" I'm not able to... ", " No one will want me", " I'm too much..." or not enough... " I would never dare"... So many little phrases that we say to ourselves to explain our difficulties, or even our failures or simply the fact that we didn't take the plunge ? What if these were limiting beliefs? What... ? We immediately take stock of these insidious self-insinuations that sometimes make us our best enemy. But the good news is that you can escape it!
What is a limiting belief?
A limiting belief makes us feel more likely to... Borderline, as its name suggests. It puts up obstacles, certainly imaginary but still well felt, on our path of evolution, whether in the personal or professional sphere. Even our dreams sometimes, which must not be greater than our supposed limits.
Generically, limiting belief is a thought based on lived experiences, which gives meaning to our behaviors, our emotions, our successes and failures and which determines our judgments, about ourselves and about others. Marion Blique, author of J'arrête les beliefs limitantes (Éditions Eyrolles, 2020) explains that these are " filters that prevent us from perceiving and accepting life as it is, and therefore from living it freely. We find ourselves immobilized in a straitjacket of principles, theories, injunctions, family, cultural, social, and societal judgments that prevent us from seeing things simply, as they are, without projecting our interpretation onto them. »
How are limiting beliefs made and how do they restrict our horizons?
Limiting beliefs take hold in our minds when, within a " validating space" (family, school, work, etc.), we experience the impediment without understanding the reasons for it or by integrating that the reasons are to be found in our incapacity. " Don't touch the oven " is frustrating for a little one who wants to discover everything, but it's explained by " You could burn yourself". But " Don't touch anything, you'll break everything " is a vague message (what is included in the nothing and in the whole ?) and sterilizing, conducive to the feeling that one has nothing to do there and to the fear of punitive punishment at the slightest movement.
The socio-cultural environment is also a fertile ground for collective limiting beliefs that will then imprint the psyche of individuals : essentialist thoughts attributing abilities and incapacities to men or women are among the best examples of how the collective imagination blocks part of our horizons.
It should also be noted that the beliefs of some can reflect on the destiny of others : this is the case with limiting benevolence , this most often well-intentioned conviction that a young mother will have other priorities than work and that there is no need to offer her a professional challenge (or even that it is putting pressure on her to only talk to her about an opportunity); that young fathers are helpless in the face of a crying baby and that it would be better to call the mother; that people from modest backgrounds have complexes that make them uncomfortable in circles where power is exercised (therefore, it is not a gift to give them to invite them to do so) etc.
How limiting beliefs manifest themselves and why it's a vicious cycle
Limiting beliefs manifest themselves in excessive caution, refusal to engage in action, procrastination, doubt, the imposture complex... But also in over-compensatory behaviors: as if to invoke a counter-belief, the person inhabited by the obsessive idea that he or she is not capable of something, may be led to behave like a hothead, to be impulsive, over-ambitious and over-daring.
Like the person shackled by chains who throws himself into the water, apparently very confident of his anti-drowning powers but finally confronted with the fact that he drinks the cup, which will reinforce his conviction that he is unfit to swim !
Closer to our concerns, at the heart of our daily professional lives, limiting beliefs push us to either reject opportunities to progress (" I'm unable to do so", " It's not compatible with my other life choices", " We've never seen someone like me take up this kind of challenge "...), or to embrace them all with avidity, at the risk of being confronted with an overload of work (we were so afraid of not being useful to the company that we anticipated the request by taking on all kinds of tasks and responsibilities that we now can't honor) and/or a succession of failures (we embarked on a project of crazy magnitude and/or complexity, and now we can't get rid of it).
How to let go of limiting beliefs and develop a balanced system of thought
Is it possible to get rid of limiting beliefs ? Yes, by preventing them from being active in our decisions. Cognitive science teaches us that our " mental boxes", where our stereotypes, the reflexive conclusions drawn from our primitive experiences, the norms of the culture in which we evolve and of course our beliefs (limiting or otherwise) are stored, open like cuckoo clocks in all situations that make us uncomfortable.
Our sense of security is undermined and the little door opens through which all the reasons for anxiety dressed up in post-rationalization come out (" It's not that I'm bad, it's that I've gotten to know myself, eh, I know that I can't do that, yes, yes, I swear ! "). Our frame of reference is destabilized, and presto, it's the parade of " I'm not made for this ", " I'd rather not get involved in this" and other " I don't understand anything. I never understand anything."
Our legitimacy is challenged and presto, back to the victim box (" I really don't deserve to be treated like this ", " It's the whole story of my life, to be trampled on ", " It doesn't happen to others..." ") and/or defensive (" I will not tolerate being disrespected in this way ", " Either I am not good enough or I am too good to work with these people; in any case, we don't understand each other"...).
In other words, our beliefs are activated more quickly and strongly when the situation makes us emotionally charged... To the point of unbalancing our relationship between emotion and reason.
To regain a healthy tension between emotional intelligence and intellectual intelligence, we must start by accessing lucidity: knowing that we have beliefs, identifying the situations in which these beliefs pass themselves off as truths, and holding back the runaway post-rationalization machine.
In concrete terms, when I'm tempted to forbid myself something, I immediately set my alarm to check that this prohibition won't find its roots in my childhood fears, my complexes, my badly digested past experiences, my neuroses...
This is why, beyond remembering that we have beliefs, it can be interesting to probe the depths of these beliefs: what is at stake when we are convinced that we lack something to succeed ? What exactly are we missing? Is it really the amount of money or time that would be necessary to follow this training essential to a change of profession ? And then, is it really changing jobs before we can start to flourish that will help us flourish ?
Because indeed, in the background of limiting beliefs, there is the mother of all : the procrastinating idea that there are prerequisites for action. In fact, behind these so-called prerequisites, there are obstacles that do not dare to say their name. What if we allowed ourselves, as the ACT movement invites us to do, to launch ourselves without any additional preparation, to dare by trusting ourselves to learn by walking ?
To do this, let's not be afraid of stumbling ! Let's give ourselves this famous right to make mistakes by meditating on Henry Ford's words: " to fail is to have the possibility of starting over in a more intelligent way". And it is undoubtedly in this happy resilience that we will see many limiting thoughts dissolve...
