Have you ever wondered why some beliefs seem impossible to shake, no matter how much evidence piles up against them?
Picture this: You’re Steph Curry. You’re a four-time NBA champion and two-time league MVP—including the first unanimous MVP in NBA history. You’ve literally revolutionized basketball by transforming the three-point shot into the centerpiece of modern play. You’re the first player to hit 4,000 career three-pointers, you hold the record for most three-pointers in a single season, you have 11 All-Star selections, and you’ve won an Olympic gold medal.
When you add it all up, you haven’t just succeeded—you’ve changed how the game is played forever.
And yet, in a recent 2025 interview with CNBC, Curry admitted he still experiences “impostor syndrome at times,” despite all these accomplishments.
How is that possible?
The Tale of Two Types of Beliefs
Here’s what most people don’t understand: Not all beliefs are created equal. There are actually two very different types of beliefs, and they respond to change in completely opposite ways.
Type 1: Concrete Beliefs (Relatively Easy to Change) These are beliefs about concrete, external facts that you can verify with your five senses.
Think about the Wright brothers. Before 1903, most people believed humans couldn’t build machines heavier than air that could fly. Even brilliant inventors with incredible resources had tried and failed spectacularly—there were literal blooper reels of crashed flying machines.
But what happened the moment people witnessed that first successful flight? Their belief instantly changed. It had to. The evidence was right there in front of them, undeniable.
If you believe flamingos will never show up on your lawn, that belief will crumble the second one appears. If you believe there’s no life on other planets, that changes the moment an alien lands and tries to communicate with us.
These beliefs change easily because they’re about verifiable facts.
Type 2: Abstract Beliefs (Resist Change by the Usual Methods) These are beliefs that are opinions or abstractions formed based on past experiences—especially beliefs about identity, worth, and what’s “good” or “bad.”
This is where Steph Curry lives. This is where most of us live.
Why Your Accomplishments Don’t Touch These Beliefs
Here’s the crucial insight: Present-day evidence can be interpreted in multiple ways, and your mind will always find a way to make it fit your existing belief.
Take a CEO who’s built a successful company but still believes “I’m not good enough.” When you point to all their accomplishments, they might say, “I just got lucky” or “Other people performed worse” or “I happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
And here’s the thing—they’re not entirely wrong. There is always some element of luck involved in success. People who work hard don’t always succeed; sometimes bad luck gets in their way. So “I got lucky” becomes a perfectly valid interpretation that keeps the original belief intact.
You could try to convince them it wasn’t just luck, that it was their hard work and skill. But since you don’t control outcomes—only your behavior—there’s always room for doubt.
The belief acts like a creative interpreter, finding ways to dismiss any evidence that contradicts it. Writers win literary awards and think, “I’m just a hack who fooled them.” Students earn PhDs from Harvard while believing “I’m stupid”—explaining their success by saying, “I’m just a good con man.”
One of my clients said exactly that. He had a PhD from Harvard but maintained he was stupid, claiming he’d simply conned everyone. The irony? If you’re skilled enough to fool Harvard professors and earn a PhD through pure deception, you’d have to be incredibly intelligent to pull that off.
But that logic didn’t matter to his belief. It wasn’t until he eliminated the original “I’m stupid” belief that he could finally see his accomplishments in a new light—evidence of his intellectual ability, not elaborate cons.
This is why the evidence in your present life won’t change how you feel about yourself. The belief is broad enough to creatively reinterpret anything to support its own existence.
To Change These Beliefs, We Have to Find Their Origin Story
These abstract beliefs usually trace back to source events—specific experiences that taught us “truths” about ourselves or the world:
- “I’m not good enough” might come from constant criticism or feeling like you could never please your parents
- “People can’t be trusted” often stems from family members breaking promises or saying one thing while doing another
- “Money is evil” might trace back to religious teachings that demonized wealth
The tricky part? Your mind filed these away as facts about reality, not opinions based on limited experiences.
Why Common Change Methods Fall Short
No wonder affirmations feel hollow. No wonder listing your accomplishments doesn’t quiet that inner critic. No wonder positive thinking feels like you’re fighting an uphill battle.
You’re trying to use present-day evidence to change beliefs that were never about present-day evidence in the first place.
It’s like trying to fix a foundation problem by repainting the walls. You’re working on the wrong level.
The Real Solution
To change abstract beliefs, you need a precise process that addresses how these beliefs actually formed:
Step 1: Identify the specific belief that’s been running your life—like “I’m not good enough” or “People can’t be trusted.”
Step 2: Find the source events that led to this belief. These are usually specific experiences from your past where you first “learned” this supposed truth about yourself or the world.
Step 3: Discover several other ways of interpreting those same events. Maybe your parents’ constant criticism wasn’t evidence that you weren’t good enough—maybe it revealed their own frustrations and parenting limitations, maybe it was their way of helping you grow, maybe they had unreasonable expectations of a child your age. Can you see that none of these is the truth including your original belief?
Step 4: Here’s the crucial part: Realize that you never actually saw evidence of the belief itself in the world. You saw events happening—words spoken, actions taken, things occurring—but the meaning you assigned to those events was never actually out there in the world. That meaning existed only in your mind.
When this becomes perfectly clear—when you fully experience that the belief was never a fact you observed but rather an interpretation you created—the belief simply goes away. And then you experience lasting change in your feelings and behavior in the present, because the belief is no longer there controlling you.
You’re Not Broken
If you’ve been trying really hard to change limiting beliefs and you’re still hearing that negative voice in your head, it’s not because you’re not trying hard enough. It’s not because you’re broken or weak.
It’s because you’ve been using the wrong tools for the job.
Abstract beliefs formed in the past require a different approach than the common-sense methods most people try. Once you understand this distinction, you can finally start working on the real cause instead of just managing the symptoms.
Ready to figure out what you really want in your life and identify what’s actually standing in your way? Book a free strategy session with Shelly where she’ll help you get clear on your goals and determine if working together makes sense for creating the changes you want.
