The Gravity of Limiting Beliefs
You are your own worst enemy
"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark." — Michelangelo
When I was a fitness coach I would often hear the same question. Eventually I noticed something interesting. Professional athletes and successful business executives would ask the question one way, while the general population asked it differently.
When I would give them an exercise, the general population would ask what would be considered good or respectable? The pros and executives would ask “What’s the gym record?”.
One group is trying to not be the worst, the other is trying to be the best. Is it a surprise why one group is more successful?
Achieving greatness isn’t meant to be easy, otherwise everyone would do it. Few will ever do anything noteworthy, no matter how hard they try but most kill their chances before they start.
Very few people fail because they lack ability. Most fail because they quietly accept a ceiling long before they ever reach it. They aim for respectable instead of exceptional. They benchmark instead of compete.
Limiting beliefs work like gravity. They pull your ambition downward before you even begin. Nobody becomes world class by accident or by aiming for average.
The question is not whether you are capable, the question is what standard you are using.
Keep reading to find out why!
If this week’s article does not interest you, please check out some other recent ones:
The Best Don’t Benchmark
Sticking with the gym analogy, I have two friends that personify limiting beliefs.
Karl always stops short of what he can do. If you tell him to do 10 reps with a certain weigh, he will do exactly 10 reps. Even if he could easily do 20+. Most people would adjust to a heavier weight or do more reps; he would never do that. Without someone to keep him accountable, he would probably be doing the same weight and reps from the first time he stepped into a gym.
In response we regularly deceive him. We might throw a 10 lbs plate on the bar when he isn’t looking, or tell him it’s only been 60 seconds when it’s really been 120. You shouldn’t do this because it’s dangerous and somebody can get hurt. In Karl’s case, he always manages to do the number of reps he was planning to do. He’s much stronger than he thinks, but he doesn’t believe it. His limiting belief is making him weak.
I have another friend Kyle, who if anything needs to rein it in. Kyle believes he’s the strongest person at the gym, despite all evidence to the contrary. Kyle is less athletic and in worse shape than Karl, but he regularly out-lifts him or beats him in cardio drills. This shouldn’t happen but Kyle goes all out 100% of the time on every set, pushing weight or attempting a pace beyond his capabilities. Although he occasionally gets injured, he improves at a much faster rate.
Karl looks at what other people at the gym are doing, to decide what’s a respectable weight for him to be lifting. Kyle simply notes what he did last time, and adds more weight or reps. Are you surprised to learn which one performs better?
I’ve previously covered why Benchmarking is Lazy, but in the context of greatness, it isn’t just lazy. It’s stupid. If you’re trying to be the best in the world at something, you shouldn’t be concerned with other people’s performances. That is unless you need to dethrone the current champion or surpass the current record.
In most endeavours, you rarely see your competitions process, just their results. Sometimes you can see daily results, other times annually or less. In a dynamic environment where everybody is trying to improve, this benchmark data gets stale very quickly. Time spent looking at others detracts from time spent looking internally.
That’s why when you are setting your target ask yourself if your goal is to reach a certain objective or to be the best?
Few people understand this distinction, but it’s what separates the good from the great. A lot of people state objectives such as wanting their startup to reach unicorn status ($1B valuation), run a marathon in under 4 hours or date Sydney Sweeney. These are all good and noble goals, but thinking this way will never make you world class.
The goal of reaching unicorn status is aiming too low for most venture capitalists. If a VC were to invest in you at a $1B valuation, they need to believe they can get some multiple return on their money. If you limit your ambition at this level, you’ll never be able to raise above a few hundred million. VCs want to back founders that can create and scale category defining companies. Assuming the end market is large enough, if a company is the best in its category, it should certainly be worth billions of dollars.
Few people run marathons, most that do aim for a time of ~4 hours. Considering the world record is 2 hours, they’re selling themselves short. If you consider yourself a runner, and you’re going to invest hours and years of your life to doing marathons, shoot higher. You can run because you enjoy it, but if you’re putting yourself through the trouble of registering for an official marathon, don’t limit yourself.
