How you reinforce negative beliefs about yourself and what to do instead

​Yesterday, I opened a newsletter from the writing coach I’ve been working with for 6 months.

Within seconds, I felt like shit.

I hired him to help me fine tune my writing and the systems I use to create content and newsletters.

But this issue was about his clients who’ve scored financially. One landed a big coaching contract from a single comment on someone’s social media post.

I immediately felt like a failure because I haven't done that. I spiraled for an hour before I realized what I was doing:

Amassing evidence for my belief that I’m not enough.

You build a case for what you already believe

A very common misconception is that what you believe is based on the evidence you find.

The opposite is actually true.

Your brain’s default mode is to focus on information that confirms what you already think and ignore information that doesn’t.

This is confirmation bias. It’s a systematic error in how your brain automatically processes information.

It works like this:

When you’re unaware of this bias, you keep amassing evidence confirming that what you believe about yourself is true.

You don’t need to know why you believe it

It can be tempting to analyze what you believe. It feels like if you can get to the bottom of why you believe something negative about yourself, it’ll lose its power over you.

But negative self-beliefs have complex roots that run deep.

My belief that I'm not enough goes back at least to Miss Olive Stubbins, my kindergarten teacher. Probably long before that.

Looking for the roots of something so deep is complicated and can be risky if it's related to past trauma. If you want to do it, get the support of a therapist.

What actually changes negative self-beliefs

Definitely not affirmations or positive thinking. Those are just denial wearing a new name tag.

Taking action changes what you believe because it creates new experiences.

Which means you amass different evidence. So your belief starts to shift on its own.

Try this:

1. The next time you realize you’re dwelling on a negative self-belief, use the words you memorized to redirect your mind.

2. When you’ve created some space between you and your negative belief, reflect on how you’ve amassed more evidence that it’s true. Did you have a conversation with someone? Read something? Scroll through prime fodder for negative self-beliefs (aka social media)?

3. Ask yourself what you would do if your belief wasn’t true. Don’t resist or try to change it. Just accept it as true (for now) and imagine one small thing you’d do if it weren’t.

4. Do what you imagined, telling yourself something like this: “It may or may not be true that , but I’m going to do this, anyway.”

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