Limiting Beliefs Protect as Well as Artificially Constrain Us
Sometimes having limiting beliefs about yourself is actually a good thing
Identity is the foundation of everything. Because who you believe that you are defines so much of what you do. I wrote a piece on this back in April.
This is true even when your identities aren’t even explicitly or consciously held. We hold many implicitly identity-laden beliefs about ourselves that shape our behaviors.
Some of these are the proverbial “limiting beliefs.”
Contrary to what you’ve heard, some limiting beliefs are actually good. They protect us from self-destructive actions.
For example, one of my beliefs about myself is that I am someone who is honest in his dealings. I do not not engage in fraudulent ones because that’s not who I am.
I could easily inflate my expenses on my taxes. It’s very unlikely that I’d get audited. Last year I had a small gain from a cryptocurrency transaction that my exchange explicitly said was not being reported to the IRS. There would basically have been zero chance of my getting in trouble for not reporting this on my taxes.
But I’m not the kind of person who cheats on his taxes. I just don’t do it. I am someone who pays taxes to whom taxes are due.
We can think of things like honesty in dealings as being the right thing to do for self-interested reasons. “Honesty is the best policy,” as they say. But it’s all too easy to find situations where we imagine that the most beneficial approach is something else entirely.
Rooting decisions like being honest in our dealings, not watching porn, not getting drunk, etc. in identity is a much stronger defense against doing things we might well later regret.
All too many people have too few limiting beliefs rather than too many. And it costs them big time.
Limiting beliefs can actually act as protection against destructive actions. Those are the kind we want.
Of course, the traditional view of limiting beliefs is right in a lot of cases too. The famed “impostor syndrome” is rooted in this. We simply don’t believe that we belong on the big stage, so we are unnerved by success - or even do things to sabotage our own success out of a limiting belief about ourselves.
I’ll give an example of a limiting belief I hold that I’m actively reconsidering. As I’ve publicly written for years, I’m deeply hesitant to give advice to people. In a sense, I believe I’m the kind of person who doesn’t give out advice.
I’m very influenced by Nassim Taleb’s “skin in the game” concept. Very little advice comes with skin in the game. If our advice turns out badly for the people who take it, it usually doesn’t affect us much. Also, we seldom really understand the other person’s situation.
Also, I’ve been the recipient of what was objectively good advice - but the results turned out very poorly for me. That experience made me very gun shy about giving advice to other people. Sometimes even great advice goes horribly wrong.
But as I wrote in the Wall Street Journal, one of the key factors in the success of online men’s influencer in taking huge market share away from traditional authorities and institutions like the church has been that those influencers give a ton of practical, actionable advice.
Anthony Bradley made a similar point in my recent interview with him. Here’s the clip:
While some of the online influencers like Jordan Peterson are basically healthy, a lot of these guys are pointing men in bad directions morally, or just in terms of their own flourishing.
If I say I’m the kind of person who doesn’t give advice, then what I’m saying is that I’m abandoning the playing field to those guys.
Even if my advice isn’t perfect in all cases, is it better to have young men looking to manosphere influencers for life advice instead? Probably not.
So this belief that I have that I’m not the kind of person who gives advice is one I’m actively reconsidering. I’d love your input in the comments if you have thoughts.
There are lots of beliefs about ourselves that limit us in ways that aren’t necessary. We ought to unearth these identity statements, explicit or implicit, that we hold about ourselves that fundamentally shape and limit our behavior.
These statements of identity need to be actively evaluated and questioned. Some of them we should probably jettison. Others we should hold. And sometimes we might need to think hard about what we should add.
Because sometimes limiting beliefs really do need to go - but other times they are a critical protection in times of stress or temptation.
Perhaps the most memorable advice I ever received was from a highly respected gentleman who told me “that’s not who you are” in response to a dubious plan of action I suggested.
As I have gotten older and more grounded in biblical principles I do not hesitate now in giving advice unless someone specifically tells they do not want it.