The locked door: how limiting beliefs quietly hold us back

How would you react if a stranger told you, “You can’t do that – you’re not clever enough”? If a teacher said that to my child, my sunny, calm disposition would be replaced by fully protective mama bear energy. I’m sure you’d be the same with your own children. And yet most of us have a voice in our heads saying exactly that to ourselves, every single day. “You’re not enough.”

Coaches call it a limiting belief. The recording that plays on repeat, so familiar that you’ve stopped noticing it’s even there. This article is about my limiting belief, exploring writing, but it could be applied to anything.

What would you write if you let yourself?

Not an email. Not a report. Not a WhatsApp message dashed off between the school run and a work call. I mean something that’s actually yours. A thought you’ve been turning over. A story only you could tell. A thing you’ve been meaning to put into words for years.

Most of us are exhausted. Not crisis-level exhausted (though some days, let’s be honest). Just the low-level constant hum of school emails, ageing parents, and the news. The uncertainty around jobs, AI, and what the world is going to look like for our children. We’re swimming in information, in noise, in other people’s words, and when we give ourselves five minutes or even half an hour, we just don’t know what to do with it.

So we pick up our phones. Get annoyed with ourselves for doomscrolling. Feel a bit rubbish about it. Go back to doing stuff because at least that keeps us occupied. And the cycle continues.

What if we were to just start something for five minutes? Put the phone in a drawer and just start.

The locked door you’ve been walking past

For me, it was writing. But it brought up a spectrum of limiting beliefs. I hear the same ones over and over:

• “I don’t have time.”
• “I don’t have anything interesting to say.”
• “Who would want to read it?”
• “I’ve never been a writer.”

These are particular to writing, but pick your own personal flavour. This is so universal to the human experience, and you are in no way alone in it.

I’ve carried that last one since I was eleven years old, when a teacher looked at something I’d written with an expression that said, quite clearly, I give up with this kid. And that was that.

It wouldn’t be strictly true to say I didn’t write anything after that point, because we all know how much writing school and life require. But as for anything personal or creative, my confidence was gone. And I’ve been telling myself this for the last thirty years, so I can’t even remember the good comments any more. They don’t register.

There’s a name for this: negativity bias. We can hear one bad thing and nine good things, but only remember the bad. I had unconsciously put myself in a box at eleven years old. The not-good-at-writing box. And I stayed in it for thirty years.

Not because I’d tried and failed. Because I’d decided, based on one tired teacher on one ordinary afternoon, that the door wasn’t for me.

What if the story isn’t true?

The belief and the truth are not the same thing.

“I don’t have time” might actually mean “I haven’t yet decided this is worth making time for.” That’s a choice, not a fact.

“I don’t have anything interesting to say” might mean “I’ve lived a full life and I do have something meaningful to say. I just haven’t trusted it yet.”

“Who would want to read it?” might mean “I’m so used to putting everyone else first that doing something purely for myself feels indulgent.” And that one is worth sitting with.

My teacher might have been having a terrible day. She might have been young and overwhelmed herself. Any of those things could be true. But the story I told myself was because of that moment? Only I have the power to change it.

Finding the key

You don’t have to start a blog, publish anything, or become a writer in any official sense. I just had to notice the belief that was firmly keeping the door shut. You don’t have to set high goals for your thing – just hear the stories you’re telling yourself about why you can’t take a first step.

Start by noticing the belief. What’s the narrative running on repeat? Not “I should write more”, underneath that. What’s the actual story? Say it out loud if you can. Write it down, which I appreciate is a slightly ironic suggestion.

Then ask: Is this actually true? Or is it a story you inherited from someone else, from a moment that’s long gone, from a version of you that simply didn’t know any better?

And then write something. Not for anyone else. Something you would want to read. A memory. An observation. Three sentences about how the light looked this morning. It doesn’t need to be good. It just needs to be yours.

Whatever gets you to the page, use it. The words still come from you. That’s what matters. Because imperfect beats imaginary. Every single time.

The next time you can make five minutes

If you feel the resistance or the pull of your phone. Stop. Notice. What is that voice saying? Has your chest gone tight? Are your shoulders up around your ears? Is there a reason suddenly appearing from nowhere why now isn’t quite the right time?

Just notice it. That’s all. You don’t have to fix it or fight it or reframe it into something positive. Just see it for what it is – a very old story, written a long time ago, by a version of you that was doing their best with what they had.

Life is genuinely hard sometimes. A lot of it isn’t in our control, and no amount of positive thinking changes that. But this one thing – the story you’re telling yourself about what you’re capable of – that bit might actually be yours to change.

You don’t have to believe it yet. Just notice it’s there. 

What’s your locked door?