Our past and what we have learned from it conditions our view of the present much more than we usually think, both on a personal and organizational level. Throughout our lives, our brain accumulates a set of beliefs and learnings. Over time, these beliefs (mindsets) end up conditioning our perception of reality, the way we live, and the culture of our organizations.
Have you ever stopped to think about how a simple belief can change the course of your professional or personal life?
The inertia of everyday life and the hectic pace that most of us maintain mean that, without realizing it, all these beliefs and learnings often unconsciously guide our behavior. Sometimes (most of the time) this acts in our favor and allows us to free up resources and focus our attention on other things. On other occasions, what happens is totally different: they make life difficult for us and limit us as people. For all these reasons, it is important to find spaces to be able to stop and analyze our beliefs both individually and at a team level and to see if they are favoring us or, on the contrary, are moving us away from what we want to be.
I would like to share with you the following ideas that I have been reading lately and that can help detect those limiting beliefs that prevent us from developing our potential and giving our best.
Limiting beliefs: What are they and how do they affect us?
There are as many limiting beliefs as there are people in the world, which is why sometimes it can be complex to identify them.
M. Hyat offers us three major families that can help us for a first approach. They are the following:
Beliefs we have about the world.
«I can’t start a new business right now; the market is impossible»«Politics never makes a difference; it doesn’t matter if I vote»
«Executives don’t care about people like me; it’s impossible to get ahead.»
These examples reflect how our experiences can skew our view of the world, although they may not always reflect the complete reality.
Beliefs about others.
«It’s useless to ask; he’s too busy to meet with me,»«He has less experience than me, what could he teach me?»
«He still hasn’t responded; he must be angry with me.»
These thoughts can close doors and limit our social and professional interactions.
Beliefs about ourselves.
«I am someone who gives up; I never finish what I start,»«I can’t help it; I’ve never been physically fit,»
«I’ll never get out of this hole; I’ve always been terrible with money.»
Beliefs like these can hinder our personal and professional development.
Since we tend to experience what we expect, beliefs like these will surely block any progress we want to make. Once we identify them, it is also interesting to recognize what mechanisms we usually follow when building these limiting beliefs. By identifying the mechanisms, we can avoid them and reduce our exposure to them.
Jeremy Dean in his book “Making habits, Breaking habits” identifies 3 of these mechanisms:
- Binary thinking, black and white: We assume we are failures if we do not achieve perfection.
- Personalization: We blame ourselves (or others) for random negative events.
- Catastrophism: We are convinced of the worst even with little evidence.
How can we overcome these limiting beliefs? In upcoming articles, I will explore practical techniques and strategies to identify and dismantle these beliefs that limit our potential.
I hope you have found this useful, I will try to write some soon about what I have learned to turn them around.
