Unsticking Yourself from Unhelpful Beliefs

When I was 5 years old and had barely started school, some of the big kids told my friends and me that there was a murderer in the school change rooms. We were horrified! I remember the feeling of panic as I heard the details of why he was in there and what he was going to do to anyone who went in.

My friend and I sprinted to the lawns to tell the teacher on duty. We blurted out our story without stopping for a breath, then stood there, panting, waiting with baited anticipation to see what drastic action she’d take.

She just laughed and told us that the big kids were playing a trick on us!

How could she?! How could she just stand there and not call the police? She was letting us down and not protecting us. I was terrified. I’d already formed the belief that there was a murderer in the change rooms and that emotion-charged belief was not going to change in a hurry. And it didn’t for another year or so.

When I was big enough to use those change rooms, even though I’d learned the truth years earlier, I still felt scared going into that building. And you know what’s really crazy, to this day, I still feel a little uncomfortable going into public change rooms! There’s just that eerie sensation that there’s something lurking in the shadows.

The things we learn as kids can stick with us until we’re long into our adult lives. Some of those memories make great stories for our kids about how things were “back in my day”. But a lot of what we learned stays tucked away in our unconscious minds, where it quietly influences what we believe, think, do and say.

We can’t say “Hmm, you’ve called me stupid because I can’t tie my shoelaces yet, but I haven’t had much practice because my last shoes were velcro. I just need more practice.” No, we just hear “I am stupid” and we take that message to heart.

We need to be very careful with our words, especially with children.

Obviously, we can’t hold onto everything we were exposed to in our childhood. The fact that someone made a racist comment in our presence won’t necessarily lead us to take on racist beliefs. But the more often we’re given the message and the more emotional intensity we experience at the time, the more likely we are to take something on as a core belief. 

For example, if you had parents who sent you to your room or yelled at you every time you cried, you probably would have learned that having negative emotions wasn’t okay. If you showed your negative emotions, that made you not okay. You might then develop a core belief that “negative emotions are bad” or “I’m bad if I feel them”. With that belief sitting way down inside, we’re likely to feel a lot of shame when these feelings inevitably come up. And we’re probably not going to be very tolerant of other people’s emotions either.

Not a great recipe for healthy relationships.

It might seem like these kinds of beliefs and fears are counter-productive, like defects in our psychological development. But they developed for a good reason – they helped us get our needs met and keep us safe. It’s just one more clever system that nature gifted us with! 

If I got told off by the teacher for asking “stupid” questions at school, it’d serve me well at that time to develop a belief that “asking questions is dangerous”. That would help me get more approval from the teacher and possibly better grades. 

But later in life, our beliefs may not serve us any more. In fact, they might be doing the exact opposite and getting in the way of us living our best lives. 

The good news is, you now have a fully developed brain (unless you’re younger than mid- to late-twenties, in which case you still have more brain growth coming your way!). A fully- (or nearly fully-) developed brain means that you now have the capacity for critical thought and decision-making, so you can consciously choose what beliefs you want to keep and which ones you want to change up.

A simple belief that isn’t tied up with your identity can be easy to change. E.g. “I thought bananas were a fruit. Now I know that they’re actually an herb.”

But a belief that’s tangled up with identity, like “I’m unlovable” will take a lot more time and effort to shift.

It’s not easy, but it’s totally doable.

One reason it’s not easy is that lots of our beliefs are sitting in our unconscious minds, making them a bit tricky to access. What we can’t access, we can’t change, so we have to be on the lookout.

Sometimes they’re pointed out to us. And that can hurt because it often comes packaged as criticism. We might not want to hear it because, who wants to be told that they’re not perfect? But really, it’s such a gift when someone can help us see ways that we’re making life hard for ourselves, or holding ourselves back.

We can also discover unhelpful beliefs operating in the background for ourselves. When we feel blocked by something or feel fear about something that doesn’t make logical sense, that’s a good sign that there’s something hiding there.

For example, when I was in my 20s, I wanted to run in the opposite direction when I was offered a promotion that was such a great opportunity and was exactly what I wanted! Working it back, I realised that I was scared of being seen because deep down, I believed that I wasn’t smart enough.

Another reason that it can be hard to shift our core beliefs is that once they develop, they become such an important and foundational part of who we believe ourselves to be that we tend to defend them at all costs…even in the face of clear evidence against it. In fact, this phenomenon is so common that there’s a psychological term to describe it.

The Confirmation Bias. 

Did you ever have a teacher who only noticed the good behaviour of their favourite students, and only the bad behaviour of the “trouble-makers”? The confirmation bias of the teacher was like a get-out-of-jail-free card for some students and a constant ball and chain for the others!

Try this.

Think about a core belief that you have about yourself. Do you think about yourself as being someone who is brave or cowardly? Impulsive or self-controlled? Lazy or industrious? Intelligent or not? Choose a self-belief that you feel most strongly.

What’s it like for you when someone gives you feedback about you being the exact opposite of what you believe? You’ll probably automatically come up with a hundred reasons about why they’re wrong, even if they have good evidence to support their opinion.

Our identity can be a pretty stubborn thing to shift!

So, how do we start peeling back those layers of conditioning and get to our real authentic selves? 

We first need to become aware of them. (Getting a great coach can be an excellent way to increase our awareness 😉) Once we see them, we can acknowledge them for helping us out at one point in time, then become curious about how we might be able to shift or reshape them to serve us better now. 

Then, it’s a matter of taking small, frequent action in line with the new belief you want to create and stop yourself when you recognise yourself behaving consistently with the old beliefs. 

Then we need to do it again. 

And again. 

And again.

Over time, you’ll start to build new neural pathways that support this new version of you and the old ones will start to get dusty and overgrown like a dirt road that never gets used. Eventually, you’ll prove to yourself that you are indeed the kind of person who behaves in this way and you will have given birth to a new identity.

The more deeply ingrained the belief, the more intentionality, practice, patience and self-compassion is needed. And the more beneficial it’ll be to have someone support you through the process.

Busting out of the moulds of our conditioning is one of the most satisfying and energising experiences that life has to offer! And it opens us up to really start living up to our full potential. 

Your beautiful, authentic self is capable of more growth and transformation than you might think! 

You are worth it.