INTRODUCTION
“What is a self-limiting belief?” is a question that I have tried to answer too many times over the years. It’s not that I couldn’t find a meaning to that question, as answers were easy to find in many walks of life. The workplace is especially rich in them, but not the only place where you can find people giving up on their aspi- rations because they think they are not on a par with other com- petitors. School is another place where people, although young and full of hope, refuse to push and move toward their goals. This has always fascinated me, and although I now can see when such a limitation occurs to me, I have never grasped the process that makes it happen. In other words, it is a hurdle I have been aware of but struggled to overcome.
The thing is, limiting beliefs are there to protect you. Your brain is wired to do everything within its power to make sure you survive. Thousands of years ago, when human beings lived in the wild, limiting beliefs helped them to survive. They refused to move into the unknown because there could have been all kinds of feral threats. People created villages, and whoever didn’t con- form to the standards of the tribe would be pushed out of the village, which often meant death.
Since birth, you unconditionally absorb the beliefs about money, careers, society, health, and relationships that your par- ents, teachers, and siblings instill into your brain. This happens to make sure you know the threats you have to protect yourself from. The process begins in the womb. You begin learning about your environment even before you are born, and it adds layer upon layer until around your sixth birthday. From that moment on, you very likely choose what to believe or not according to the belief system you have been equipped with.
This huge amount of information gets stored in your limbic system, which is the oldest part of your brain. It processes emotions and pain through the cingulate cortex, learning and memory through the hippocampi, emotional monitoring (and therefore the well-known flight-or-fight response) through the amygdala, and all other monitoring (body temperature, hydra- tion, hormone production, and appetite) through the hypothal- amus. In short, the limbic system stores non-conscious habits and behavior patterns, emotions, memories, navigation, and intuition. Importantly, it decides how to make sense of new experiences using the information stored from your past. That’s how you are wired.
Fortunately, your brain is a fantastic part of you, and it can be rewired through internal and external experiences, sensory inputs, and learning. This potential is neuroplasticity, the wing- man that will help you build the life you desire.
Looking at my life experiences, I must say that I have always limited myself. I still do, especially in the areas I touched upon earlier, all of which can be summarized in one phrase: leaving the comfort zone.
Simply by writing this book, I am miles outside my comfort zone. However, I am happy because I know that by navigating away from home, I can help you to get past your self-limiting beliefs much faster than I got past mine.
This book shows you how to use the way your brain works to your advantage. Thanks to neuroplasticity as well as the right practices, your brain can adapt, learn, and rejuvenate. I’ll show you how to use the power of the brain to overcome your limiting beliefs. This book is a toolbox in which you can find what you need to improve your life.
This book is for you if you want to have a better-paying job but can’t find the way to get it; if you want a better relationship but it seems impossible to achieve; if you want a healthier life- style; if you want a clean and loving home.
This book is for all those courageous people out there who want to live with meaning and stop complaining about what hap- pens to them. It’s for all of you who want to take responsibility for what happens in your life and start changing it in the way you desire. It’s for you if you want to take control of your time and smile every day, knowing that things are progressing in the way you want them to.
I wrote this book because not so long ago, I was in that same situation. I was on the complaining side of the river, and I was surrounded by people who complained about everything. If it rained, it was too wet. If it was sunny, it was too hot. If they poured a cold drink, it was too cold. If they poured a warm drink, it was too hot. I found myself acting in the same way.
But that way of thinking was getting me nowhere. I was stuck in a corporate position I didn’t like. I was gaining weight and I was not exercising. I spent my evening in front of TV programs that added nothing to my life. My social media algorithms affirmed and reaffirmed the things that were pushing me down.
Mediocrity was all around me, and so I was becoming mediocre. There was always something or someone else to blame for my situation: the government, the weather, the boss, inflation, you name it.
I was not living the life I wanted, and I was disappointed with myself. Suddenly, a voice from within pulled me toward a resur- rection. It was that positive young kid I had once been, full of energy and very entrepreneurial, starting to kick my backside. The same kid who taught himself to speak English and was told by his teacher that he couldn’t write but got one of his compos- itions awarded at the same school by a commission of independ- ent teachers. The same kid who arrived in New York in 1998 for an internship with nowhere to stay and no friends, then ten days later booked into the Kolping House with shared toilet facilities but still no idea about what would mean to live in New York for three months. Well, that kid still lives inside me and wants a life filled with greatness.
