Challenging your Limiting Beliefs

When you spend the summer at a sleepaway camp like I am,
you see daily how fiction becomes fact 
through exaggeration & repetition...

True for rumors that become camp gospel, 
true for the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

The story I told myself about myself for decades was:
“I’m not smart, I just work hard.

The architected truth
of that story persisted despite
a mountain of disconfirming evidence
(Honors, accolades, fellowships, awards…)

It kept me working, grinding and proving my value
as if my life depended on it, when really
the only thing that depended on it
was my own self-worth.

It was a vicious cycle
that I could have broken sooner,
had I ever stopped to question the veracity
of that core belief I’d held on to
and repeated all those years.

Like most of our Limiting Beliefs,
the origins of mine were self-protective.

As a teenager I knew two things:

1. My best chance to escape a repressive trauma
and get a fresh start for myself was
to get into a top tier college.

2. I did not have the grades to get into a top tier college.

During the summer after sophomore year,
I told myself I had to work my butt off
to improve my grades (significantly!)

As Cs (ok and a D in Spanish) became Bs and Bs turned to A-minuses,
I repeated the message to myself:
your grades aren’t good enough,
you have to work harder.
WORK HARDER.

What started as motivation and self-preservation
became my truth through repetition:
“I’m not smart, I just work hard.”

By the time I got into a top tier school,
I believed that truth so completely,
it never occurred to me to question it.

I literally lost myself in a story
that I made up about myself
to protect myself from
what was going on
around me
as a kid.

That story was my truth for decades.

And I’m not the only one.
Have you lost yourself in a story too?

What are the stories you tell yourself about yourself?

I hope it’s that you’re fucking amazing and
that your value is a simple fact of your existence.

But, if there is something you believe about yourself
that is holding you back or keeping you stuck,
question it, challenge it.

Assemble the disconfirming evidence,
everything that proves that story to be false
and use that as the building blocks for a new story.

Then repeat it until it becomes your truth.