On External Limiting Beliefs

I talk a lot about limiting beliefs. Those pesky mental habits or saboteurs that color the way you view yourself, your world, and your abilities. But what I haven’t spoken about before is the phenomenon of external limiting beliefs.

External limiting beliefs are the pesky (at best) or harmful (at worst) beliefs that other people hold about you. They’re mental projections of someone’s personal beliefs, prejudices, or insecurities. I’m not talking about non-judgmental, objective observations about you— for example, Santana isn’t good at video games. Try as I might, I just can’t get the characters to walk in the direction I want them to. I’m talking about people projecting their BS onto you—for example, Santana will never be able to graduate college so she should just join the military (this came courtesy of my high school guidance counselor—ha!).

Much to our chagrin, human beings raised in society will absorb some limiting beliefs about others—it’s unavoidable. We’re also the products of our home lives, and parents often project their own limiting beliefs onto their children. So there are many potential sources of external limiting beliefs, and unfortunately, many opportunities for those beliefs to become our own. Because a person is constantly bombarded by critical messages from the external environment, those messages can become habitualized and internalized.

What Do External Limiting Beliefs Look Like in Your Career?

Picture this. I was in a meeting presenting the results of a new initiative to bring customer renewals online for the first time in an organization’s history. After launching a brand new email nurture campaign for renewals, the results were astonishing: nearly 80% had converted to paid renewal. With typical email conversion rates hovering around 2-5%, with peaks up to 15% depending on campaign type, 80% blew all benchmarks out of the water. <— Did that sentence sound aggressive to you? Because when I uttered this simple, verifiable sentence out loud in that meeting, another senior leader went directly to my manager to complain that I had been overly aggressive by saying that. The feedback from my manager was, “You will never succeed in your career if you’re so aggressive. You should communicate more softly”

Why am I telling you this story? I’m sharing this personal anecdote to illustrate an important point. A well-documented microaggression against WOC in the workplace is calling them “aggressive.” Calling women in the workplace aggressive for communicating with directness is a form of gender bias; one study by the Harvard Business Review found that out of 200 performance reviews, 74% of women received feedback that they were “aggressive” while only 24% of their male counterparts received the same feedback. Women at work and in society are expected to behave in certain ways (think: accommodating, quiet, forgiving, demure), and when they behave outside of these expectations, their actions are often policed to corral them back in line.

In my story, the behavior of directly communicating the success and value of the program built by my team was an affront, and the performance feedback was to become more accommodating, pleasing, and demure.

This is external BS. I didn’t start that fire— it was always burnin’ since the world was turnin’. External limiting beliefs can look a lot like this. They are projections of external BS projected onto you to influence your behavior. Like this example, they are often based on social structures like racism, sexism, colorism, ableism, or any ISM. External LBs can be positive or negative, right? Some groups are expected to succeed and do well by society. Some groups are not.

At work, external LBs are always harmful. Even if you benefit from an external LB, it is at the expense of another group. And workplace external limiting beliefs become particularly insidious when they are combined with power. Because prejudice + power = discrimination.

What To Do When Leadership Has Limiting Beliefs About You?

Firstly, dear reader, take a deep breath and give yourself a hug. It’s not in your head, you aren’t crazy, and you aren’t alone. Whatever form external limiting beliefs in the workplace look like, you have options available to you. You may not have control over others or the system, but you do have power. Leadership may think you’re too something or can’t do something. They may not see you as “leadership material” or suited to the industry you’re in. They may downplay your experience or contribution. But they don’t have power over your beliefs if you don’t let them.

Here are some things you can explore if leadership does not believe in you:

• Non-judgmental Inquiry: Honestly, it’s probably not you. But we’re all learning and growing beings. When you’re slapped with feedback that feels off-base, you can dig into a non-judgmental inquiry of yourself, your actions, skills, or experiences. The non-judgmental piece is important because you need as clear a picture of yourself as possible. No harsh self-criticism, doubt, or triggers. At the same time, no self-inflation, grandiosity, ego, or avoidance. Just the facts.

• Connected Conversation: If it’s challenging to do non-judgmental inquiry, or simply a nice bonus, a connected conversation with a trusted friend or mentor can help wonders. This is especially true for all the verbal processors out there. A connected conversation is an intentional, present, and vulnerable conversation with someone you trust. Ask your trusted person if they can hold a little space to help you explore and reflect without judgment. We don’t want a hype woman for this; we love it when our friends build us up. But in this instance, we want candid feedback, not hype.

• Let It Fly: Something I often say is, “If it doesn’t apply, let it fly.” I know this can be easier said than done. And yet, so much of our suffering comes from attaching to BS that isn’t ours in the first place. The desire to correct the record or make people change their minds about you comes from a hurt place or an ego place. And, it’s a fool’s errand.

• PQ Rep/Mindfulness: When someone says something inaccurate about us, the desire to defend can be STRONG. It can also trigger lots of other painful things. One way to support you as you let it fly is to bring in mindfulness practice. That could look like two minutes of bringing intentional focus to your breath, to what’s in your visual field, or what you can hear. It could be meditation. It could be labeling. When it happens to me, I like to notice and label the feeling, and then rub my thumb against my fingers with so much focus I can feel the ridges of my fingertips.

• Get a Coach: It’s not always easy to see yourself clearly when you’re in the eye of a workplace storm. Coaches can help you reflect on where you are and where you want to be, and then bridge the gap between those two places. It’s important to pick the right coach. If you’re experiencing LBs, microaggressions or the ISMs, you need to ensure your coach is familiar with the structures that uphold these toxic workplace practices. If not, you run the risk of reinforcing the external limiting beliefs by getting coached to work within the system e.g. how to become more palatable to a system that harms you.

• GTOF: If you’re in an environment in which leadership and or colleagues habitually lob external limiting beliefs at you or —worse— weaponize those beliefs into discrimination, you can leave. I know when it’s happening, many will stay. You might think it’s your fault, that something is wrong with you that needs fixing. But an environment that uses LBs, microaggressions, or the ISMs will not see your talent and value, and you will not thrive there. You deserve to move out of survive and into thrive. And charting your exit path can sometimes be the most compassionate action for yourself.

May you be well,

S