You have a stellar idea for a niche business or you want to start a nonprofit for a cause near to your heart, but before you take a step toward making it happen, you’ve killed the thought. Your brain has already found a long list of reasons it just won’t work. It may be true that what you’ve considered isn’t feasible, but it’s more likely that you’re getting in your own way. You may be holding beliefs that hold you back.

We all have limiting beliefs, stories we subconsciously tell ourselves about what we can or can’t do, what we do or don’t deserve, and who we are or are not capable of becoming. Left unexamined, limiting beliefs may prevent us from achieving our goals, finding fulfillment, and unlocking our highest potential.

To understand how to disrupt limiting beliefs, it’s helpful first to explore where they originate. Our beliefs are absorbed from the world around us throughout our lives.

Key influences include:

•  Role Models in Childhood

                Our earliest role models – parents, caregivers, teachers – shape our core belief systems. Their behaviors and their own unconscious limiting beliefs leave an imprint on us as children and become internalized as truth. For example, if a father constantly criticizes his son’s abilities, his son may adopt the belief, “I’m just not good enough.” This belief then limits confidence and potential long into adulthood.

•  Cultural Norms and Values

                The culture and society we grow up in teaches us assumed rules for how the world works and what’s possible for people like us. These cultural standards seep into our subconscious beliefs.

                For instance, a young girl raised in a community that still emphasizes long held beliefs about limited opportunities for women may absorb that limited thinking. Over time that can result in beliefs like, “I can’t be a scientist” or “women shouldn’t be ambitious.” This girl’s ambitions become restricted by these false cultural narratives.

• Education and Knowledge Gathering

                Well-intentioned as it may be, formal education often teaches us “facts” and standards that inadvertently limit our beliefs about ourselves and others. A student who struggles with math may get labeled “not a math person” by teachers, even though they have the innate aptitude, just not the proper learning approach yet. This belief can haunt a person for life.

• Unconscious Absorption from Life Experiences

                We pick up limiting beliefs from subtle life experiences starting in childhood. An offhand judgment from a peer, a small failure, a stray comment all quietly implant self-limiting beliefs that can affect us for a lifetime if not addressed. Imagine a 12-year-old girl eager to make friends. One day she awkwardly misreads social cues and gets excluded from a party. She adopts the belief, “I’m socially weird,” which sticks with her for decades, stunting her confidence.

Next step: Identify and challenge your limiting beliefs

Because they operate in your subconscious, the first step to overcoming your limiting beliefs is to drag them into the light.

Ask yourself:

• What chronic stress, frustration and resistance do I feel in my life?

• What drama and conflict do my beliefs create with others?

• What goals and dreams feel impossible for me to achieve?

• When do I think, “I can’t do that”?

These are entry points to excavate the limiting beliefs that constrain you from your potential. Once you identify your limiting beliefs, there are proven tactics to challenge limiting beliefs. They include:

Journal about them: Write the belief down clearly. Re-read it after 24 hours for a fresh perspective. New insights will emerge.

Get another opinion: Share your belief with trusted friends. Does it seem valid from their perspective? Hearing from others helps us detach from beliefs we’ve overly identified with.

Advise yourself as a friend: If a dear friend had this belief, what would you say to them? Take your own advice!

Examine counter-examples: Has this belief always been true? What past experiences contradict it? Hard evidence trumps inner doubts.

Research opposing views: What do experts say that disrupts your limiting belief? Knowledge expands limiting lenses.

Visualize and affirm alternatives: Imagine how your life would transform with a new empowering belief. Then affirm it through positive self-talk.

Next step: Fake It ‘til You Make It

If you act as if your new empowering belief is already true, it will gradually become your reality. Our actions shape our beliefs as much as our beliefs shape our actions.

Let’s think about this technique in action. Imagine Sarah freezes up when speaking in her college classes due to her belief that “I’m terrified of public speaking.”

First, Sarah journals about where this belief came from. She remembers being a shy child and flubbing a class presentation in middle school, cementing her fear. Sarah asks friends if they also believe public speaking is terrifying. They reassure her that everyone gets nervous, and her fear is unreasonable.

She reminds herself that she can easily order food in restaurants and chat with peers daily, so she can speak confidently in public. Her past failures weren’t inevitable.

After reading about exposure therapy, she vows to start small by complimenting someone each day. Finding she can do this comfortably, Sarah gradually exposes herself to more challenging speaking situations while affirming, “I can speak confidently when I choose to.” Within a few months, Sarah’s once terrifying belief has transformed into, “With practice, I can speak competently in public.”

The Liberation of Changing Beliefs

Disrupting limiting beliefs takes dedicated focus and intention, but steadily replacing old constraints with empowering beliefs liberates us to create the lives we truly want. It allows the eager, but doubting, student to become the valedictorian, the chronically single person to find a fulfilling relationship, the frustrated worker to build their dream career, and the wannabe entrepreneur to launch the business they always envisioned.

By updating the narratives running through our subconscious, we install new and improved operating systems for greater achievement. Limiting beliefs are just old programs that no longer serve the people we aspire to become. When we identify and rewrite them, we reclaim the power to achieve our boldest dreams and highest potential.

What limiting belief are you ready to rewrite today?