The Excuses You Keep Making Aren't the Real Problem

TL;DR: The reasons you give for staying stuck can feel like facts when they’re really arguments built around a belief you’ve stopped questioning. Nicole Hollar, behavior change keynote speaker and integrative life coach, looks at how limiting beliefs hide inside explanations like “I’m too old,” “I don’t have the resources,” or “That’s not realistic for someone like me”—and why identifying the belief underneath the excuse can open up choices you couldn’t see before.

The Card You Keep Holding Up

Everyone has a card. It's the reason you give, to yourself and everyone else, for why the promotion, the relationship, the business, or the body you want isn't happening. Too old. Too young. Too inexperienced. Too overqualified. Not the right background, wrong gender, wrong zip code, wrong last name, wrong appearance.

Sometimes the card is real. Bias exists. Circumstances exist. I'm not telling you to gaslight yourself into thinking every closed door was open the whole time. But here's the reality: a lot of people hold up a card that has almost nothing to do with why they're stuck, and everything to do with the fact that the card is easier to live with than the truth underneath it.

Where the Card Came From

Limiting beliefs rarely arrive with a warning label. They form early, get reinforced a few times, and then quietly generalize to situations that have nothing to do with where they started. A kid who got mocked for being short might spend the next forty years assuming every awkward interaction is about their height. A kid who watched money cause nothing but fights might grow up sabotaging every raise, because on some unconscious level, more money still equals more conflict. The ongoing societal observations and obsessions around appearances.

None of that is stupidity. It's a nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do with the information it had at the time. The problem is the information never got updated, so it's still running the same program on a completely different life.

The Lies That Sound Reasonable

This is what makes limiting beliefs so hard to catch: they don't sound like lies. They sound like common sense. "I want to start the business, but the market's too saturated." "I'd ask for the raise, but timing isn't great." "I'd set the boundary, but she's going through a lot right now." Every one of those might be partly true. That's exactly why they work as cover.

Some of the most common versions I hear in coaching: "I’m just not lucky." "It’s because I am too…" "What if I get there and can't sustain it." Notice none of those are about the market, the timing, or the other person. They're about what you believe you're allowed to have.

How to Tell a Real Barrier from a Card

Ask yourself one question: if a friend you respected, with your exact resume and circumstances, wanted to do this thing, would you tell them it's impossible? Usually not. You'd tell them it's hard, or it'll take longer than they'd like, or they'll need to build a few skills first. The gap between what you'd tell them and what you're telling yourself is where the card is hiding.

A real barrier has a next step. A card has a story. If the honest answer to "what would I do next" is "nothing, because it's pointless," you're probably not looking at a barrier. You're looking at a belief masking itself as a barrier.

What Changes When You Put the Card Down

This is where awareness earns its keep on Hollar's Potter's Wheel™. Seeing the card clearly, without immediately defending it, is the first step. You don't have to fix the belief in the same breath you notice it. You just have to stop treating your excuse as a verdict.

Personal power isn't pretending the world is fair or that every obstacle in your way is imaginary. It's the ability to recognize what's driving your "no," tell the difference between what's true and what's just familiar, and choose what you do next with that information instead of without it. The card might have been accurate once. That doesn't mean it still is.

Questions for Reflection

1.  What's the card you reach for most often, the explanation you give yourself for why something hasn't happened yet?
2.  If your closest friend had your exact circumstances and wanted this same thing, what would you tell them to do?
3.  Where did you first learn the belief underneath your excuse, and is it still getting information from that original moment, or from your life right now?

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between a limiting belief and a real obstacle?

A real obstacle usually has a concrete next step, even an unpleasant one, while a limiting belief tends to produce a story that ends in "so there's no point trying." Real obstacles can be worked around, negotiated, or planned for; limiting beliefs are typically framed as permanent facts about who you are or what people like you can expect.

Why do smart, capable people still fall for their own excuses?

Because the excuse was built by the same mind that's supposed to be catching it, using logic that sounds airtight from the inside. Limiting beliefs usually form in childhood or early experience, before critical thinking could weigh in, and then get reinforced quietly enough that most people never think to question them. Likewise, they expose a real present-day insecurity.

Can you change a limiting belief just by thinking positively about it?

Positive thinking can help with day-to-day self-talk, but it usually doesn't touch the original emotion or memory a belief is attached to, which is why the same pattern tends to resurface under stress. Techniques I use with coaching clients like Mental and Emotional Release^® (MER) and NLP are designed to work with that underlying emotional charge directly, rather than talking over it.