How Limiting Beliefs Are Formed

You hear it a lot:

You are your worst enemy.

You hold yourself back in more ways than one.

Sure, you make excuses and procrastinate. But the most powerful way in which you sabotage your success is through your limiting beliefs.

These beliefs shackle you. They prevent you from moving forward despite the best of your efforts.

Limiting beliefs aren’t something you are born with. They are something you acquire.

Babies don’t know that crawling off the edge of the couch will hurt them—until they try it. That experience lets them know that walking off the edge of the couch = pain.

That belief limits them from trying to do it again. This is a good limiting belief of course.

Here are a few ways you create a limiting belief.

Like the baby crawling off the couch, the experiences you’ve been through can develop into a belief about what is or is not possible.

You may belief that you are bad with money because you made a bad investment. You may believe you will never find love based on a few bad relationships you found yourself in.

These beliefs aren’t necessarily reflective of reality though.

Take this for example.

Mindy, who had a lifelong dream of acting in a movie, received a last-minute call telling her she would no longer be cast. Mindy assumed someone else with better acting skills would be cast instead of her, and that crushed her.

She started to believe that she didn’t have what it took to get to Hollywood. Her low self-esteem was reflected in her auditions. As a result, she was selected for fewer roles, which solidified her belief that she wasn’t a good actress.

Unbeknownst to her, the movie that she was removed from had a budgeting problem and many other actors were also removed from their roles.

Had Mindy known the truth, she wouldn’t have assumed it was a result of her bad acting skills and that belief would have never taken root in her mind.

What is a belief you have based on past experiences? Did you fail a test and create the limiting belief that you aren’t smart enough? Were you betrayed by a close friend, subsequently forming the belief that no one can be trusted?

Have you noticed that when the sky is gray you feel less ambitious and excited than when the sky is clear and blue?

The environment you are in affects you. If you are surrounded by people who haven’t achieved anything, you’ll end up believing that is your destiny as well.

If you live in a poor neighborhood, you may develop the belief that money is scarce and hard to come by.

Did hardly anyone from your school go to college? In that case, you may believe that you won’t be able to get a higher education either.

These limiting beliefs are a reflection of what you see going on around you. We are good at spotting patterns. It’s how we deduce facts about the world and this helps us navigate through it.

For example, you noticed that rich people carry around iPhones, so you assume anyone carrying an iPhone is rich.

You know, though, that they could’ve bought a used phone or got it with their credit card. So, this belief isn’t true.

Other beliefs formed by observing the environment are similar. Just because you observed a pattern doesn’t mean it’s true all the time.

What patterns have you noticed in your environment? Which of those observations has turned into beliefs that hold you back and stop you from trying to reach new heights?

This is a big one.

The people you surround yourself play a major role in creating limiting beliefs.

When we are children, the things our parents tell us become what we believe. Then our teachers help shape our values and beliefs. Then comes our friends and the school bully. Once you reach the teen years, your partners contribute to your beliefs as do the random people who follow you on the internet. As an adult, our friends and co-workers help shape these beliefs.

No one can say they are not affected by those around them at all. We hear their snide comments. We pay attention when they say we can’t make it.

Other people’s opinions of us can plant self-doubt that may end up growing into a strong, deeply rooted limiting belief if not weeded out early.

Think about when someone made an unpleasant remark about your looks. Did that make you feel less beautiful/handsome? Did it make you feel like you’ll never find a lover?

So many people have shared stories about how teachers have told them they wouldn’t amount to anything and how they carried that belief with them far into adulthood.

Even more have shared stories about how their families didn’t believe in their dreams, telling them they were setting themselves up for failure.

What’s your story with this? How have the words of others shaped what you believe about yourself? How do you feel about those words now?

What’s your story with this? How have the words of others shaped what you believe about yourself? How do you feel about those words now?

Education is a must. Education also makes a realist.

realism (noun):
a way of thinking and acting based on facts and what is possible, rather than on hopes for things that are unlikely to happen

I’m not encouraging wishful thinking where you believe you can make a million dollars overnight. If you look at the people who are ultra-rich, they didn’t think that that kind of success was possible for them—according to logic.

Look at J.K. Rowling, for example. She was a single mother, struggling to get a publisher to consider her book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

So many authors never get published. If J.K. Rowling learned the statistics, i.e., only 0.6% of writers who start a novel and finish it (because a large percentage of people start writing, don’t finish) get published.

Would she have kept trying after getting rejected over and over?