There’s this voice in your head that comes right at the moment you’re about to attempt something difficult. It’s whispering — or maybe shouting — “I can’t do this. Perhaps it occurs while weighing a career change, beginning a new fitness regimen, acquiring a skill, or confronting some daunting project. The voice sounds compelling, almost authoritative, as though it’s stating an objective fact about your abilities.
Now think about how often that certainty is wrong. Everyone knows — and says, either as self-justification or chest-pounding machismo — that they “can’t do” certain things until a situation requires them to learn those things, be it speaking in public, managing their finances or even grasping the basics of blackjack online after deciding it was all “too hard.” The discomfort is not an emblem of incompetence; a reaction like that tends to be a sign that you’re in unchartered territory.
The unpalatable truth is that voice may be lying to you. Not in a mean way but in a self-protective way that’s actually keeping you stuck. This is not some sort of toxic positivity or a claim that you can achieve anything if you only believe hard enough. It’s the process of understanding how your brain forms limiting beliefs based on past experiences, and how over time those beliefs can become so automatic that you confuse them with truth.
What may seem like a fair appraisal of your capacities is often plain old learned helplessness in disguise.
Here’s What Actually Happens When You Experience Learned Helplessness
They begin by casting repeated failure: Learned helplessness is a psychological phenomenon in which you give up trying to escape a horrific situation because you have failed so many times before. In the classic work, dogs were subjected to inescapable mild shocks until they stopped trying to escape. Humans are no different — instead of being predictable mice, we express variation in subtle manners.
Your brain draws false equivalences: Say you failed a math test in fifth grade, and your brain tucked it away under “I’m not a math person.” Or maybe a relationship didn’t go well, and now you think “I’m bad at relationships.” That’s not a fact — it’s a conclusion your brain came to based on fragmentary evidence. But once established, they provide the filter through which you see new opportunities.
The self-fulfilling prophecy takes hold: So, here’s where the circular kicks in: If you assume you can’t do something, you either don’t even try or you make a half-assed effort. The inevitable result? Failure or underperformance, which then affirms to you that you were correct all along. Your brain loves to be right, even when being right is the problem.
The “Can’t” Versus the “Haven’t Yets”
‘I can’t do this’ and ‘I haven’t learned how to do this yet’ is a huge chasm. The first statement shuts doors; the second one leaves them open.” You’re committing to that assessment when you declare “I can’t.” When you say “I haven’t yet” you’re affirming the way things are now, but leaving open space for what could be.
This isn’t mere semantic quibbling — the words you use in any given context affect how your brain responds to a challenge. Both experiments and studies based on the concept of growth mindset demonstrate that individuals who have a belief that abilities can be developed rather than being fixed are more capable of persisting through challenges and achieving ultimate success.
Breaking the Pattern Requires Evidence
Small wins matter more than you may think: You can’t just positive-think your way out of learned helplessness. Your brain needs proof that counteracts the limiting beliefs it has taken on. Begin with problems that are challenging but doable. And with each small victory, a crack appears in the wall of “I can’t.”
Track your progress objectively Your brain has a negativity bias: You remember failure better than success. Write down what you’ve done. So when “I can’t” arrives, you might need some hard data with which to argue back.
The Questions That Reveal the Truth
Next time you find yourself thinking, “I can’t do this,” ask yourself these questions: Is it actually the case (have I ever tried, or am I just assuming)? If I had tried and failed, was it because it’s impossible or because I didn’t know the best way to do something or the appropriate resources for a given task? What might someone who believes they can do this differently?
These inquiries short-circuit your involuntary helplessness response, bind your mind, and refract the light so that you can consider for yourself whether or not your alleged constraint is real or merely learned.
Wrapping Up
Learned helplessness is sneaky in that it passes itself off as self-awareness. It disguises itself as realistic self-assessment when in fact it’s just your brain trying to protect you from a future hypothetical failure by convincing you not even to try. The “I can’t” voice isn’t always off base; there are real limits we must all operate within. But more often than not, it’s a lazy conclusion based on dated data, incomplete information or a few isolated experiences that your brain has manufactured into a full-blown law.
Getting free doesn’t mean not acknowledging your true limitations or pretending anything is possible. It involves challenging the default “I can’t” thought and then seeking evidence for whether or not that’s really true, or is just a story your brain has been telling you for long enough that you’ve stopped questioning it. Yet.” Sometimes the most empowering thing that you can do is to add a word: yet.
