Limiting beliefs about self-worth or any other aspect of your personality can be difficult to wrap your head around. Why would you believe in anything that sabotages you and hinders your growth?
It seems, however, that human beings are extremely prone to self-sabotage.
Starting from childhood, we start believing in false stories about ourselves and the world, adopting them as the absolute truth when in fact, these beliefs are doing nothing but hindering our ability to live a full life.
My favorite explanation of limiting beliefs comes from business mindset coach Nina Cooke, who said the following in a Forbes article:
“Many limiting beliefs are created in our childhood. Devastatingly, they become part of our identity. ‘I am Nila and I am not artistic. I’m not good enough. I’m unlovable.'”
“Mistakenly, we think these stories are keeping us safe, protecting us from rejection and humiliation. The reality is, they’re just stories we make up in our head by attaching made-up meanings to events.”
Growing up, our minds are incredibly susceptible to our surroundings. Your parents, siblings, and environment shape your worldview. In addition, specific negative events during childhood can trigger the formation of limiting beliefs about self-worth, money, relationships, etc.
Then, you subconsciously build an entire self-defense mechanism made up of these beliefs to prevent yourself from being hurt. It’s a very human response but one that will severely limit the quality of your life unless you recognize them and actively work on overcoming them.
Limiting Beliefs About Self-Worth
1. “I don’t deserve good things.”
The belief that you’re not good enough to deserve X or Y (be it wealth, a healthy relationship, or a career that makes you happy) is one of the most widespread limiting beliefs.
It goes hand in hand with impostor syndrome, a condition where you feel like a fraud, unworthy of any opportunity that comes your way.
Constantly doubting yourself is exhausting, on top of making you feel like anything you’ve ever achieved in your life was a fluke. You might unknowingly self-sabotage yourself by avoiding risks, trying new things, or develop work anxiety.
Before you accept that you do deserve good things in life, it’s helpful to journal about your strengths and all the ways in which you bring kindness and positivity into the world. What are you proud of? How have you grown in the past five years?
Understand that you are a capable individual with so much to offer and acknowledging that doesn’t make you a bad person.
2. “I need to hide parts of who I am to be loved and accepted.”
Recovering people-pleasers will definitely resonate with this limiting belief about self-worth.
In an effort to be universally loved by everyone you come across, you resort to becoming a completely different person depending on who you’re with.
Here, I’m not talking about filtering yourself when you’re with your coworkers versus when you’re with a close group of friends.
I’m referring to abandoning some of your core values and beliefs to be accepted by another person or actively pretending to be someone you’re not in order to be liked.
Constantly keeping parts of your personality hidden is not only exhausting but actually robs you of forging genuine relationships with others.
Being an authentic version of yourself is incredibly powerful, and the sooner you allow people to meet the authentic you, the quicker you will feel seen and build better relationships.
3. “I am not good enough to pursue…”
As a recovering perfectionist, it’s difficult for me to do (and especially share) anything that I’m not certain is 100 percent perfect. Naturally, I’m afraid that others might laugh at me, and the prospect of feeling humiliated used to be enough to keep me from pursuing new things.
Recently, I had a conversation with my friends about why it took us so long to start working out regularly.
We were all well into our mid-20s by the time we first stepped into a gym and had a similar history of unhealthy behaviors like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day (we’ve since quit) or replacing entire meals with bags of chips.
What we discovered was that growing up, we weren’t naturally athletic or “good” at competitive sports. With time, our embarrassment and fear of being mocked by other kids turned into a limiting belief – “I suck at sports” – and became a defense mechanism.
After all, if I say that I’m terrible at anything that has to do with physical exercise, now no one else can use it as ammunition to try and humiliate me.
As the years went on, this limiting belief bled into other aspects of my personality. I was strangely proud of my poor diet and nicotine addiction, and I didn’t care that this was unhealthy for my body.
It wasn’t until I was nearly 25 and started kickboxing to improve my mental health that I realized that I didn’t need to be a UFC champion to deserve to train with all the other women in the group.
The only thing that mattered was that I enjoyed it. And surprise, surprise, I got better over time and became confident in my skills.
If you catch yourself saying you’re simply “not good enough” to do whatever it is you want to do, stop, and reexamine where this belief came from. Like me, you might just realize it’s an illusion.
4. “If I try, I’ll only end up getting disappointed.”
A guaranteed way of keeping yourself in the comfort zone is by convincing yourself that any new endeavor you embark on is doomed to fail from the start.
It’s one of the most widespread limiting beliefs in modern society, especially since negativity seems to be the norm on social media.
Shifting your mindset from believing that you’ll always fail to believing that you can succeed is not easy and requires confronting your negative self-talk.
You can start by calling yourself out when your ego tries to convince you to stay in your comfort zone. Understand that no one succeeded by simply staying put and not taking any risks.
5. “I don’t have any power over my life.”
When you believe that life happens to you, it’s easy to feel like there’s no point in even trying to improve your life. Someone else holds all the strings – who are you to disrupt that?
Feelings of powerlessness create a tunnel vision, where it’s difficult to see anything but potential danger, which keeps you frozen and unable to make any decisions that could potentially change your circumstances.
Depending on how deep-rooted this limiting belief about your self-worth is, you can try different strategies to overcome it, including journaling about your strengths, addressing your thoughts (instead of letting them run the show), and therapy.
6. “If I put my guard down, people will hurt me.”
For many people, vulnerability equals weakness. However, it takes a lot of courage to be truly vulnerable and show your true emotions, especially in a society that frequently puts being coldhearted on a pedestal.
The problem arises when we operate as if everyone is out to get us. When you don’t trust people with your true self, you rob yourself of genuine relationships that have the power to improve your life.
What’s more, feigning indifference puts you in the path of emotionally unavailable people who aren’t interested in getting to know the real you. This usually results in disappointment, further confirming your limiting belief that people will always hurt you.
The first step to lowering your guard is to stop hiding your emotions. Not just from other people, but from yourself as well.
Acknowledge when you feel hurt, don’t just distract yourself in hopes the feeling will magically go away.
The biggest surprise of all is that when you’re more in tune with your emotions (and aren’t afraid to express them), you’re more likely to listen to your body when it tells you that a situation or relationship isn’t good for you. Who would’ve known?
How To Overcome Limiting Beliefs
If you aren’t sure what your limiting beliefs about self-worth are, you should first identify how you limit yourself through your behavior to uncover the belief.
In the example I mentioned above, my limiting belief manifested itself as my unwillingness to start working out and be healthy. At the root of this behavior was my belief that I’m not good enough at sports.
Your low-self worth might manifest in dating or another aspect of your life.
Once you answer this question, it’s time to dig deep and ask yourself whether you had any childhood experiences that led to the formation of these beliefs. Perhaps you were told something and accepted it as fact or grew up in an environment where this belief was the norm.
Then, think about all the ways in which this belief has been a detriment to your life. What has it prevented you from doing? Most importantly, think of all the examples you can to illustrate that this belief is not a universal truth but just a story you’ve been telling yourself.
Finally, think of a new belief that you can adopt that will replace the old, limiting one. Start acting like it’s true, and observe how your thoughts and behaviors change. It won’t be easy at first but pushing through this initial stage of discomfort is key.
I always recommend writing this stuff out in a journal because it helps you organize what’s in your mind in a coherent way.
During this process, you might just discover things about yourself you didn’t know before and get that much closer to changing your mindset for the better.
Make no mistake – your self-worth is the foundation of the quality of your life. When you don’t value yourself at a core level, you leave the door open to situations and people who don’t have the best intentions for you.
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