The journey of becoming a better me took several years, but it was worth it — and it’s not over by any means. I remember with gratitude all the days of misery that preceded those of suc- cess, because those days made me write this book with a clear intention: to help you get the life you desire much faster than I did.
What separates you from having it is within your mind. Yes, it’s that close to you. Your thoughts determine what you are. The issue is that your thoughts are the consequence of the program- ming you received at a young age. Those are the beliefs you agreed to believe, and therefore, built your life on. The aim now is to follow a path that will help you get rid of those limiting beliefs and build new, empowering ones.
This book is a blueprint to reprogram your beliefs, updating the software of your magnificent brain to the current version. You’re no longer that young human; you’re grown up now and you live in the 21st century. You deserve to have all you want from your life.
By following this blueprint, you will be able to achieve imme- diate benefits in terms of decision-making and daily prioritiza- tion. You will get clarity about your goals and mission in life. You will progressively get rid of your limiting beliefs and embody new, empowering ones. Your health, mental and physical, will benefit as well. Nothing can be achieved without a high level of a healthy life.
“Thoughts are things,” Napoleon Hill said in his famous book, Think and Grow Rich. it is up to you to make sure the things that come out of your thoughts are those that you genuinely want, and not those that scare you most.
PART ONE - WHAT IS A BELIEF?
“Never say never, because limits, like fear, are often just an illusion.”
(michael jordan, businessman and former basketball star)
Me: “I want to work for NASA.”
Inner Critic: “Yeah, sure. With all the talented and skilled people
out there, why should they choose you?”
Me: “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s be more realistic. Let’s find a job in
line with my skills so that I don’t make myself look
ridiculous.”
Me: “I want to be promoted. I am skillful and determined. I
deserve it!”
IC: “Hey, have you seen how many colleagues are competing for
that promotion? Do you honestly think they are less skilled than you? They would hate you for taking the position they are aspiring to! Do you want them all to hate you? Have you seen that the big boss only talks to A, B, and C?”
Me: “Yeah, I’d feel horrible if I made my colleagues hated me
for stealing their dreams. Moreover, they’re as skilled as I am. Actually, many of them are even more skilled than me.”
“Don’t let the fear of loss outweigh the glory of gain.”
Sound familiar? How many times have you heard yourself or a friend say something similar?
It starts with a desire, which your brain quickly comes up with an array of reasons not to pursue. When that happens, you stop operating as a free, thriving individual in charge of their own fate. You decide to follow the path of least resistance by perpetuating your daily routine.
It may even be very painful for you to realize, but the idea of going all-in to something new scares you. The fear of loss out- weighs the glory of gain.
This ignites the self-doubt loop that ultimately limits you. Limited thinking is based exclusively on assumptions. There is no science, no math and no facts backing up the reasons why you give up, just perceptions and beliefs.
“Failing to try is the death of your prosperity.”
What is the consequence of that process? Your self-esteem low- ers.
You are severely impacted by this. Life continues as always, but deep in your heart, you know that you gave up. You didn’t try to achieve your aspiration. You didn’t follow your instinct.
You know that you failed to try, which is different than failing by trying. When you try and fail, you’re learning. You get valu- able information that helps you to improve, dissect the causes of your failure, and learn how to do things differently.
Success is the result of failure. Experience is what you get when you fail.
Failing to try is different. If you give up before trying, the message you give yourself is, “I’m not good enough.” You devalue yourself. Soon, you start judging yourself; you think about your behavior, and before you know it, you’ve formed a habit of giving up.
“Be impeccable with your word.”
(Don Miguel Ruiz, author and spiritualist)
Once you’ve formed a habit of giving up, your words change accordingly. Phrases like “I can’t do it,” “I don’t know how,” and “I am not good enough” become the ones you end up using when faced with a challenge.
The fact is that your words become your thoughts, your thoughts become your habits, your habits become your beliefs, your beliefs become your behavior, and your behavior becomes your reality.
That’s why learning to ponder the words you use every day is of great importance. In his masterpiece, The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz states very clearly: “Be impeccable with your word.”
Use your word to speak with integrity and avoid using it to gossip about others or to criticize yourself. Say only what you mean. Use the power of your word only in the direction of truth and love.
