What Are Limiting Beliefs and How to Overcome Them
Limiting beliefs are thoughts you have about yourself that “limit” or hold you back in some way. These thoughts or ideas tell you what you believe is possible for yourself and stop you from reaching your true potential.
In this article, I want to explore:
- What specific effects do limiting beliefs have on language learners
- Why it’s important to identify and overcome these limiting beliefs
- How you can overcome these limiting beliefs
What do Limiting Beliefs Look Like for Language Learners?
When someone has a limiting belief specifically about their language studies, they might avoid doing particular things, or feel like they’re “supposed to” use certain strategies in order to learn a language, and often ignore other possibilities.
Below are some examples of limiting beliefs that many language learners often have:
- “I don’t have time to study languages”
- “I’m not good at it. I don’t have the talent”
- “I’m too old to learn languages”
- “I don’t have the money to learn languages”
What’s really going on when you have these limiting beliefs?
Before we dive deeper into what happens, I want to give some more context into the way I personally identify and address limiting beliefs. Whenever I’m exploring limiting beliefs, whether they are my own or someone else’s, I tend to use the NLP lens (because I’m a huge nerd for psychology, and it makes a lot of sense for me to use this framework).
A little about NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming)
To understand this a bit more, we’re going to use some NLP, or Neuro Linguistic Programming to unpack this. And while I am most certainly not an expert in this (far from it), there are concepts that I’ve learned and applied to my own language learning routine that just work.
It’s my way of making sense of the world and the language learning journey.
NLP focuses on improving our communication with ourselves and others by helping to recognize, identify, and reprogram our subconscious mind.
If you want to know more about NLP, here is a website and video that talks a bit more about the subject.
Example of Limiting Belief in Language Learning Studies
To give clearer context, let’s say that I’m working with a client who recently had and shared the following experience:
They recently watched a “Learn a language in 30 days or less” video, or read an article about learning multiple languages. With this external event, my client starts to generalize language learning. She starts to believe that she ahs to learn a language in 30 days, or that she shouldn’t learning multiple languages at once.
This leads to a distortion of the ENTIRE language learning journey for her. This experience shifts her values as a language learner, her beliefs of what she can or can’t accomplish, her mood, and even her identity as a language learner. She might’ve seen that youtuber or blogger share their recommendations for resources, which will affect her decisions.
She feels like she now needs that exact set of pens, or that same textbook to learn her target language. And if she doesn’t get it, she won’t ever be able to learn her target languages.
She pictures in her mind either:
1) herself speeding through the textbook and getting the results shared in the video
Or
2) the story that maybe she can’t actually learn multiple language.
This might make her anxious, or lose confidence in herself. And this leads to her deciding to study less because she BELIEVES “I can’t do this” or “I have to learn in 30 days, because they did it”.
And the result?
She doesn’t achieve the results she wants.
How does this stop your progress?
As you can see, that one experience (or repeated experience) shifted every aspect of her language study system.
Her study habits changed, her mood around studying changed, her decisions—everything! And as a result, she gets stuck in a cycle of frustration can be really difficult to get out of.
This is the power of your mindset, and of our limiting beliefs!
Now, I’m not here to say I don’t have any limiting beliefs because that would be a bold-faced lie. BUT what I do differently, and what many other successful language learners do differently is they don’t let that stop them.
They recognize when their beliefs are getting in the way of them doing the work.
Or when it’s blocking them from having the experience they want and actually using their target languages the way they want to.
They see this, and they shift their mindset, and clarify their ‘why’— which I talk about in the article here.
If you don’t identify your limiting beliefs and take the time to conquer them, you will continue to have the same struggles in your language studies.
And continue to stay frustrated with yourself, your journey, and your results.
How Can You Overcome Limiting Beliefs and Shift Your Mindset?
The path to overcoming limiting beliefs is pretty simple when you break them down:
1. Identify your limiting beliefs
Whenever you want to make changes to your current system or create an entirely new system for your language studies, you first need to clarify where you are and all of the different factors causing, contributing, or influencing your limiting beliefs and behaviors.
You have to explore the ideas you have about yourself as a language learner—and what you BELIEVE you can and cannot do.
Again, I talk more about why clarity is so important in creating a language system in general here , which also applies to overcoming limiting beliefs.
One big takeaway from that post is that you can’t take action if you don’t know where you are and where you want to be.
If we go back to the example above, this would be my client identifying that she has the limiting belief that she should be able to learn a language in 30 days, or that it’s impossible to learn multiple languages at once.
2. Create a plan for your mindset shift
Once you’ve clarified your current self and the mindset shifts you want to make, you want to create a plan for how you will get there. Brainstorm some action steps you can take in your current study routine that will make changes (big or small).
If we use the same example, maybe my client decides to watch those videos less, or even remove them entirely from her running list of videos because of the effect they have on her overall system.
3. Execute and refine your plan
After you’ve identified the thinking that’s holding you back, the actions you will take to make both big and small changes, and created a plan on how you will redefine those limited beliefs, it’s time to DO the work.
4. Repeat!
Continue to identify any limiting beliefs you have that are stopping your progress or telling you what you can or cannot achieve.
Adjust your plans when they stop serving you and your Guiding Principle— the reason you’ve decided to learn languages in the first place.
Execute your plans, refine your process, DO THE WORK.
Period.
What are some limiting beliefs you’ve had in your language learning journey?
And what are some of the ways you’ve worked to overcome them?
Let us know in the comments below!
PS. If you’re struggling with your own limiting beliefs and need help creating a system to support the mindset shift you want in your language studies, DM me on Instagram so we can start a conversation.
— The Polyglot Fox