Pinpointing Your Limiting Beliefs
The beliefs you hold can make or break your business.
A founder’s ability to name and address their limiting beliefs is one of the biggest sources of growth – both in the business and for themselves.
Or to put it another way, retaining your limiting beliefs can restrict your success, and keep you trapped by fear.
Not only will you make less money, you’ll also feel unhappy.
Fortunately, this topic is becoming a more regular part of the startup conversation.
There is huge benefit to examining what you believe and why you believe it, then asking yourself “is this belief still serving me well?”.
You’re also going to need to talk about this with your team, who will likely hold limiting beliefs of their own.
If those aren’t addressed, it will be hard for them to bring their whole selves to work each day, and will shy away from making suggestions that can benefit your business.
So not only is it a good thing to address, it’s also financially responsible.
How Do Beliefs Affect Our Work?
We tend to invent stories that help us understand the world we’re in, creating our own interpretation of the “unwritten rules” of life.
These take the form of generalisations, morals and principles that make sense of what we’ve seen and experienced.
You might inherit these from your family, friends, teachers, role models, religious texts, cultural norms or even the movies you watch or books you read.
These usually feel so sensible and obvious that you might not know they are there, or they are old cliches.
Sometimes there are cliches on both sides.
e.g. “You get what you pay for” vs “It pays to shop around”
“I can’t afford to be excluded/ostracised” vs “Be yourself”
“A business needs to grow or else it dies” vs “Slow and steady wins the race”
“Investors are out to get you” vs “Investors help you scale”
These beliefs shape our goals, our choices, our prices, our promises, who we hire and how we spend our time.
Crucially, none of these are facts.
While we strenuously think they’re true, a lot of them are difficult to “prove”.
What Is A Limiting Belief?
These beliefs are used to keep ourselves safe – to avoid risk and rejection.
They might be shaped by bad experiences, seeing what’s happened to others, or by things that we might fear.
Like the name implies, these “limit” or restrict the actions you take or the terms you use, so that you don’t end up feeling embarrassed or losing money.
Social enterprise isn’t usually a “life or death” proposition for the founder, who are usually more concerned about shame or bankruptcy.
We tell ourselves that the limit is a good thing – it keeps us safe from disaster.
And in a lot of cases, that has seemed to be true.
The problem is these limiting beliefs are based on half-truths, true-isms and fundamentally different scenarios.
The limit was a good move in a different time, for a different person, but is not universally applicable.
They are also prone to exaggeration and catastrophising.
In our heads, any problem or misfortune is a calamity, and we may never recover.
Limiting Beliefs About Yourself
Some of the most common limiting beliefs are statements about yourself.
They often sound definitive and permanent, such as:
· I am not creative
· I am not a risk-taker
· I don’t do things like…
· I don’t have time for…
· I can’t spend money on…
· So many people are better than me at…
A great way to find yours is to fill in the blank: “I am not __________ enough”.
Limiting Beliefs About Your Industry
You might also have limiting beliefs about what is possible or allowed in your industry.
These might include:
· I am too old for social media
· You need a lot of money to start a…
· Every customer would just choose our competitor
· The current industry leader will be strong forever
· If this was a good idea, someone would already be doing it
How Limiting Beliefs Sneak Up On You
Limiting beliefs often become troublesome when they get twisted and tangled together, like a clog in a pipe.
Each separate strand feels justifiable, but when bunched together they stop us making any sort of progress.
Here are some real examples:
• Only a small percentage of VC funding goes to women
• Only a small percentage of VC funding goes to people of colour
• There are likely going to be a lot of applicants
• There’s no point in applying for anything because I definitely will not get it.
• It’s important to make a good first impression
• You should “start as you intend to finish”
• People will see my work and judge it
• I can’t start something until I know it is perfect
• I’m in a small and connected community
• Letting staff go can be really awkward
• We have a lot of work coming up, but it’s still not totally locked in
• We can’t hire anyone until we’re 100% certain that we’ll never have to let them go, or else I will become a pariah.
• In a startup, momentum is important
• In a startup, planning is important
• I really don’t want to disappoint my board
• Running tests takes time and money and they might not go well
• No I don’t want to run tests, it might hurt the idea. Better to just invest now.
