The Power of Beliefs: How to Liberate Your Potential

Most people mistake their beliefs for facts. Here's how to challenge them and unlock possibilities you couldn't see before.

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Our beliefs are lies we tell ourselves. They can liberate us or limit our potential. Ask Serena William—at Wimbledon, she was her worst rival.

When Serena Williams strode onto the Wimbledon grass, her legendary power was never in question. Her serve was crushing. Her backhand was unstoppable. But she wouldn’t go to the net. She’d see a short ball, the kind that screams “approach,” and she would hesitate to volley and miss the point. Serena was not playing at her full potential because of a story in her head.

Her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, intervened not by addressing her technique but by addressing her beliefs.

He decided to fight a lie with another lie.

After a match, he told Serena casually, “When I see a short ball, I am so comfortable, I could sleep.”

Serena pushed back: “Why do you say that?”

“Because you win 80% of the points at the net,” Mouratoglou lied with conviction.

That stat helped surface Serena’s limiting belief. “I thought I was terrible at the net,” she told the coach.

That conversation changed everything. She started approaching the net more often. Volleying more confidently. Winning crucial points. She eventually won the Wimbledon title—and actually finished winning 80% of points at the net.

The lie became true.

By changing her beliefs, Serena did more than just change her behavior. She improved her entire game.

If you think positive thinking is enough, stop right there. Beliefs are not a magical pill.

As Nir Eyal explains in his new book, Beyond Belief, the “think positive” and “just believe” mantras are not necessarily wrong but incomplete.

To be effective, a belief must accomplish three things:

1. Hold up to real-world feedback

2. Remain open to revision

3. Not ignore evidence to sustain it

Beliefs are mental models built through experience and practice. Just like physical strength requires consistent training, the same applies to beliefs.

If beliefs determine what we think and feel, we can intentionally design them.

The Three Powers of Belief

For years, I’ve been helping teams identify limiting beliefs and replace them with liberating ones. It's the most powerful intervention I know. When I read an advance copy of Beyond Belief, I was thrilled to see rigorous research supporting what I've observed in practice.

Eyal peels back the science and practice of beliefs, layer by layer. The author uncovered three common patterns —the “Three Powers of Belief”: attention, anticipation, and agency.

1. Attention:

Our beliefs filter reality. We see what matches our expectations. When you believe your team lacks initiative, you’ll spot every missed deadline. When you believe they’re capable, you’ll notice every moment of ownership. Same team. Different lens.

A leadership team wrote a postcard from the future to visualize how they would be celebrating success, where, and with whom. That exercise shifted their focus.

2. Anticipation:

Beliefs shape the experience even before it happens, starting with our mood and energy. If you believe a difficult conversation will be awful, you’ll drag your feet. If you believe it’s an opportunity to solve a problem, you’ll approach it with confidence. The experience changes because the belief changed first.

A manager wrote down how she wanted to feel before giving a difficult performance review—calm, curious, collaborative. She walked into the room embodying exactly that.

3. Agency:

This is the power to turn belief into action. Our sense of control changes what we’re capable of. You can train your mind to stay motivated when most people give up—if you believe you have agency in the first place.

An executive spent ten minutes each morning writing down the three decisions only he could make that day. That simple practice helped him delegate seventeen tasks he'd been hoarding for months.

Understanding the Three Powers of Belief helps you spot which is sabotaging you.

Beliefs are mental models running invisibly in the background. We might notice them, but they still affect everything we do (and everything we stop doing or never try).

As Eyal explains here, “The worst part is that these beliefs feel like facts. They don’t announce themselves as beliefs—they masquerade as reality. Someone doesn’t think, ‘I believe I’m bad at networking.’ They think, ‘I am bad at networking. That’s just who I am.’ And the moment you mistake a belief for an unchangeable truth, you stop questioning it. You stop testing whether it’s actually true.”

When we stop questioning our beliefs, they becomes reality.

