One phrase I hear a lot is:
“limiting beliefs.”
And I understand why. I’ve used it before, and it helps give a sense of something that holds us back..
The issue I see is that if we call something a limiting belief, it can lead us to think that the solution is to ‘simply’ replace the limiting one with a better one.
So.. The belief that “I can't.”
becomes
“I can.”
But brains don't update in that way.
A belief has a history. It has neural architecture that is supporting it.
It has networks that have fired in a certain pattern enough times that they are ‘favored’ by brain-body resources.
And the self-fulfilling challenge is that because the brain already favors’ those firings..
... it can lead us to keep behaving, noticing, interpreting and experiences the same experiences that reinforce those patterns.
So instead of immediately asking:
How do replace or change a limiting belief?
I like to invite this exploration:
What has this particular brain learned to predict?
And:
What kind of new evidence (that is bolstered by embodied movement, social support, co-regulation) might allow that prediction to update?
This can help us move us beyond trying to convince a person out of what they truly (neuro-architecturally) believe to be their reality….
And expand us into understanding how that reality was constructed.
Not because we're trying to understand everything about their past.. (and use that to hide a sense of present-moment-agency and accountability...)
but because when we do this, we have a better chance of connecting with them in this moment to help them expand their own view beyond those filters that are distorting their reality.
I find that to be a more compassionate and scientifically interesting way to approach mindset.
It is an approach that my own guides and teachers have explored with me over the years.
The feeling this approach can offer is that instead of feeling like someone is trying to convince us that the past didn't happen, or that it ‘shouldn’t” dictate the present and future’..
we get to explore spaces where data from our past isn't the only data that can build our future.
Stefanie
Stefanie
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P.S. If you teach mindset, behavior change, leadership, resilience or human potential, this is exactly why I created Teach Mindset Science.
It takes you underneath familiar phrases like “limiting beliefs” and “growth mindset” and into the predictive mechanisms that make those concepts work.
