Breaking Free: How Your Hidden Beliefs Shape Your Startup's Reality

Here's a simple truth that most people have heard but don't fully understand:

Your beliefs create your reality.

Not in some mystical way, but through a concrete sequence:

1. Beliefs determine what you notice and filter out
2. Perception shapes your thoughts and emotions
3. Thoughts and emotions drive your decisions and actions
4. Actions create your results
5. Results reinforce your original beliefs

This cycle explains why two founders can face identical circumstances yet experience completely different outcomes.

One sees opportunity in market volatility. Another sees only threat. One interprets feedback as valuable data. Another hears only criticism. One views a setback as information. Another sees it as proof of their inadequacy.

The difference? Their beliefs.

And the most dangerous beliefs are the ones you don't even know you have – the invisible operating system running in the background of your mind.

Even if you fully understand how beliefs create reality, it is much more difficult to actively be aware of your own beliefs that are creating your reality.

Because the strongest beliefs are often rooted deep in the subconscious, meaning they are only something we experience the effects of but aren't actually at all aware of.

In order to change a belief, we must create awareness of the belief and step outside of it.

And once you do so, it’ll allow you to break these mental barriers that create the difference between founders who scale successfully and those who hit the same walls over and over again.

So here are the most common limiting beliefs, how to gain awareness of them within yourself, and how to reframe them into empowering beliefs that make you a more capable founder.

Why We Cling to Limiting Beliefs

Most of our limiting beliefs were generated at a young age as a way to make us feel safe when our environment or parents didn’t. 

For example, a child who didn’t get the kind of attention they wanted from their parents might develop a belief that they are unworthy of that attention. 

This creates the possibility of becoming worthy rather than the untenable belief that there might be something deficient about their parent. 

The beliefs that we develop to survive or adapt to threat are seen as critical by our nervous system and often get locked deep in our unconscious for safety.   

Beliefs that were adaptive in childhood so often become maladaptive in adulthood. 

But because they are locked deep in our unconscious, we don’t generally see them for what they are. Once we uncover the belief and begin to examine whether it’s actually true, we'd eventually see its falsity.

But the mind operates with "meta-beliefs" – beliefs about beliefs – that create fear around letting go of familiar patterns. This fear - that it's not safe to let go of a particular belief - makes us avoid looking directly at the truth or questioning our assumptions.

This is why simply asking "Is this belief true?" often doesn't work. Instead, we need to ask: "What am I afraid would happen if I let go of this belief?" This question reveals the psychological safety mechanism that's keeping the belief in place. 

Using the example from above, if I have a belief that I’m unworthy, I might also have a meta-belief that I need to believe I’m unworthy in order to be motivated to improve. When you start to see and question the meta-belief, it then clears the path to let go of the initial core belief.

7 Most Common Limiting Beliefs For Founders

1. "I'm not enough / I'm an impostor." - Worth must be earned through achievements.
   
   
2. "I need to control everything to succeed." - Loosening control leads to failure.
   
   
3. "I have to work hard to deserve success." - Struggle is a prerequisite for success.
   
   
4. "Failure means I am a failure." - Failures define identity rather than provide data.
   
   
5. "There isn't enough to go around." - Business is zero-sum and resources are scarce.
   
   
6. "Wanting financial success is shallow or selfish." - Wealth conflicts with values.
   
   
7. "I need everyone to like and approve of me." - Disapproval threatens worthiness.
   
   

These are a handful of the common limiting beliefs founders come to me with, whether consciously or subconsciously.

You can use these as a starting point to go through the belief transformation process below.

Breaking Free: A 5-Step Process to Transform Limiting Beliefs

1. Reveal and Identify the Belief

Start with your current challenges. Where are you stuck? Ask: "What must I believe to be experiencing this?" Write down the first answer that comes to mind. 

Name it specifically.

Look for "should" statements, absolutes like "always" or "never," and beliefs that feel emotionally charged.

2. Trace the Origin

Ask: When did I first adopt this belief? What experience taught me this was "true"? Understanding the source helps you see it as an interpretation formed at a specific time, not an eternal truth.

3. Uncover the Fear

This is the crucial step most approaches miss. Ask: What am I afraid would happen if I let go of this belief? This reveals the psychological safety mechanism keeping the belief in place. Be brutally honest about what you fear would happen if you stopped believing this.

4. Create a New Belief

Only after understanding your resistance can you objectively examine the belief (Byron Katie’s The Work can be useful for this):

• Is this absolutely true? How do I know?
• What evidence contradicts this?
• How might the opposite be true?
• Who would I be without this thought?

Let go of the belief and craft a new more empowering alternative. Then actively look for evidence that this new belief is true.

5. Take Immediate Action

Do one small thing today that embodies this new belief and creates additional evidence for it. Without action, insight rarely creates transformation. Each action builds more evidence, strengthening the neural pathways of your new belief.

A Founder's Transformation

A client I worked with discovered her core belief was: "If I become too successful, people will resent me and I'll lose connection with those I care about."

When we explored what she feared would happen if she let this go, she revealed: "I'm afraid I'll become arrogant and shallow like those wealthy people my parents always criticized. I worry my childhood friends won't recognize me anymore."

This belief had silently operated in her subconscious, leading her to unconsciously sabotage growth opportunities, undercharge for her product, and avoid raising capital despite clear opportunities to scale.

After tracing this belief to childhood experiences where her family criticized wealthy people, she realized this wasn't an absolute truth – just an interpretation formed in childhood. She began to see how the opposite could be true: greater success could actually enable deeper, more meaningful connections.

Her reframe became: "My success creates opportunities to connect meaningfully with others and to serve in ways that align with my values. My true relationships will deepen with my growth, not diminish."

She raised her prices, pursued strategic partnerships she'd been avoiding, and had honest conversations with friends about her ambitions. Within a year, she doubled her company's revenue while deepening her most important relationships.

The key insight? Her external circumstances didn't need to change to shift her belief. She changed her beliefs, which changed her actions, which changed her results.

Your Turn: The 10-Minute Belief Breakthrough

1. Identify a current challenge where you feel stuck
2. Ask: "What must I believe to be experiencing this?"
3. Ask: "What am I afraid would happen if I stopped believing this?"
4. Question the belief's validity
5. Create a new belief + actively look for evidence that supports it
6. Take one small action today that creates additional evidence

Your beliefs create your reality. Choose ones that serve your highest vision.

With love,

- Dave Kashen

P.S. Which limiting belief do you see holding you back the most? Reply with what you uncover