The beliefs you have about yourself might be filtering what you see

What if something you believe about yourself isn’t actually completely true, but over time you’ve become very good at finding evidence that makes it feel true?

There’s something in psychology called confirmation bias. Once we believe something, we tend to notice the things that support it and give less attention to the things that don’t.

There’s also some interesting research around how this works with the beliefs we have about ourselves. In one study, psychologists William Swann and Stephen Read found that people were more likely to look for feedback that fitted with how they already saw themselves, and were also more likely to remember feedback that matched those existing beliefs.

So let’s say you’ve started to believe “I’m not very good at my job”. Your boss seems distracted one morning and barely acknowledges something you’ve done. Straight away, you might start thinking that your boss isn’t happy with your work. Later, someone tells you that you handled something really well. But instead of taking that in, you might think they were just being nice, or that what you did wasn’t actually that difficult.

Both things happened. But one of them fits with what you already believe about yourself, so it can feel much more important.

The same thing can happen if you think “I’m terrible with money”. You spend more than you planned one weekend and think, “I knew it. I always do this.” But you might barely notice that you paid your bills for that month, put money into savings and investments, or didn’t buy something you didn’t really need. After a while, the belief can start to feel like a fact. 

So if you catch yourself thinking things like “I always mess things up”, “I’m just not confident” or “things never work out for me”, it can be worth stopping for a second and questioning it. What is actually making me believe this? And then look for the bit we often forget to check: what evidence do I have that it isn’t completely true?

You don’t need to replace the thought with something really positive that you don’t believe. If you think you’re terrible with money, telling yourself “I’m amazing with money” probably isn’t going to help much. A more accurate thought might be: “I sometimes overspend, but I also make sensible choices with money.” 

You could even try this for a week. Pick one belief about yourself that you tend to treat as fact, and start noticing the evidence on both sides. You might find that there’s some truth in the belief. Or you might realise that you’ve been giving certain experiences much more attention than others because they fit a story you already have about yourself.

Either way, it gives you the chance to question whether that negative story still deserves to be treated as the truth.