Limiting beliefs: how to find yours and test whether they're true

A limiting belief is something you believe about yourself that holds you back, and it was often formed years ago from a single experience and never checked again. PiViva's Limiting Beliefs tool asks five questions about each one: what it is, where it came from, what it has cost you, what evidence contradicts it, and what you'd rather believe. The approach comes from Aaron T. Beck's cognitive therapy, and it can help you put down beliefs you've been carrying for far too long.

Why do you hold yourself back without meaning to?

"I'm not a numbers person", "I'm not creative" and "people like me don't do that sort of thing" are the kinds of sentences many of us say without thinking, sometimes as a joke and sometimes in complete seriousness.

Most of us didn't choose them. A teacher said something when you were nine, a parent's worry slowly became your rule, or one bad experience hardened into what felt like a law of nature. And because they feel like facts, you never think to check them, so they sit in the background deciding which opportunities you go for and which ones you scroll straight past.

The hopeful part is that a belief that was learned can be examined, and a belief that has been examined is far easier to change.

Where does the idea of limiting beliefs come from?

The approach comes from cognitive behavioural therapy, and in particular from the work of Aaron T. Beck. Working at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s, Beck noticed that his patients held automatic beliefs about themselves that they never examined, and that when they did examine them directly, how they felt began to change.

Beck published his cognitive model in 1967, and it grew into what we now know as CBT, which is among the most heavily researched psychological approaches there is. In 1980, David Burns took the ideas to a much wider audience with his book Feeling Good, which taught people how to spot distorted patterns of thinking for themselves.

"Limiting belief" is simply the term the coaching world uses for the same idea, and the good news is that the same practical techniques work just as well on the everyday beliefs that hold us back.

How does Limiting Beliefs work in PiViva?

For each belief, you work through five prompts: what is it, where did it come from, what has it cost you, what evidence contradicts it, and what would you rather believe.

It's worth spending most of your time on the evidence. Ask yourself whether the belief is actually true, and what you'd have to ignore for it to stay true. Most beliefs turn out to have exceptions, such as the time you did speak up in the meeting, the spreadsheet you built that everyone ended up using, or the thing you made that people genuinely liked.

It helps to start small, so pick a belief you could imagine being wrong about, perhaps one about a practical skill such as cooking or driving, and save your biggest and oldest one for later, once you've had a little practice and seen what's possible.

What if the belief feels completely true?

Some will, at first, and that's exactly what makes them limiting, but there are two things that can help. The first is to look at how the belief plays out in your life using the Belief-Results Cycle, as you'll often see the belief arranging the very results that seem to prove it. The second is to write a new belief that's true and a little kinder in Reframing Beliefs. All three tools share one list, so you only have to write each belief once.

If a single incident keeps setting the belief off, the ABCDE Model is designed for unpicking moments like that, one at a time.

These tools are for the everyday self-limiting thoughts most of us carry. If a belief is tied to something painful, or it's affecting your mental health, please do speak to a qualified therapist, who can give you the support you deserve. For everything else, you may be surprised by how much lighter life feels once a few of these old beliefs have been taken out and looked at properly.