This is a story of a limiting belief that really held me back, although I was unaware of it at the time.

After I got engaged in 1997, my twin sister and I had one of those late night conversations about many things.

“I always thought I’d get married before you,” Donna said.

“That’s funny,” I said, “I always thought you would, too.”  Donna was two minutes older than me and she had been the one who talked about and planned her wedding day when we were kids.  Partly to be different, I think, I focused on where I would travel and the adventures I would have when I grew up.

Fast-forward a year after that conversation and my fiancé and I had broken up.  In the meantime, my sister Donna got engaged.  Here I’ll skip a whole big, interesting part to the story and just say that my sister got married in February of 2000, four months before my wedding to a wonderful (completely different!) man.

So, the whole wedding first or not was a limiting belief but it didn’t end up limiting me because I ended up married to the love of my life.  But another limiting belief about my sister and me showed up a few years later.

Luckily, this limiting belief was brought to my attention by an amazing energy healer, Cynthia Atkinson, at True North (www.truenorthhealthcenter.org).  I became their resident Life Coach in the spring of 2005 and was encouraged to book sessions with all the healers.  In return I offered coaching sessions to the staff there.  During an energy healing session, which I thought would be purely informational, Cynthia asked me if there was any question that I wanted answered.

“Yes,” I said, surprising myself.  “Will Donna be okay if I get pregnant before her?”

By the end of the session, I realized that I believed I couldn’t have a baby until my sister Donna had one.  At the time she had been diagnosed with infertility and had gone through many medical tests, treatments and procedures and still wasn’t pregnant.  So this belief could really be holding me back.  After recognizing this limiting belief, I was able to, with the help of the energy healing session, let it go.

“All is well,” I said at the end of the session, feeling a huge sense of peace and relief about my sister’s infertility and my own longing to have a child.

The next day my sister called to tell me she was pregnant.

Realizing I had the limiting belief, bringing it into my conscious awareness, was the biggest hurdle, because it allowed me to make a conscious decision to take action, trusting that my sister would be okay.  The fact that she was pregnant was just a huge bonus!

Is there some problem you are having in your life that resists any solution?  Can you take a few quiet minutes to think about whether or not you have any limiting beliefs that may be preventing you from moving forward?

• If you’ve been passed over for a promotion, could it be that you don’t believe you deserve to be promoted?
• If you’re unlucky in love, could it be that you don’t believe you’ll ever find your soul mate?
• If your home is cluttered or disorganized, could it be that you don’t believe you can ever keep house the way your mother did, so why bother?

Limiting beliefs can be more complicated than the examples I’ve just given, but they can also be as simple as “Girls can’t do math,” or “Boys don’t cry.”  Bringing them to your awareness allows you the chance to question them.  The thought “I can so do math!” may be all you need to win that All-Calculus All-Day Competition that you’ve been dying to enter.   It may be all you need to make your biggest dream come true.