Hi learners,

do you hold any beliefs that keep you from realizing your potential?

Fleas can jump 8 inches high, but when put in a closed jar for three days, they will never again jump higher than the lid’s height. Their offspring mimics their parents and settles on the same height.

You can witness the effect in this 49 seconds video:

Similar to the jar's lid, low expectations build glass ceilings. Once your mind is conditioned to not being capable of something, it's hard to remember all the possibilities.

A teacher might have told you're "not made" for a specific subject. Your parents might have labeled you with an unfavorable label.

My Physics and Chemistry teacher once told our glass that girls don't get natural sciences. So, I grew up believing my brain wasn't good at it. Unsurprisingly, I avoided Physics and Chemistry - to the extent that I still have large knowledge gaps in these subjects.

Educational psychologists label this phenomenon The Golem Effect: lower expectations placed upon individuals either by supervisors or the individual themselves lead to poorer performance by the individual.

But luckily, our brain's can change. You can update limiting beliefs step-by-step:

• identify harmful thoughts about your capabilities
  ("I'm not creative, I'm not good with numbers, ...")
• acknowledge their nature
  ("I hold this belief because of X and I realize it's an unsubstantiated belief")
• reprogram your mind through repetition

The last part requires consistency, and anything you can do repetitively helps. Here are a couple of ideas that have helped me in the past: self-record an audio and listen to it every day for two weeks, write your new beliefs on post-its and place them next to your computer, book a RTT session with a therapist.

Pick whatever feels helpful and enjoy your learning journey. :)

P.S.: Do you have a topic you'd like to see covered in a future Learn Letter edition? Hit reply or submit your topic request here.

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“Nothing has meaning except for the meaning you give it.”
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​— T. Harv Eker

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