Overcoming False Limiting Beliefs: Part 1
I’ve been coaching adolescents on mindset issues for over thirty years and have seen false limiting beliefs consistently rob them of their full potential.
In the next few posts, I’ll be sharing the exact process I’ve used to help teens and twenty-somethings bust free and stay free from negative, false thoughts that damage their self-esteem and prevent them from making progress toward flourishing futures.
This is a critical issue, and I’m glad you’re reading.
I want to establish two foundational thoughts that will be helpful to the discussion.
Foundational Thought 1: The Mind is Powerful
The mind is powerful because it strongly influences our actions. Actions are often shaped by thoughts. Beliefs and assumptions frequently precede behavior, even when we’re not fully aware of the connection.
Say, for example, you ask your kid to clean their room, and the request is met with rolling eyes and a sigh of annoyance. What might appear to be an automatic response is actually the result of thoughts that occurred right before the behavior.
It's highly likely that your kid thought something like, "I have other things to do. They shouldn't assume I can drop everything to do whatever they want. That's not fair"! You might not have seen that part happening, but it was definitely there.
The second foundational thought for our discussion is that the mind is dangerous.
Foundational Thought 2: The Mind is Dangerous
The mind is dangerous because it can be tricked. It can be convinced of things that aren’t true. This means the mind can treat a perception as reality.
Combined with the previous thought, that's a serious problem.
Our actions can be dictated by beliefs that aren’t true.
Especially Susceptible
Young people are especially vulnerable to this threat because the parts of the brain responsible for emotions are in full swing, while the parts that regulate emotions through rational processing aren’t fully developed until the mid-twenties.
In their formative years, they can develop limiting beliefs and harmful habits that are not grounded in reality and can impede them for the rest of their lives.
Career Implications
This is important to understand because, as you consider your child's career path and future employment, false limiting beliefs can significantly constrain their options and success.
I actually have to include mindset work in my career coaching because, even after identifying a True Job Match that clients are excited about and creating a detailed plan to get into the position, they can still get stuck due to false beliefs they’ve become convinced of.
After a decade of career guidance with teens and twenty-somethings, I’m convinced that most young people are plagued by false negative beliefs about their capabilities and futures, which lead them to act in self-sabotaging ways and miss out on their full potential.
Without a proven process and external intervention, many of them will continue to make choices that move them further from their ideal futures and their best selves. We'll be working our way toward that solution, so I hope you’ll stick with me for the rest of this series.
START A CONVO
Use these prompts to start a conversation with your child about this topic.
- Do you think people can become convinced of something negative about themselves that’s not true?
- How do you think that impacts how they live?