Your word is the medium with which you manifest every- thing in your life.
What is your dream? What is that thing that would make you happy? You surely have one thing. I can see you; your eyes have lit up, and you’re thinking of it right now. Oh yes, that small smile tells me more than any amount of words.
That one thing makes you feel good. It’s your dream, and you think what your life would be like if only you had the guts to pursue it.
The good news is that you can get it. Over the following pages, I’ll show you how, but first, let’s understand how our enemy operates. You must know your enemy so that you can defeat it.
“Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.”
(Sun Tzu, the art of war)
1. FEAR
Fear: /fɪər/
“A strong, bad feeling that you get when you think that something bad might happen.”
In The Success Principles, Jack Canfield reports that according to research, we talk to ourselves 50,000 times per day, and 80% of the time, it’s negative self-talk.
The reason for this is fear. It can be any kind of fear; being physically harmed, ridiculed, judged, you name it. Whatever happens, we start decoding it with a bunch of automatic negative talk that can even start projecting our thoughts into other peo- ple’s heads. It’s called mind-reading, and it’s a skill humans don’t have yet. Imagine you’re sitting in a meeting, and your boss cuts you short. You start thinking they dislike you, only to find out later that they had to catch a flight and were in a hurry. Refrain from mind-reading; it’s useless.
I’ve discovered during my career that most of the biggest relationship issues arise because of this presumed ability to read minds. It’s something that successful people avoid doing because they have their “whys” very clear in their minds. They know what their mission is. They set goals, and they set deadlines to achieve them. They avoid wasting time on assumptions. Instead, they love executing by showing up day in and day out.
The definition of fear quoted at the start of this chapter states that fear is a feeling we get when we think that something ter- rible might happen. Let’s go a little deeper and explore what it means to “think”:
Think: /θɪŋk/
“To believe that something is true, or to expect that some-thing will happen, although you are not sure.”
So now the definition of fear becomes: “a strong, bad feeling that you get when you expect that something bad will happen, al- though you are not sure.”
This definition opens a new world of possibilities. It’s fear of the unknown that drives our inner critic, our negative self- talk, and that little voice that accompanies us at all times. The unknown might refer to what other people think about us, or what might happen to our lives if we change jobs, or what our lives will look like if we break up with our partners. Often, it leads to stasis. When this happens, we don’t take any step for- ward to get the life that we secretly aspire to.
“Nature has placed mankind under the governance
of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.”
(jeremy bentham, english philosopher and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism)
The fear of pain is one of the most powerful drivers of human behavior, as is searching for pleasure. They’re interrelated: avoiding pain brings pleasure, and missing pleasure causes pain. That’s why we try to read other people’s minds, to try and avoid any behavior that might cause pain. Our brain tends to make sense of the current situation based on older experiences, through pat- tern recognition and emotional tagging. For example, if you experienced a painful dentist session and tagged it as something to avoid, your brain will do all within its power to stop you from going to the dentist again, regardless of how important it is.
However, that is the self-imposed limit we have to face if we want to live a happier, more fulfilling life.
Before moving on to the next chapter, think for a moment of the placebo effect. How is it possible that nowadays, multi- billion-dollar pharmaceutical companies still test new drugs against inert substances to see if they are effective or not? Gov- ernment regulatory agencies approve new drugs only after tests establish not only that patients respond to them, but also that their effect is greater than that of placebo by way of affecting more patients, affecting responders more strongly, or both.
The testing process goes like this:
1. Define the study group according to the pathology the drug will cure.
2. Define the length of the test.
3. Determine whether it’s a double-blinded (research and patents don’t know who is taking the placebo) or single-blinded (patients don’t know) test.
4. Randomly divide the group into two subgroups, A and B.
5. Subgroup A receives the real drug.
6. Subgroup B receives the inert substance (the placebo).
7. Check whether subgroup A received comparable health benefits higher than those of subgroup B, or vice versa.
Results can be worse or better. In the former case, the drug had no meaningful effect on the pathology and so gets rejected. In the latter, the drug proved its efficacy.
So, what’s the placebo effect? It’s the effect of the expectation of the patient receiving that treatment. In other words, when they think the treatment will help them get better, they get bet- ter, regardless of whether they’re given a drug or an inert sub- stance.
