07/05/2024
Can I tell you why replacing a limiting belief with a new, more positive belief doesn’t work?
I do a lot of mindset transformation work with my clients. I also listen to a lot of coaches who are *not* mindset experts try to help their students with mindset stuff. I really wish they’d stop doing that and just hire someone like me to teach mindset stuff to their students!
One of the recommendations I see most often is coaches telling their students that they just have to replace their limiting belief with a new, more positive belief.
This is very well-meaning advice, but it doesn’t work. And here’s why.
Beliefs that hold us back from building our business were formed before we turned 7 years old (some people say 6 years old; some say 9 – I’m going with 7).
So, it’s not like you just woke up yesterday and decided, “I’m not good enough,” or, “What if this doesn’t work for me?” or, “What if this does work for me?”
You decided you’re not good enough or things don’t work out for you or you’re afraid of things working out for you before you were 7 years old.
Then, once you had the belief, you started looking for evidence to prove you’re right. Then, as a result of looking for evidence to prove you’re right, you created a well-trodden path in your brain that always leads to that (limiting) belief. And since your brain always takes the path of least resistance – i.e. leading you directly to that (limiting) belief, simply replacing that belief with a new, more positive belief isn’t going to work.
It's like taking a hike on a trail where thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people have hiked before (this is the “I’m not good enough” trail). You decide that you’re going to take a different route (the “I’m good enough” route). So you start to break in the new trail. How many people (i.e. your brain) do you think are going to follow your new trail (“I’m good enough”) versus the old, well-trodden (“I’m not good enough”) path? Not many. You’d have to keep going back thousands of times, tens of thousands of time, even hundreds of thousands of times before your new trail (the “I’m good enough” trail) is the more appealing trail for people (i.e. your brain) to hike.
Let’s look at an actual example. You likely started school when you were 4 or 5 years old. Maybe you had an older brother or sister. You drew a picture in school. All proud of yourself, you brought it home and showed it to your parent. Your parent or caregiver gave you a cursory, “Oh that’s beautiful, honey,” and then kept moving on with their day.
You notice that your brother’s or sister’s artwork is hanging on the fridge. Yours never makes it there. So you decide (even though your parent didn’t intend for you to believe this) that you’re not good enough.
The next day you come home with your paper full of letters you’re learning to write – you know those papers where you copied the A in uppercase and lowercase format. Then you did the B and the C and so on.
Again, you show your paper to your parent. But your brother or sister just came home with a spelling test where they got an A and your parent is fawning all over them. You conclude, again, that you’re not good enough.
Now you’re on the hunt.
You dress yourself the next day and your parent tells you your shirt doesn’t match your shorts, and you need to go upstairs and change.
You’re not good enough ... again.
Now you’re 50 years old. You’ve had, what? 43, 44, 45, 46 years of building up all that evidence that you’re not good enough.
Do you actually think that putting up a post-it note on your computer is going to change that “I’m not good enough” belief?
To be honest, yes, it would change that belief. But it took you, say, 45 years to form that belief. How many years do you think it’s going to take to unform that belief? Because remember, you’re still going to be looking for evidence as to why you’re not good enough, even while you’re trying to change that belief to “I’m good enough”!
This is why simply replacing an old belief with a new, more positive belief just doesn’t work.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please comment below. And share this post if you think it would help someone!
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