Sydney Sweeney is never going to date a dude whose entire mission in life is to date Sydney Sweeney. I don’t know her, but I would expect she would be drawn to somebody who’s confident and secure in their abilities, whatever their domain.
The way you approach your goal matters. Setting impressive sounding objectives, is usually just an artificial limitation you’re placing on yourself.
Winners Win Before Showing Up
Most people when faced with a consequential decision, spend most of their time worrying about why something can’t work. This often leads to inaction, because when you dealing with unknowns, people would prefer discomfort over uncertainty. This is a form of conservatism bias.
People who accomplish great things, focus more on why it can work, and what they need to do to make it happen.
The great companies in business rarely win by following the herd. They become the best by trying something new and potentially risky. If you are a business executive trying to maximize job security, you would probably just copy what everyone else is doing. You have strength in numbers, which diffuses responsibility. This is where benchmarking helps, you can say your performance was in line with your peers.
If your goal is to get your company to the top, you won’t get there by copying others. The person you are trying to emulate is better at the skill, so you’re better finding your own advantage.
If your ambition is to build the best company in your category, you cannot get there by imitating someone who is already better than you. You need to find your own edge.
Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Economists call them factor endowments. Some people can focus deeply for hours and block out all distractions. That is a superpower in research or software development. It is less helpful if your job requires constant situational awareness. Probably why I got fired from my busboy job.
If your goal is to be the very best at something, you should pick competitions where you are better suited at winning. Some athletes tolerate intense pain for short bursts but struggle with prolonged discomfort. They are likely better suited for sprinting than marathon running. Others thrive in long, steady efforts and would never survive a 100 meter final.
At a world class level, every small advantage in the margin matters, and becomes magnified. That’s why Olympic skiers are doing weird things to their junk, not because of olympic village festivities, but because they even the slightest advantage can be the difference for a medal.
If your goal isn’t to be the absolute best at something, you don’t need to resort to these type of measures. By focusing on improvement and refinement instead of setting arbitrary goals, you can often achieve well more than you ever thought you could.
Carles Reina, Go to market leader at Eleven Labs recently appeared on Harry Stebbings 20VC podcast and explained his sales team philosophy which bucks most conventions in the SaaS sales playbook. For one thing he sets a sales person quota at 20 times their base salary. This is well above the typical 6-8X you see at other software companies. “At ElevenLabs, the rule is simple: you must bring in 20 times your base salary in revenue. If your base is $100k, your quota is $2M. It sounds aggressive, but it sets a high-performance bar where over 80% of the team hits their targets.” In most SaaS companies only 50-60% of the team reaches a much lower quota than this.
In addition, he requires hew hires to sign a customer within their first two weeks. Some have even closed enterprise deals within 72 hours of joining. Most would consider closing a deal within a new salespersons first 90 days to be a feat.
By setting very high standards, Reina can make sales people accomplish what most sales leaders and account executives to be impossible. Carles doesn’t care about what the benchmarks say, he decides what the company needs to do to become one of the fastest growing companies in the world.
Antoine Le Nel, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Revolut follows a similar approach. Instead of allocating marketing spend based on what comparable companies do, his team analyzes returns at a granular level. He determines the maximum cost of acquiring a user that still produces attractive economics, then scale aggressively within those parameters. (Great interview with him here)
Neither leader spends much time worrying about whether their targets look conventional. They design systems around what winning requires, not around what is typical.
You can become competent by copying best practices. You can become respectable by matching industry averages, but you will not become exceptional by aiming for the middle of the distribution.
If you want to win, you need to understand your advantages, pick the right arena, and set standards that stretch beyond what feels comfortable.
The real gravity holding most people back is not competition. It is the quiet belief that they are not capable of more.
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Great article! I recognized myself as Karl while reading this. What are the first few steps to break that pattern?
Really liked and needed this one!