In his book, You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter, Joe Dispenza reports the case of a woman who had been affected by depression since she was a teenager. She had suicidal tendencies, and her quality of life wasn’t good at all. When she was 46, she got into a group study to test a new anti-depressant (Effexor), which she took very seriously. She complied with the prescrip- tion and never missed a pill. She even developed the declared side-effect symptoms that were announced beforehand. Although she knew that there was a placebo subgroup in the test, she was sure she was in the drug subgroup because she was feeling much better — she even had the side effects. The patients received an EEG before and after the test began. Her EEG was one that showed much higher activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the seat of all the major executive functions of our brain and is the one that is impacted by depression (which lowers its activity). When she was told that she was on placebo, she couldn’t believe it, but the results of her EEG showed a great recovery. Moreover, she wasn’t the only person to record such a good recovery and such different brain-wave patterns. 38% of the placebo group felt better, compared to 52% of the Effexor one.
Former Stanford University Biologist Bruce Lipton, in his book The Biology of Belief, brings up the case of Sam Londe, a shoe salesman who died of esophageal cancer just weeks after he was diagnosed. What shocked the doctors that performed the autopsy was that the cancer appeared too small to be fatal. According to Lipton, what caused him to die so precautiously were his beliefs and those of his family members. He and they believed he was already dead, even though he still had many years in front of him. This is called the nocebo effect, which is when you think that something is bad for you, and regardless of the science disproving your belief, you just feel bad.
Beliefs can make you or break you. Let’s meet your enemy now.
2. DISEMPOWERING BELIEFS
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.” (John Milton, Paradise Lost)
Belief: /bi’li:f/
“A mental attitude of acceptance or assent toward a propo- sition without the full intellectual knowledge required to guarantee its truth.”
Girl: “How big it is! What is it?”
Dad: “It’s a General Sherman!”1
Girl: “Wow! It’s so enormous, tall, and solid!”
Dad: “And you can only see how big it is outside! Its roots
spread for 100 to 150 feet, and the biggest ones have
roots that spread for over 200 feet!” Girl: “200 feet, Dad?”
Dad: “Yes! 200 feet!”
If you go to the Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, you can likely catch such snippets of dialogue. Those trees are mag- nificent. You can touch each of them and still be surprised by their majesty. Some of them might be smaller, others might be weaker but what determines their greatness is rarely found on the outside. More likely, it’s hidden from the human eye. The same is true for each of us. How we are inside, so we show out- side. The quality of our thinking determines the quality of our actions.
“Don’t believe everything you hear — even in your mind.”
(Daniel G. Amen, M.D., Psychiatrist, brain disorder specialist, and author)
You keep behaving in the same way, and you regret it. There’s an opening for a new position, and the requirements match your skill set, but you think you aren’t ready for that jump. It’s a way-too-ambitious leap for you. “There are colleagues more qualified than me,” or so you think.
You’d like to exercise but you give up; one workout wouldn’t change your status, you think. I’ll never be fit and in good shape. I’d better watch that movie and forget about it for now.
You want to date someone, but you don’t think they would look twice at you. If I ask them out, they’ll laugh at me. You desist. You don’t try. And you can’t know what they think about you. You shy away.
You never enter any competitions because you think you’re not on par with the other participants.
You never read books because you believe they won’t add anything to your life.
Regardless of the example, you get the point.
You live according to what your beliefs tell you. You don’t question them but take them as immutable laws of nature. And because of this, you don’t progress.
“What we manifest comes from what we believe we are. All we see is a consequence of all we believe. All we believe comes from what we think is true. What we think is what we are.” (The Buddha)
We’ve seen that, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a belief is the feeling of being sure that something exists or is true. The stronger the emotion, the deeper the belief. Beliefs are not factual but based on a bunch of assumptions.
A limiting belief prevents you from performing at your best to achieve what you aspire to.
Disempowering beliefs are rooted in the past. They come from the early childhood programming that followed you into adulthood. But fortunately, you can change them.
Examples of disempowering beliefs are plenty:
I’m afraid to talk in public because I think I’m a terrible speaker.
I’m scared to speak to more senior people in the team.
I don’t read books because it’s a waste of time.
I neglect math because I’m not smart enough to learn it.
I settle for low-paying jobs because money is evil.
