Types of Beliefs: Limiting and Empowering Beliefs, With Examples

Where there’s a will there’s a way, love lasts for ever, marriage kills romance… Are any of these true? In reality they are beliefs: personal opinions and points of view about the different areas of life, which we build up over the years. We already know how beliefs are formed, that they shape how we understand the world, and that they are often unconscious.

What are the types of beliefs?

In our approach to managing happiness we start with the wheel of life. To live more fully, though, it also helps to review all your beliefs and sort them, with the information you have at each moment, into two groups: empowering beliefs and limiting beliefs.

Empowering beliefs

Empowering beliefs push you to grow, to bring out the best in yourself and to reach the goals you set. Work on them and you can change, find success and get through emotional crises in line with your values. Your beliefs influence how you improve any area of your life, so pay close attention to them. Your successes are measured by how strongly you believe in them. Anyone can succeed at what they set out to do, but believing it is as important as working for it.

Limiting beliefs

Limiting beliefs are the main obstacle, and the ones to blame when you do not reach your goals or live by your values. It is always worth asking a powerful question: what is stopping me from reaching success? Limiting beliefs usually start in childhood and stay hidden in the subconscious, where we do not assess them consciously. They also reach us through the media, the people around us, society, family and friends.

Where beliefs come from

Both kinds of belief are usually built on experience and, because they feed back into our values (do not forget this exercise to identify your values), they act as principles we follow as if they were proven truths. For instance, if you believe you are a pleasant person, you act like one: you treat people openly, you are sociable, you enjoy company, and people welcome you, which strengthens the belief.

Managing your beliefs

You should be able to choose your beliefs simply, reinforcing those whose results you like. If you do not like the results, act differently and change them. It is more accurate to talk about letting go of or moving beyond beliefs than losing them. We treat the rules of our life as possessions, and nobody wants to lose what took time and effort to build. The world makes sense and feels predictable when our way of interpreting it is confirmed. We can even take comfort in a disaster, as long as we predicted it. “I told you so” feels satisfying, not because we wanted things to go wrong but because our beliefs were confirmed.

Examples of empowering beliefs

These ideas come from the NLP coaching tradition, as described by Joseph O’Connor:

If you want to understand, act. Learning happens in action, and change comes from doing, not from intellectual understanding.
We have all the resources we need, or we can create them. There are no people without resources, only states of mind without resources.
We create our reality. The beliefs, values and stimuli we receive are the raw material of how we see the world. You can turn the telescope and look from another angle.
There is no failure, only learning. Failure is just a judgement on short-term results. Not having succeeded yet only means you have not got there yet.
Every behaviour has a purpose. We are always moving towards some kind of goal, even when we do not notice. Set your own goals and do not let others set them for you.
Having some choice is better than having none. Find the options that best fit your values and follow them. Do not forget to set priorities.
You have all the answers. The answers to your questions have to come from you, however good a listener the person next to you may be.

Examples of limiting beliefs, and a question to ask of each

Here are some typical limiting beliefs. Next to each is a question that starts to loosen it. This list is a starting point, not a verdict, so edit it to fit your own words.

Limiting belief	A question to loosen it
This is impossible.	What would have to be true for it to be possible?
No pain, no gain.	Where have I made progress without suffering?
I can’t trust anyone.	Who has earned my trust, and what did they do?
I can’t get what I want.	What is the smallest step towards it I could take this week?
To be happy I need to earn a lot of money.	What do I really want money to give me?
Most people are luckier than I am.	What did I do last time things went well?
I never get what I set out to do.	When did I last finish something I started?
I’m not good at that and never have been.	What would I try if I were allowed to be a beginner?
I have to work very hard to make a living.	Which part of that work is really necessary?
You can’t recover from a bad start in life.	Who do I know who did?

It is time to start valuing yourself and to put aside the lack of confidence built on limiting beliefs, some of which are simply mistaken. It is also one of the best exercises for couples: try it with the love wheel.