…About Who We Are
I´ve been thinking a lot about limiting beliefs lately, and where they come from.
The beliefs that quietly become part of who we are. The ones we´ve carried around for so long that we stop seeing them as possibilities. They become facts about who we are.
Until I was about thirty, I didn´t really try hard at anything. I worked because I had to, travelled whenever I could, enjoyed life and had some wonderful experiences. But I wasn’t building towards anything because I didn’t think that was an option for me. I genuinely believed that other people were the clever ones, the ambitious ones, the people who went somewhere in life.
I wasn’t one of them.
And beyond that I had even built into my identity that I would be poor. Having travelled in impoverished countries I felt guilt around our Western priviledge. So what hope had I of aspiring to anything?
I now know that undiagnosed ADHD played a part in that. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 55, so there were years of wondering why I found some things so much harder than others seemed to. Sadly that condition often comes with low self-esteem. But I don’t think ADHD was the whole story.
I think many of us reach adulthood carrying around beliefs that were never really ours to begin with.
Some come from school. Some from our families. Some from relationships or workplaces. Sometimes they’re born out of a few difficult experiences that somehow become our whole identity.
The strange thing is that we rarely stop to ask whether they’re actually true.
I thought I wasn’t creative, yet I later built a busy travel website with 100s of clients with my husband from nothing.
I thought I couldn´t study yet now I´m an accreditated mindset coach for adults with ADHD.
What changed wasn’t my ability.
It was my willingness to question the story I’d been telling myself.
First of all someone came into my life who believed in me far more than I believed in myself. At first I borrowed some of his confidence because I didn’t have much of my own. Then, little by little, I started collecting evidence that perhaps I’d been wrong about myself all along.
I don’t think confidence appears out of nowhere. I think it grows quietly through experience. Each time we do something we didn’t think we could do, we rewrite the story just a little. Eventually, the new story becomes stronger than the old one.
Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh
I’m not writing this because I’ve somehow conquered self-doubt. I still have days when that old voice pipes up and tells me I’m not good enough. The difference is that I recognise it now. I know it’s drawing on a version of me that no longer exists.
Our brains are remarkably good at looking for evidence to support what we already believe. If we think we’re not creative, we’ll notice every mistake and dismiss every success as luck. It’s one of the reasons limiting beliefs can become so deeply rooted—they’re constantly being reinforced by our own attention.
Perhaps that’s all personal growth really is. Slowly letting go of the stories. Once we decide who we are, we unconsciously make decisions that reinforce that identity.
As Tony Robbins says – Focus goes where energy flows!
We don’t just believe “I struggle with public speaking.” We start believing “I’m not the sort of person who speaks in public.” Once something becomes part of our identity, our brain works hard to keep us consistent with it.
It’s something we’re continually shaping through the choices we make, the risks we’re willing to take and the stories we choose to believe about ourselves.
So choose those stories carefully.
Main – Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh
About the Author: Jess Twitchin