• Anyone can leave reviews online
• I sometimes get put off by bad reviews when I’m shopping
• My friends sometimes show me funny negative reviews they’ve seen
• Literally one bad review will be seen and believed by everyone, and will ruin our business.
• I started my business at home
• I have fewer costs and overheads
• My competitors all charge more than me
• I can’t charge as much as others because mine is just a homemade business
As you can see, these start out sounding quite reasonable, but quickly turn into some bizarre rules and proclamations.
Most importantly, these rules don’t seem to make people happy.
Tell-tale Signs Of Limiting Beliefs
One of the biggest indicators that something might be a limiting belief is that you’d never tell someone else that they should be as limited as you.
You wouldn’t go up to your friend and say “One mistake could ruin your business” or “You need to be the cheapest on the market” or “You can’t publish anything that isn’t 100% perfect”.
That would be really rude, and worse than that, it wouldn’t be good advice.
The rudeness is a giveaway – it’s a sign that you’re speaking to yourself in a way you wouldn’t dare speak to someone else.
Another sign is that the belief is broad and permanent.
There’s a lot of good advice for avoiding danger or waste, but it’s usually specific.
i.e. “I wouldn’t advertise on Twitter right now, you won’t get the reach that you did back in 2021” is different to “All social media ads are a scam, don’t bother”.
Or “I wouldn’t put much money into it until you’ve made five drafts, then you’ll know more about what you want” is different to “don’t spend any money, you can’t afford it”.
There are very few things in life and business that need to be avoided in all forms, forever.
If you’re hearing those warnings, there’s a good chance your mind is exaggerating for dramatic effect.
Testing Your Limiting Beliefs
Kate Wilson has a great test question: “Is this belief still serving me well?”.
It’s a good question because it acknowledges that some limiting beliefs have kept us safe in the past, but might have served their purpose and are now unhelpful.
It reminds us that we can edit our beliefs, swapping them for new beliefs over time.
It reinforces that beliefs are not facts, and that not everyone needs to think the same way.
It tells us that a good belief will continue to help us, even if it’s a new belief.
Once you’ve scrutinised your thoughts and beliefs, you can choose what to remove, what to keep, and even what to add in.
You can even give a belief a trial period, e.g. “What if I decided that I was creative for three months, then assessed my work?”.
Working Around Limiting Beliefs
Rather than advocating for toxic positivity and telling you to ignore your thoughts, it might be worth trying to negotiate with your limiting beliefs.
We’re not dismissing the belief, it might hold a bit of wisdom, but pushing back on it to see how well it holds up.
This might be through research, thought experiments, tests, challenges or incentives.
For example:
· Let’s see if I can find people my age in my field on social media – is it working for them?
· If I make progress in secret for three months, could I then show it to some customers and partners to get their honest feedback?
· What if I take 10 classes, then decide whether to put a chunk of money into this?
· Could I set a policy that we’ll accept 5-10% of our reviews being negative, and that we only need to take drastic action if that slips up to 20%?
· Can we break this into smaller pieces?
· Can we partner with someone more knowledgeable to help us with the bits that are unfamiliar?
Working With A Coach
Limiting beliefs tend to sound significantly less sensible when you have to say them out loud, especially when it’s with someone outside of your closest circle.
Your friends want to agree with you, and your family want to protect you, whereas a coach or mentor are willing to challenge you, even if it creates a brief awkward moment.
A coach will prompt you to explain your thought process in more detail, digging into where certain stories have come from.
They’ll ask questions and set tests like:
· Could you call the funder to see if we meet the criteria?
· Could you create first drafts in secret?
· Could you create a short-term contract that set expectations for staff and the business?
· Could you trial a range of prices and measure customer behaviour?
The tests might not lead to success, but they’re cheap, fast and offer more peace of mind than the limiting belief did.
This sets up a pattern of experimentation; gathering evidence as you push the boundaries of your comfort zone.
You don’t have to change your mind, at least not until you’ve seen the evidence for yourself.
Your mind is like a garden, and a gardener has to constantly pull up the weeds that will affect the rest of their plants.
Reviewing your beliefs helps you distinguish the plants from the weeds, dig down the roots, and giving them a swift pull to rip them out.
If you’d like a practical exercise for identifying, separating, and processing these limiting beliefs, we highly recommend a process called Facts vs Fake News.