Limiting Beliefs

Limiting Beliefs ask you to name the things you believe about yourself that hold you back, then take each one apart. Five prompts per belief. What is it? Where did it come from? What has it cost you? What evidence contradicts it? And what would you rather believe instead? Most limiting beliefs were formed a long time ago, often from a single event, and they were usually reasonable at the time. A belief that you're not good at maths, formed as a nine-year-old from what one teacher said to you, might have run ever since without ever being tested again. The approach comes from cognitive behavioural therapy, and specifically from Aaron T. Beck, who published his cognitive model in 1967. Beck noticed his patients held automatic beliefs they never examined, and that examining them directly changed how they felt. CBT is now among the most heavily evidenced psychological approaches there is. The evidence question is the one to spend time on. Not whether the belief is kind, but whether it is true, and what you would have to ignore for it to stay true. Your beliefs sit in one shared list across three tools here, so what you write appears in the Belief-Results Cycle and in Reframing Beliefs too. Start with one. Not your biggest one, the one that you could imagine being wrong about.