What are my self-limiting beliefs?
Training fleas, a limitless leader, and surviving junior year of high school....
I was talking with a group of high school students recently about some of their hopes for the coming school year and after about 20 minutes I noticed a theme emerge.
Survival.
Many of them talked about surviving junior year. In case you can’t remember high school, junior year has a reputation for being crushing. You’re pushing to solidify your GPA and extracurriculars so that you’re set to begin college apps at the start of senior year. These are very real pressures at this age and I think it’s good to be self-aware and realistic. I also think it’s important to not let other people’s experiences determine the limits you set for yourself. We’re only a week into the school year and I want them to imagine what it could look like to crush it this year. If we think the best we can do is survive before we’ve even really started the year, then we’ve already placed some limits on what we think is possible.
They’re going to crush it this year.
Our conversation led straight to this week’s question—what are my self-limiting beliefs?
Why should we ask this?
Think for a minute about any time you say the words, “I’ve never really been good at,” or “I’ll never be able to,” or “I just hope I can.” You may not even realize you’re doing it. Now, this is different than saying “I don’t want to do…” And it’s helpful to make the distinction between being incapable of something and choosing to direct your energy toward something else.
It’s especially dangerous when we limit ourselves in areas we are interested in. Why would you set a limit on what’s possible in the exact area you’re trying to dream big in?
In fact, you don’t even need to read the rest of the article. You’ve probably seen some of these stories already anyway. If you do nothing else, do this:
Write down your self-limiting beliefs.
Put them in two buckets
Things that don’t matter
Things I care about and want to do well in
For the things you care about, add the word “yet” to the end of the statement and reframe this limiting belief.
Imagine what it would be like to crush it in this area and develop a plan to move in that direction.
There you go. At least if you fail, it won’t be because you never believed in yourself.
Napoleon Bonaparte—A limitless leader
So there’s some good and bad that comes along with Napoleon, like many oversized political and military leaders. But one thing Napoleon was best at was seeing possibilities where others saw limits, constraints, and obstacles.
“The moral is to the physical as three to one.”
Napoleon
Napoleon believed that it wasn’t the size of the army that ultimately determined the outcome but the will and morale of the troops being led into battle. He proved this point several times throughout his conquests as he led undersized armies to victory.
What would happen if you dropped some of the limiting beliefs you had and instead channeled that energy toward seeing possibilities?
Training Fleas
There is an old apocryphal story about flea training that has often been used to demonstrate the power of self-limiting beliefs. Fleas are incredible jumpers. They can jump 50-100 times their size. The story goes that you can take a group of fleas and place them in a small jar where they will consistently hit the lid as they jump. Soon, they adjust their jumping height in order to avoid hitting the lid. When you take the lid off the jar, the fleas will continue jumping at their new learned height as if the lid was still on the jar. They have trained themselves to jump to a certain height even though they are capable of more.
*I couldn’t find any official studies published that document this experiment and I have no fleas to try this experiment myself. If you can find some studies or you’ve done this work yourself, hit me up so I can change this section and make it sound a little more official.