I look for jobs where I’m overqualified so I feel more
secure.
I avoid relationships because I’m afraid to suffer.
I don’t work out because it won’t work for me. Those who work out are just showing off.
As you can see from the examples, none of them are based on facts, but rather on feelings that have roots in the past.
3. GLOBAL BELIEFS
“One change in a global limiting belief can have a big impact on our life.”
(Tony Robbins, American author, coach, and speaker)
Global beliefs are assumptions about self, others, and the world. Global beliefs might regard the benevolence and fairness of the world, the nature of humanity, personal control, luck, randomness, vulnerability, and how or why events occur. They include people’s core views of themselves, which form a sense of personal identity.
Global beliefs are those that apply regardless of where you are and what you do. They usually present themselves in abso- lutes: “People are selfish,” or “Life is a nightmare,” or “They are all against me.” They are generalist and stereotypical.
When you have a global belief about something, you’re bringing an experience that you had in the past into the present, regardless of the new context you’re in. When you say, “It will never work!” or, “I can’t do that!”, what you’re effectively doing is limiting yourself to the existence of predictive behaviors. You exclude the opportunity to grow by experimenting and doing things you’ve never done before.
In this way, you use your beliefs against you. It’s a way of say- ing, “I give up living my life wholly and fully because all of my past experiences will repeat in the future in the same manner.” The issue is that when you expect that something will have a negative outcome, it will likely end up exactly how you imagined it. This happens because our brain hates gaps, and it is continuously seeking to close those between conscious thinking and experienced reality. Say you think a lot about getting a new car. Your brain, through the reticular activating system, makes sure you start to see as many cars of that sort as possible until you end up buying one or discarding the thought. The same thing hap- pens with your beliefs. The brain doesn’t recognize if they’re positive or negative; it just makes sure you experience what your thoughts keep bringing up.
“Your subconscious mind does not argue with you. It accepts what your conscious mind decrees. If you say, “I can’t afford it,” your subconscious mind works to make it true. Select a better thought. Decree, “I’ll buy it. I accept it in my mind.”
(Dr. Joseph Murphy, the power of your subconscious mind)
In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins writes that our beliefs are just “generalizations about our past based on our interpreta- tion of painful and pleasurable experiences.” In other words, “it’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean.”
Considering what you’ve just learned, we need to focus on what we think and say about our daily lives if we want to live more happily. Whatever happens to you — let’s say you get an invitation to a photography exhibition or an art gallery. If you catch yourself turning it down because of a global belief, I invite you to stop and do the opposite. Find space in your schedule to visit that photography exhibition or art gallery. You will benefit greatly, but you will know it afterward. A change in just one of our global beliefs has a massive impact on our lives. It’s like open- ing the door to a new stream of experiences and opportunities whose existence we weren’t even aware of. Your world expands, and you expand with it.
Global beliefs run in the background. They are generic and based on stereotypes. They present themselves with is/am/are verb forms.
Examples of global beliefs are:
I am bad at math.
They are bad-mouthing me.
They don’t like me.
They are too beautiful for me.
I never know how to behave.
Politicians don’t care about the common good.
Swimming pools are polluted.
My colleagues are better than me.
My competitors are acting unfairly.
All snakes are dangerous.
Do not despair; your brain is magnificent, and thanks to neuro- plasticity it can rewire in a way that better serves you. With that in mind, let’s keep on learning about the nature of limiting beliefs. In Part III, I’ll show you how to reprogram your brain to forget about them.
4. IF-THEN
“You are today what your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.” (James Allen, As a man thinketh)
“If I ask for a promotion, my colleagues will hate me.”
What a powerful, limiting belief that is! You’re limiting your- self because you fear other people will stop loving you if you progress.
But is it true? Are any of your assumptions actually true? Do your colleagues love you? If so, why they should hate you if you get promoted?
You see, limiting beliefs aren’t based on anything but your own fears. The issue is that they’re very powerful. “If-then” beliefs are everywhere; I can go as far as to say that they control the way we behave in society. We go out for lunch with our col- leagues and fancy a salad, but everybody else has a burger. What happens? We have a burger, too. If we get a salad, they might think we want to be healthy and they don’t. We’re afraid of not conforming to the rest of the tribe by appearing uselessly healthy. Such behavior is wholly normal because our brain knows that survival happens when we live within the tribe and don’t get pushed out of it.
