What are self-limiting beliefs?
Self-limiting beliefs are unhelpful ways of thinking that get in our way. Self-limiting beliefs prevent us from acting in certain ways that are necessary for our development and improvement. As the result, we can not realise our potential.
For example, if you have a fear of failure, then you will only do something if you are absolutely sure that you will succeed. But the road to improvement lies through confronting failure and working on areas where you are lacking. Otherwise, you are guaranteed to be stuck at your current level of skills and knowledge. It's as if your thoughts have built a wall around you and you dare not step outside.
They limit you to what you have. Since to get something which you don't have you need to start doing what you have never done.
Examples of self-limiting beliefs
Fear of failure
Perfectionism
Fear of being judged by others
How do we get self-limiting beliefs?
Beliefs regulate our behaviour. Most of our beliefs were formed at the earlier stages of our lives. When events strongly influence us, they shape us in certain ways - they become our formative experiences.
Whenever something happens to us for the very first time in our lives or if the event is very important and impactful - our beliefs are shaped.
Experiences of various situations can be sorted into different groups, such as types of life experiences and situations that arise in our lives.
Cooperation, conflict, love, negotiation, argument, etc.
And we could trace these kinds of experiences in each person's life to the very first few times. These are the experiences during which a belief for such situations was being created.
These beliefs were created using current understanding of things, level of knowledge, skills and level of maturity.
Once a number of such experiences repeat forming our beliefs we make certain assumptions, expectations, rules and attitudes for such situations in the future. How they will work out, what to assume, how to act, and what rules to follow. (Beck 2021)
Most of the time this works well enough. However, sometimes we end up with beliefs that only worked back then with earlier versions of ourselves but don't work now or even worse - beliefs that harm us more than they help us with such situations.
During formative experiences, we construct beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world at large. Often we are not even aware that we hold certain beliefs, let alone notice how they affect our behaviour.
Beliefs construct our expectations from the reality around us, and as long as the reality matches our predictions we experience little or no negative emotions. However, if there is a mismatch between our expectations and what actually happens we experience negative emotions.
We could be thinking that it is the events in our lives that make us experience negative emotions which is true when it comes to tragic circumstances, but more often than not the true reasons are our beliefs that shaped our assumptions and expectations for these situations.
Another way we can experience negative emotions is purely by thinking unpleasant thoughts that are linked with our Self-Limiting beliefs. They destabilise us, and in order to avoid emotional breakdown we employ defence mechanisms in our day-to-day life.
Which is fine as long as we are using them to cope with stress and not to avoid unresolved problems in our lives.
Most beliefs and defence mechanisms are necessary for our function.
We should be focusing on beliefs that prevent us from reaching our goals and making sure that we are not getting in our own way.
Defence Mechanisms
Defence mechanisms can be divided into mature and immature. Mature defences help us function without making us run from the reality of our problems. While immature defences are a form of self-deception to avoid working on the real issue at hand because some thoughts are so emotionally unbearable to us.
Examples of defence mechanisms are
Denial
Rationalisation (Cramer 2015)
Cognitive distortions
Another issue that further complicates the matter is that frequently we have distorted ways of thinking. They often prevent us from noticing, making sense of and working with new evidence that does not match our beliefs.
Examples of cognitive distortions
All-or-nothing thinking
Only paying attention to the negative things (Beck 2021)
Self-handicapping
Procrastination is a form of self-handicapping. REF
Self-handicapping is a way of protecting your self-esteem when you think you might fail.
Examples of self-handicapping
Procrastination
Not putting in the effort
Substance abuse
Setting of unattainable goals (Schwinger et al. 2022)
If you fail at something then you have two choices:
Admit it
Come up with an excuse
Self-handicapping is constructing your excuses even before you have done something, especially if you think you will fail.
You might fail, or you might not. If you don't commit and make your honest best effort how would you truly know? What is stopping you?
If you link your performance to your self-worth then putting effort and failing is too scary. If you honestly perform as best you could and then fail, you are likely to think that there is something wrong with you - I'm stupid, I have no talent, I don't have what it takes, I'm a failure.
It feels much safer to always have an excuse in case you fail:
I failed because I didn't study enough, if I studied more I would have passed
I didn't make an effort, if I really wanted to do it I would have passed
So If you pass with a handicap you can feel good that you passed without “trying hard”.
And if you fail it's never truly your fault, there is always an excuse for why you failed. (Schwinger et al. 2022)
How could I change my Self-Limiting Beliefs?
In order to start working with your self-limiting beliefs start asking yourself the following questions.
Does my belief work in my best interest? Does it allow me to improve and become better?
What would happen to me in the future if I don’t change this belief?
Is it actually true? Do I have evidence to support it?
Does it apply to everyone all the time or does it only apply to me?
Conclusion
Our beliefs strongly influence us. Some of them work against our best interest and then it becomes necessary to reevaluate them. This does not happen overnight, but it could be done with consistent work.
References
Beck, J. S. (2021). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond (3rd ed.). The Guilford Press.
Cramer, P. (2015). Understanding defense mechanisms. Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 43(4), 523.
Schwinger, M., Trautner, M., Pütz, N., Fabianek, S., Lemmer, G., Lauermann, F., & Wirthwein, L. (2022). Why do students use strategies that hurt their chances of academic success? A meta-analysis of antecedents of academic self-handicapping. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(3), 576–596. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000706
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