Two Approaches to Limiting Beliefs: Which One Actually Works

When it comes to working with limiting beliefs, two broad approaches dominate the conversation. The first could be called the Overcoming Approach. The second could be called the Updating Approach. Both are genuinely useful. They’re also genuinely different in how they work, what they’re suited for, and what they tend to produce.

The Overcoming Approach

The overcoming approach treats limiting beliefs as obstacles to be pushed through, argued with, or transcended. Its logic: the belief is false, you need to act as if it isn’t true, and repeated action in the face of the belief will produce the results that demonstrate its falseness.

Tools in this approach: affirmations, positive thinking, power posing, “feel the fear and do it anyway” frameworks, accountability challenges, structured commitment devices, visualization of success outcomes.

What it does well: It produces action. For someone who is close to the edge of their comfort zone and needs a push rather than a deep excavation, the overcoming approach can generate the action that breaks a period of inaction. The push itself can produce enough real-world results to begin updating the belief.

What it doesn’t do well: The overcoming approach addresses the symptom (lack of action) rather than the belief structure (the prediction model). When the belief is held deeply — at the somatic and identity levels, with significant developmental roots — pushing through produces short-term action followed by regression. The person charges the rate once, then discounts the next five clients. They show up fully for one launch, then disappear for three months. The action happened, but the underlying structure didn’t update.

The tell: If you’ve charged the rate, been visible, made the significant ask, and found yourself consistently reverting to the old pattern afterward — the overcoming approach addressed behavior without updating the belief.

The Updating Approach

The updating approach treats limiting beliefs as predictions that the nervous system is making based on historical data. Its logic: the prediction is the belief, the prediction needs new data to update, and the work is to provide the conditions in which the nervous system can receive and process genuinely disconfirming data.

Tools in this approach: somatic processing (working with the belief at the body level), relational updating (experiencing belonging and safety in contexts where the belief predicts threat), identity work (building familiarity with the identity that the belief is blocking), graduated exposure (providing the nervous system with enough safety in the relevant territory to update without overwhelm), community (relational disconfirmation of the belief’s social predictions).

What it does well: It produces lasting change. When the belief updates at the nervous system level — when the prediction model itself changes — the behavioral change doesn’t require ongoing effort. Charging the rate becomes the default, not the exception. Visibility feels relatively neutral, not threatening. The change is stable under stress.

What it doesn’t do well: The updating approach is slower. It requires patience with a process that doesn’t have a linear timeline. It requires tolerance for regression periods and oscillation. And it requires genuine community and relational context — it’s harder to do alone than the overcoming approach, which can be done as a solo practice.

Which One Works?

The honest answer: both work, for different patterns and different people, at different stages of the work.

For surface-level, recently-formed beliefs held primarily at the cognitive level — the overcoming approach can be effective. The belief isn’t deeply embedded, the action-based disconfirmation can update it, and the combination of push and evidence produces lasting change.

For structural beliefs embedded at the identity level, with somatic components and relational roots — the updating approach is required. The overcoming approach may produce action, but the action doesn’t update the deep structure, and regression follows.

The diagnostic question: how many times have you already tried the overcoming approach with this particular pattern? If the answer is many times, with genuine commitment, and the pattern keeps reasserting — the pattern isn’t at the level the overcoming approach addresses. The updating work is needed.

The Integration

The most sophisticated approach combines both:

The overcoming approach provides the actions that give the updating approach its data. You need to be in the territory — charging the rate, being visible, making the claim — for the nervous system to have the experience that updates it. The push of the overcoming approach creates the exposure. The work of the updating approach processes that exposure at the deeper levels where lasting change happens.

Neither approach is wrong. They’re complementary tools for different aspects of the same work.

The Invitation

The Abundance GPS community integrates both approaches — the action orientation that the overcoming framework provides and the deep updating work that produces lasting change.

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