"No matter what we've done, there comes a point where you think, 'How did I get here? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me?'" - Tom Hanks
No one is immune to limiting beliefs. Not me. Not you. Not even Tom Hanks.
Self-doubt, imposter syndrome, fear, lies, limiting beliefs, whatever you call them, they are all different flavors of those nasty little buggers crawling around in your brain telling you “Nope!”.
Every time I think I’ve squashed the last limiting belief in my head, I turn over a rock and a dozen more of these little nasties come scuttling out. I recently uncovered a whole colony of negative thoughts skulking around telling me I’m kidding myself, and this from the girl who wrote a 200-page book on dealing with mental monsters.
So, if you’ve managed to extract some limiting beliefs and you’re not yet perfect - welcome to the club!
The really good news is that most of our limiting beliefs aren’t anything special. Oh sure, they may put on their best costume and pretend that they are the biggest, baddest belief you’ve ever seen, but they typically fall into one of five categories.
Any of these sound familiar?
Not Enough - I’m not good enough, smart enough, fit enough, rich enough, educated enough, talented enough. I need to work harder. I don’t have the time. The person who did that thing that I want to do is better than me. I could never…
Unworthy - I don’t deserve it. Who the hell do I think I am anyway? It’s really not that important (because I don’t actually deserve it). It wouldn’t be “right” for me to be/do/have that.
Victimhood - I’m too old, young, inexperienced. I come from the wrong part of town. I didn’t go to the right school. Circumstances are preventing this from ever happening. I don’t know the right people.
Fear of Failure - What if I beef it? What if I try and it doesn’t work? What if I lose all of my money and my house and I end up turning to a life of crime in order to survive? Things never work out for me. I’m just unlucky.
Fear of Other People - What would they say? What if they find out? What if they see me fail? My boss might fire me. My family might disown me. My partner might leave me. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable. And my personal favorite flavor of this one: Their needs come first. If I don’t do it no one else will. Someone has to take responsibility. They need me to be something, so I’m going to contort myself to fit the mold so that they will approve of me.
What makes these beliefs so tricky is that they don’t happen once. They happen over and over and over, creating a pattern of thought that your brain turns to when it faces a similar situation. 90% of the time the trigger is uncertainty. You haven’t done it, so you don’t know if you can. There is absolutely NO PROOF that you can do it. So, it’s safer to stay small and keep your mouth shut and be grateful that you aren’t living in a box down by the river.
Nothing is all good or all bad. You created those limiting beliefs because you are trying to avoid pain (good). Those beliefs keep you safe (good). They probably help you avoid mistakes (good). But they don’t allow much room for growth (not so good).
Life is going to happen whether you chase your dreams or not. You can stay in the dead center of your comfort zone, never offend anyone, be all things to all people, skip all the risks and STILL get the flu, or pop a tire, or get laid off, or have a bad boss.
If your belief system is working for you - keep it. You’re the boss of you! There is no shame in just being happy. You don’t need to constantly be achieving something. It’s ok to just be ok. Happy is a state of mind, and limiting beliefs are only a problem when we are unhappy and feel powerless.
For those of us who are unhappy: If we want something different - we have to do something different. And 80% of the something different is dealing with limiting beliefs. Of course, we have to take different actions or make different choices. It’s just infinitely easier to do those things when we aren’t fighting ourselves or disallowing better outcomes.
Breaking the Pattern in 3 Steps:
Awareness - We can’t change something we aren’t aware of. So, start paying attention to your internal monologue. What are you saying to yourself? What are your stories about your situation?
Extra credit - dig into those stories to find the root belief. As questions like: Why? Who says so? How do I know? Where did I get that? So what? Getting to the root, is like unmasking the villain at the end of a Scooby Doo episode. You realize “Ohhh, so that’s what has been making all this trouble.”
Demotion - Challenge the validity of the belief. Is this a fact or an opinion? Is there any evidence to disprove it? Is there anything you could do to change the “truth” of the situation? If the belief didn’t exist what would change? Would your life be better with a different belief? If you can disprove the belief it loses its power. Try looking at things from a different perspective.
Replace - Consciously choose a better thought. Then BE KIND to yourself and look for evidence to support the new belief. It will feel strange - that’s ok. It takes time to adjust to a better thought pattern and rewire your brain in a better direction.
“Fake it till you make it” is a one-way ticket to imposter syndrome. That’s not what I’m proposing here. Instead of pretending to be something you’re not, I encourage you to be more of who you already are. It’s a process of uncovering what you do well, allowing yourself to appreciate those things, and expanding on them.
Example: I struggled professionally for a decade. I was making $45,000 per year working at a job I absolutely hated. I never got promoted. My boss was a micromanager. And the company I worked for was openly misogynistic. So, I was miserable and stuck.
At my last performance review with that company, my boss told me that I barely met expectations (even though I got a “far exceeds” in every individual category). She had a lot of other nasty things to say to me about my capabilities. The same day, I found out that she’d taken credit for all of my accomplishments over the last year and it netted her a big promotion.
That was the day that I realized my work had value. The belief that I wasn’t good enough got blown out of the water. Whenever the “I’m not good enough” thought would creep into my head, I’d remind myself that my work got my boss a promotion, meaning I was performing at a higher level than my manager.
With the new mindset, my work got even better, I got better at showing my value, and I got recruited to a different company for a 40% pay bump. Then 18 months later I got another massive pay bump and a double promotion.
I was always doing good work, but it never mattered until I believed it was good enough.
Find your own evidence to support a different belief. If something isn’t possible today, who cares? What can you do to make it a possibility in the future? Allow yourself to try, to fail, and to succeed. You don’t have to be perfect, but you can be better. So be better.
When you believe you can, you’ll figure it out.