In one of my product I wanted to add an upgrade button, but for some reason I had a surge of negative emotion hit me. I thought "No, let's not do that."
I could have stopped there. But this time, I decided to confront this thought.
The 4-step approach to overcome limiting beliefs
In a book I recently read, Goal Setting by Thibaut Meurisse, the author outlines a 4-step approach to overcome limiting beliefs:
- Step 1: Identify a problematic belief
- Step 2: Befriend your brain
- Step 3: Argue with your brain on why this belief is not useful
- Step 4: Replace the belief with a more rational, better one
So, I decided to apply this process to my own situation.
Step 1: Identify the belief
The first step is to identify the belief. It’s really not easy because strong negative emotions pop up. It was uncomfortable, and I wanted to think of something else, but this time I kept pushing.
I started to interrogate myself:
- Why do I think I should not add the upgrade button?
- (Still me): Because users aren't going to like it.
- Why are they not going to like it?
- Because it will annoy them.
- Ok, but what if I add a small button, with neutral colors so it's not too flashy. That could work, right?
- Well... yes, but then they will hate me.
I was getting close.
- So you say, if you ask people to upgrade, they will hate you?
- Yes, I think.
- So essentially, if you ask people for money, they will hate me?
- Yep.
That’s it! I identified the belief: "If I ask people for money, they will hate me."
I checked recent events in my personal life, and it matched. For example, I'm currently subletting my apartment, and I always feel terrible when I have to ask my tenant to pay the bill.
Step 2: Befriend your brain
The second step is to understand why your brain holds this belief. How is it trying to protect you?
So I asked myself:
- Why does my brain think 'if I ask people for money, they will hate me'? How is it protecting me?
- Because if they hate me, I would feel terrible. My brain wants to avoid that pain.
So, I realized my brain was just holding onto this belief to protect me.
If we keep pushing, I love finding biological explanations for our behaviors. I believe we inherited our instincts from our ancestors 200,000 years ago.
Back then, if people hated you, you risked being kicked out of the tribe. And without the tribe, you died.
So my brain is trying essentially to keeping me alive.
Sounds fine. Thanks brain.
Step 3: Argue with your brain
The third step is to argue with your mind and show it why it's wrong.
So, I started a debate with myself:
- Look Anis, that's cute, but absolutely no one is going to hate you if you ask them for money.
- But…
- Look, we live in a transactional world. It's normal to exchange money for value, right?
- But…
- No bro, listen. Your tool provides a lot of value. It's normal that people want to exchange that value for money, isn't it?
- Yes…
- Look at the evidence. Thousands of people have already paid. Did they hate you?
- No, but…
It went on like this for a minute or two. A real telenovela.
But by the end, I felt much better. The negative emotion had simply vanished.
Step 4: Replace the belief with a better one
In this last step, I simply replaced my initial belief with a new one that came up while arguing with my brain.
It was:
"When you bring value to people, it is normal for them to pay you."
The key here is to really believe it deep down.
When I say this sentence, it really resonates with me. It doesn't trigger a "but…". My brain has accepted this as the truth.
Conclusion
After that, I felt much better and had no problem adding the upgrade button.
What I did here is challenge my belief rationally. This is the core of the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a branch of psychology (The great book Feeling Great talks about this in depth).
To be fair I believe this kind of trick works but not too much: for some deeply rooted beliefs (especially the ones touching your identity) it can take way more work, you need to show your brain evidences again and again so it doesn't revert to old ways of seeing stuff.
And what's the best way to show your brain new evidences? Actions!
How about you? Do you have beliefs that are holding you back? Try this 4-steps exercise maybe it can help you!
