintain a sense of self-control and a sense of self-worth. We do it to protect our self-esteem.

Self-handicapping often involves behaviors or thought patterns that may seem counterintuitive, but feel safer because they keep us from risking our self-worth. But in reality, it’s our limiting beliefs that are the real obstacles. I feel like I could do an entire episode on self-handicapping.

It blew my mind when I started digging into the research. If you are a millennial, you’ll definitely recognize this author’s name from the story I’m going to share with you. This story is about J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, because her fortitude and commitment to showing up and not allowing life or excuses to get in the way is inspiring and empowering.

You may not know this, but Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, her first book, was rejected by 12 publishers before the 13th finally said yes. 12 publishers. She was a struggling single mom just trying to make ends meet.

She wrote that book in what she refers to as her rock bottom, her dark night of the soul. But she chose to persist, rewriting her story with each rejection. Today, she’s one of the most successful authors of all time.

Despite facing multiple rejections, Rowling continued submitting Harry Potter to publishers again and again. Rather than stopping or downplaying her efforts, her persistence paid off. She demonstrated how sticking to our goals and releasing self- limiting beliefs about talent or value can lead to success.

So what happens when we let these stories run unchecked? They shape everything. Our choices, our relationships, our happiness. They create self-sabotage.

They keep us in cycles that don’t serve us and lead us to put our dreams on the back burner. These beliefs can manifest as us not speaking up, avoiding opportunities, or settling for less in relationships and careers because deep down we don’t believe we deserve more. It’s like being in a cage we didn’t even realize we walked ourselves into.

And this isn’t just theory or yoga woo. Dr. Carol Dweck’s research on neuroplasticity and mindset shows that when we shift from a fixed mindset where we believe our abilities are static, unchangeable, to a growth mindset, we open to new possibilities. Our brains are wired to change, but we have to start with challenging those old stories.

We can’t allow them to run the show. Think about how often you’ve stopped yourself from going after what you really want because of fear, self-doubt, or that nagging voice whispering that you’re not enough. Maybe it’s that project you’ve wanted to start, that business you’ve wanted to launch, that dream career you’re putting off, or even is just taking time for yourself to heal, recharge, and reset.

There was research published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience that shows that when we hold on to beliefs that tell us we’re not enough, it activates the same areas of the brain as physical pain. So these beliefs don’t just affect our thoughts, they affect your entire being. I remember one of my retreat participants who has actually been on retreat with me now a handful of times, but every time she came to the retreat she carried this quiet anxiety.

She questioned whether she deserved to be there, whether she was worthy of this time and space for herself. She was a busy mom leaving her kids at home to take this time away. But the more she challenged those thoughts, the more she realized that her fears were just illusions.

I love that she shared that by the end she saw that she didn’t need anyone’s permission to take up space. She left feeling lighter, empowered, and ready to show up for herself and her daughters in ways she’d never thought possible. And that’s the thing.

These stories we tell ourselves, they’re just stories, and we get to write new ones. All right, so let’s talk about shifting those beliefs. This process isn’t magic, but it is deeply transformational and it’s within your reach.

So if you are ready, go ahead and grab a journal or just take a deep breath and follow

along. I use a three-step process to work with releasing and overcoming limiting beliefs. The first step being to identify the The second step is to challenge its validity.

And the third is to replace it with a new empowering belief. I love combining this type of work with yoga nidra because yoga nidra really gives us that access point to the subconscious mind where we can kind of implant those new empowering beliefs. But let’s go ahead and dig into those three steps.

The first step is identifying the belief. This is the practice of inquiry. What’s one story you tell yourself that keeps you from moving forward? Maybe it’s like me.

Maybe your belief is, I don’t have enough experience. Or people won’t take me seriously. My opinion doesn’t matter.

Name it. Because awareness is the first step to change. And if there’s more than one that comes up, go ahead and write them all down.

Step two is to challenge its validity. So I want you to ask yourself, is this belief absolutely true? What evidence do I have to support it? And more importantly, what evidence do I have that contradicts it? For example, if you think I am not good enough, ask yourself, is that really true? What about the times you’ve shown up and done great things? Where did this belief come from? Get really clear about where this belief came from. Is it based on one moment of doubt? A comment someone made? Or maybe just a story you picked up along the way? Studies show that our minds are wired to seek evidence for whatever we believe, whether it’s true or not.

So when you start questioning these beliefs, you’ll often realize that they’re based on old stories, not reality. Tony Robbins once said, beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. When we challenge these beliefs, we shift our reality.

It’s all about seeing the bigger picture and realizing that we can shape our experiences by changing our internal dialogue. This is why manifestation works, because we begin to shift our reality by shifting our thoughts. So step three is replacing it, replacing that thought, that belief with a new empowering belief.

You’ll replace that old story with something new, something that feels true to who you’re becoming. For example, instead of saying I’m not enough, try I am enough and I’m ready for what’s next or something along those lines. There has even been scientific study on the power of affirmations, and they found that affirmations and positive self-talk actually activate the reward centers in our brain.

This shows that when we start speaking to ourselves differently, we’re not just changing thoughts, we’re rewiring our brain and shifting the way we experience our lives. We become more resilient and open to positive changes. You have the power to change your story.

You are not defined by your past, your mistakes, or what you’ve been told. You are not defined by your roles, by your You are so much more than that, and this is your chance to reclaim your truth, to stand in your power, and to open the door to what’s waiting for you. Before we wrap up, I want to challenge you.

Identify one limiting belief you are ready to let go of. Write it down, and use the steps we talked about today to challenge and replace it. Remember awareness and intention are the keys to creating change, and if you want more support, I’ve created a free resource for you.

It’s a PDF guide with prompts for releasing limiting beliefs and some affirmations to help you reinforce your new empowered mindset. You can download it for free in the show notes. I’m also going to include a link to a yoga nidra practice.

Yoga nidra is yogic sleep. It’s a guided deep relaxation where you actually access the subconscious mind, and it’s in that space of the subconscious mind where you can insert your new beliefs so you can begin to rewire your mind. It’s an incredibly powerful practice to have.

If you’ve never done it before, I encourage you to give it a try. All you have to do is receive. Both of these resources are available to you for free in the show notes.

If this episode resonated with you, screenshot it, share it on social media, tag me. Let’s build this community of growth together. Remember you have the power to shape your reality, and it all starts in your mind.

I’ll see you next time for another powerful episode on living in alignment with who you truly are. Bye for now.