From Limiting to Liberating Beliefs

Success isn’t about having a perfect plan or routine–it’s about having the right type of belief.

When you’re convinced an exercise plan or diet will work, you follow it with conviction. But the moment you doubt it? Your commitment collapses. You lower the ceiling on your potential.

A belief can be helpful whether it’s true or not. When you realize which behaviors keep you going and which get in your way, that’s when things change. Just like it happened to Serena Williams at Wimbledon.

A product team I worked with believed "conflict damages relationships." So they stayed silent when disagreements surfaced. I introduced the metaphor of conflict as fuel to shift from "it can burn us" (limiting belief) to "it helps ideas catch fire" (liberating belief). That shift changed everything.

What about you?

When was the last time you quit something you liked? Maybe playing a new instrument, a new sport, or starting your own business. What story did you tell yourself about yourself? What belief got in your way?

Beliefs can open possibilities or convince us that we’ll never make it.

Try this simple exercise. Think about something you like doing, but you think you’re not good at. Write it down, starting with “I’m not good at…” Read it aloud. Then tear it apart.

How do you feel now?

I’ve done this exercise with hundreds of people sharing and tearing their limiting beliefs all at once. It’s liberating. The shift is palpable. Not just the energy but the increased awareness and agency. Once you can name the enemy (your limiting beliefs), it’s easier to defeat it.

Here are some examples of reframing limiting beliefs into liberating beliefs:

How to Stop Beliefs From Getting in Your Way

Increasing awareness is not enough to challenge your beliefs. You need deliberate practice. Learn to spot your beliefs, recognize how they affect your behavior, and reframe limiting beliefs into liberating beliefs.

Start by examining your patterns.

Procrastination is the fear of discomfort:

The greatest barrier to personal growth isn't learning new things. It's unlearning the old beliefs, habits, and mindsets that no longer serve you.

When we procrastinate, we’re avoiding anticipated discomfort. Let’s say you want to have a difficult conversation with a colleague. You know it’s the right thing to do. But you avoid it because you don’t want to go through a tense experience.

Try this belief: “The regret of not having that conversation will hurt more than the discomfort of having it.”

Ruminating fuels your beliefs:

We rehash negative events because of our beliefs. You need a new belief to stop ruminating. If you keep complaining that your team lacks initiative and accountability, you’ll turn every small mistake into evidence that reinforces your narrative.

Prove yourself wrong: Kill your limiting belief by deliberately seeking evidence that contradicts your narrative. Write down every time your team actually demonstrates ownership. Does your belief still hold true?

Relationship problems are belief problems:

Once we think we know someone, we usually stop seeing them. We no longer truly listen to them or try to understand their thinking. The moment they speak or act, we filter it through a belief: “my colleague’s always complaining”, “my husband never helps with the kids”, etc.

Move beyond labels: Are you seeing people clearly, or filtering their behavior through your preconceived beliefs?

Your beliefs can hold you hostage:

Limiting beliefs don’t just hold you back; they hold you hostage. When you’re stuck in a limiting belief, your attention, your focus, everything you do feeds that belief. By the time you realize this, the damage is done.

Regain agency: Are your beliefs serving you, or are you serving them?

You become your own lies:

Beliefs are not facts. They are lies we tell ourselves about ourselves until we come to believe they’re true. We should treat beliefs as lenses for exploring reality and possibilities, not as facts or constraints. Eyal suggests approaching beliefs as hypotheses we can test.

Explore possibilities: Don’t just replace one limiting belief with a liberating belief. Try multiple ones.

When you challenge a limiting belief, new doors open. When you retire a long-held belief from your childhood (“I’m not good at…”), you make room for exploration. When you adopt liberating beliefs, you’re not lying to yourself. You’re simply seeing what you believe you can achieve. You’re setting anticipation in motion. No one can change your beliefs except you.

What limiting beliefs are holding you back?

This article was originally published in my Psychology Today column. Republished here for my subscribers.

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