Develop Your Creativity

Identify Limiting Beliefs

"I can’t... I’m not… I don’t…" 

Or simply:

"I’m not creative."

How often have you used these phrases?

When you choose negative phrases to articulate your state of being, abilities, or actions, you reveal how you feel about yourself, often without conscious awareness.

And when it comes to creativity, it can be hard to see the relationship between this soft skill and the tech sector’s hard skills. Let's listen to what Joy Francis has to say about this:

Why Do so Many Digital Professionals Find It Difficult to Think of Themselves as Creative?

These are limiting beliefs: a belief or decision you make about yourself that limits the way you live or work. Limiting beliefs can stunt your creativity, prevent you from sharing your ideas, and affect you on both a personal and professional level.

Here are some common examples that may affect your creativity at work:

"I'm not good enough."

"People will judge my contribution."

"It’s wrong to change my mind."

"I have to be perfect."

"My ideas aren’t as good as…"

Modern technologies, such as social media, have impacted this further. With over 70% of the population experiences imposter syndrome, a thought or feeling that our successes are more down to luck than our skills or experience. 

It’s clear then that our thoughts are powerful, but the good news is you can re-program them.

To transform limiting beliefs, you first have to identify them. Your views are acquired and developed throughout your life. You carry them from childhood or the world around you. Some don’t even belong to you at all but have been imposed on you by others. Because of this, they can be deeply held and hard to free yourself from. So how do you identify them?

Take Action

Start by listing all the beliefs you hold about your life's key areas: your childhood, education, work-life, creativity, and global beliefs (i.e., the generalizations you make about life). In each area, think about your challenges. Decide which ones empower you and which ones hold you back.

Transform Limiting Beliefs

Negative beliefs make you doubt the worth of your creative ideas, which means you're less likely to share them with your work colleagues. Now you’ve identified the beliefs that are limiting your creativity, you’re ready to transform them. Try these four techniques:

1. Know the Difference Between Belief and Fact

Beliefs are deeply held because they develop over time. They are so deep that you can often confuse them for a fact. According to Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert, this happens in three stages:

1. You hear something.

2. You believe it to be true.

3. Sometime later (and sometimes a very long time!), you think more deeply about it and determine whether it’s true or not. 

Take Action

Let’s start this process now by jumping in at the third stage. Using the limiting beliefs listed above, ask yourself, “Is it a fact? If so, when did it become one?” If you can’t pinpoint its origin, recognize that it’s a belief.

2. Replace Negative Beliefs With Positive Ones

For every negative or unhelpful belief, gather evidence to prove this isn’t the case. For example:

“I’m not creative,” becomes “I found a new, more efficient way for our team to work.” 

“I’m not good enough,” becomes “My team values my ideas.”

This is an example of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a set of principles that offers practical ways to help you change the way you think.

Take Action

Now create a new belief as a result of the evidence you’ve found. Write it on a sticky note, place it somewhere you can see it, and repeat it aloud to yourself a few times a day. Make it a habit you adhere to, eventually replacing the old belief with the new one.

"The most creative part of my job is creating documentation that allows people to easily use the software or tool that I’m building.” - Ben Hong, senior front-end developer

3. Turn Beliefs Into Affirmations

Affirmations are positive statements that, through repetition, can help you overcome negative core beliefs. So, for example:

Limiting belief: “People will judge my contribution.”

Could become:

Affirmation: “The client chose my app design.”

Both statements are true, but you choose what to focus on: limiting yourself with unnecessarily negative thoughts, or affirming what you’ve already achieved, thus opening doors to further opportunities and successes.

Look at your limiting beliefs and consider how you can turn them into positive affirmations instead. Then repeat them to yourself regularly throughout the day.

4. Allow Daily Negative Thought Time

Because limiting beliefs are so ingrained, they crop up when least expected. Executive Coach Julie Kantor suggests allocating 10 minutes at the end of each day for negative thought time. Whenever you have a negative thought, jot it down then forget about it. During your 10 minute negative thought time, dissect each one. What prompted it? Is it true? How can you transform it?

Explore Failure as a Pathway to Success

“Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It’s not optional. We understand that and believe in failing early and iterating until we get it right.” - Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon

What do Post-It Notes, penicillin, potato chips, pacemakers, fireworks and microwave ovens all have in common? These creative successes all exist either because of a mistake or a failure. If another idea hadn’t failed first, then these products may never have existed. And in each case, creative thinking led to a new and commercially-viable product.

Although failure is often viewed negatively, it can create an environment that challenges your thinking, sparking directions you may not have explored if the original idea had been successful. So, failure can propel you to even greater creative heights! 😊

According to research in Scientific American, error and failure are an intrinsic part of learning, and the process leads to a literal expansion of your brain.

"I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the way that will not work, I will find the way that will work." - Thomas Edison

• Learn from every mistake: Why didn't your idea work? How can you improve it? 

• Listen to and accept criticism: Other people will view your idea through different lenses, giving you the chance to develop it in interesting ways.

• Be persistent: Don’t give up at the first hurdle; what new creative directions can you explore instead?

• Remember: Like Post-It Notes, creative failures often lead to great success!

Let’s see what Guillaume Parrou, Director of Learning Products at OpenClassrooms, has to say about taking a positive approach to failure:

How Has a Culture of Positive Failure Played a Role in Your Approach to problem-Solving and Innovation?

Complete Your Creativity Journal 

Do: When was the last time you failed at something? Describe this in your journal. 

Reflect: How did you feel about it? What did you learn? Did it transform your thinking in any way? What did you learn about failure? About yourself?

Let’s Recap!

• Limiting beliefs are a belief or decision you make about yourself that limits the way you live or work.

• Error and failure are an intrinsic part of learning.

• The learning process leads to a literal expansion of your brain.

Now that you’ve discovered how to use failure to your benefit, you’re ready to explore techniques to help you focus your mind.