Thousands of years ago, living outside the tribe very likely meant death, or at least a difficult existence. Luckily for us, there’s no longer any need to belong to tribes that don’t resonate with our values. Nowadays, we can survive alone; there’s no question about it. However, if-then beliefs short- circuit our inner desire to experience new things. They’re emo- tional gates; when we have them in place, surely, we won’t do what we wanted to do in the first place: ask that question, speak up, talk to a stranger, travel alone. They are persistent, but they do not last if you know how to overcome them. You‘ll see that in Part III.
If-then beliefs stop you from doing something in the now. They are situational.
Examples of if-then beliefs are:
If I wake up early, then I’ll feel exhausted all day.
If I ask them out, then they’ll laugh at me.
If I fail this exam, then everybody will know.
If I go running, then I’ll get injured.
If I don’t ask any questions, then I won’t be criticized.
If I get a promotion, then people will hate me.
If I become rich, then people will want my money.
If I don’t go out every day with my friends, then they will
cut me out.
If I spend more time at work, then I’ll get a promotion.
If-then beliefs are often used to condition our emotions. Think about the following sentence: “If I buy that car, then I’ll be hap- py.” You can substitute the object or the emotion in the sentence, but I’m sure you can relate to the sentiment. The reality is that once you’ve bought that object, you’re soon unsatisfied again because you want another one. As such, it becomes crucial to get rid of these kinds of beliefs altogether.
5. EMPOWERING BELIEFS
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
Fortunately, beliefs can be empowering as well as limiting. Em- powering beliefs are those that make you fly, that support and have supported all the most successful decisions you’ve made in your life.
If you look back at the last time you experienced a success, like passing an exam or quitting a job you disliked for a new one more in tune with your inclinations, all those decisions had a fundamental empowering belief supporting them. Examples of empowering beliefs are when you face a tough task but say to yourself, “I can do it,” “I’ve got this”, “I know how to do it.”
Belief in your ability to create is deeply rooted within you. Empowering beliefs sustain you; they support you; they make sure you have the right fuel to make your engine run, and that is when you decide to fight another fight.
Empowering beliefs are those that make you move when the going gets tough. They are those that make you whistle in the morning when you have a dreadful day in front of you. Empowering beliefs are those that disable the “collapse” command when you lose somebody dear so suddenly that you don’t even believe it’s true.
Like limiting beliefs, they are based upon past experiences: that time when your mom encouraged you to stand up, or when your dad told you that you played well at sports. Such moments are within you, and they make a difference any time you face a challenge. Empowering beliefs sustain you whenever you face a challenge.
Examples of empowering beliefs are:
There is no failure, only results.
I am excited about what is ahead.
I am responsible for the life I create.
I am excited by challenges; they make me find solutions to overcome them.
I always try to be the best person I can be.
I create my destiny.
Life is beautiful. I am grateful for experiencing it one more day.
I am brave, and I don’t fear the future. I am in the present.
I am strong, powerful, and majestic. All that I want, I create
You can add your own empowering beliefs to the list; it will help you assess who you are and what is supporting you when faced with adversity.
PART I: KEY TAKEAWAYS
What is a belief? It is the feeling of being certain that something exists or is true. The stronger the emotion attached to the feeling, the stronger the belief.
What kind of characteristics do beliefs have? There are disempowering, empowering, global, and “if-then” kinds of beliefs.
What is a disempowering belief? One that keeps you from performing at your best and getting what you aspire to.
Disempowering beliefs are rooted in the past, but they can be changed.
Empowering beliefs are those that sustain you whenever you face a challenge.
Global beliefs are those that exist in the background; they are generic and stereotypical. They present themselves in the present, absolute tense.
If-then beliefs stop you from doing things in the moment. They are situational.
When we believe a cure works and we feel better regardless of whether all we are taking are sugar pills, that’s the placebo effect. Nocebo is the opposite of a placebo. Placebo happens when we have positive expectations of the results of the treatment; nocebo occurs when we believe in the inefficacy of the treatment.
According to the expectation model, placebo and nocebo are based on the subject belief system.
Positive beliefs improve the efficacy of the treatment. On the other hand, negative beliefs worsen the response of the patient to the medication.
