2 Powerful Shifts To Upgrade Your 'Self-Concept'

Your mind can trap you in a false identity. Here's how shifting your self-view can set you free.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | June 24, 2025

We all carry mental blueprints or schemas of how the world works, what love should feel like, how success should arrive or what's possible for us.

These schemas are internal roadmaps that determine how you navigate through life. At the very core of all these maps is your "self-concept"— the beliefs you hold about yourself, about who you are, what you're capable of and what you're allowed to have or hold onto.

Your self-concept isn't something you're born with but something that has been building ever since you were born and continues to form as you live through varied experiences.

From childhood onward, your self-concept is shaped through repeated messages, cultural narratives and most importantly, your emotional interpretations of life events.

In simpler words, anything your brain picks up from your environment as a "suggestion" about who you are can become part of your self-concept.

It doesn't even have to be explicitly said; sometimes it's just what you felt.

For example, if you went through an experience that ended up making you perceive yourself as "not good enough" or perhaps even "too much," that very conclusion quietly becomes a self-belief and eventually a part of how you see yourself.

In case that belief keeps getting reinforced, maybe through similar experiences or the way people treat you, these beliefs become stronger. Your brain starts scanning the world for more evidence of them, which happens because of confirmation bias.

This means once you believe something about yourself, your mind selectively notices and remembers the things that confirm it, while filtering out what contradicts it.

Over time, this becomes your internal baseline. Even if life gets better or can get better, your self-concept may keep you stuck in that older story unless you consciously shift it.

Here are two ways your self-concept sabotages your desires.

1. A Limited Self-Concept Shrinks What You Believe Is Possible

Often, the reason you may not be pursuing your desires isn't laziness or lack of ambition. It could be that it doesn't align with your current self-concept and so, it just doesn't feel possible to you. This can lead you to shrink what you desire to keep yourself congruent with your current beliefs.

When your self-concept quietly says, "That's not for someone like me," your brain doesn't even allow the desire to fully register as an option. This kind of rejection often doesn't even happen consciously, but at unconscious levels of your core identity, which can have an even more powerful impact on your choices.

This idea is explored in a 2017 study published in Psychological Inquiry. Researchers developed the Identity-Value Model (IVM) to explain how deeply identity shapes our motivation and self-regulation.

Their work shows that when a behavior or goal feels aligned with your self-concept or when it feels like "you," your brain assigns it more subjective value, which makes it far more likely for you to pursue and sustain it.

However, when something doesn't match your identity, no matter how desirable it is, your brain can quietly decenter it.

In other words, your self-concept even shapes what feels worth wanting. So, when your internal identity says a desire or goal is not for you, your subconscious won't even let the desire land fully, let alone act on it.

Next time a desire feels off-limits, catch the thought in the moment and journal about it. Try reframing it into an empowering statement, such as "I'm someone who can learn this."

Then, take one tiny action to act on your goal, like reading a page, making a quick call or spending five minutes practicing. Such micro-commitments can send a signal to your brain that a bigger and bolder dream is possible for you, even if it happens in steps. All you have to do is let yourself desire it and see it happening for you as much as it can for anybody else.

2. A Past-Based Self-Concept Keeps You Stuck In The Same Patterns

When your identity is stuck in who you have been, no matter how hard you work, it can be hard for newer outcomes to emerge. This is because your internal reference point may still be tied to an outdated version of you, including old roles you played, unresolved pain or perceived past failures.

These experiences also subtly influence your present behavior without your conscious knowledge, and you may find yourself stuck in similar patterns in different situations. Instead of living in the current moment, you might be living on autopilot, where the same beliefs, reactions and even results get recycled.

A 2019 study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence explored how the way teenagers talk about their life experiences (their narrative identity) relates to how they build their sense of self (their identity commitments and exploration).

Researchers focused on two aspects of their stories. The first was self-event connections (a question of, can they link life events to who they are?) and agency (do they see themselves as someone who takes action or has control?).

This was compared to identity-building behaviors like making commitments, exploring different paths in life, ruminating and overthinking choices, and so on. Data was collected from two groups, a large group of 1,580 Dutch teenagers at one point in time and a smaller long-term sample of 242 teens over two years.

Researchers found that teens who made clear links between life events and their self-image and saw themselves as agentic were more likely to have stronger commitments and explore options more deeply and broadly.

Over time, those who saw themselves as agentic in their stories tended to grow in identity strength and exploration. Teens who didn't share any story or couldn't link it to themselves were less engaged in identity formation.

The findings suggest that adolescents who narrate themselves as having a greater sense of agency and who actively shape events in their lives are more likely to build stronger commitments and explore life's possibilities in adaptive ways.

This implies that how you narrate your life can reflect and even shape who you are becoming.

If you want to break out of old patterns, start paying attention to how you tell your story to yourself, as well as to others. Try reflecting on whether you are always the victim of what happened or the one who learned and adapted to become better.

Even if your past wasn't ideal, seeing yourself as someone who can grow from it rather than be defined by it can help activate a growth mindset. With this mindset, it becomes more likely that you'll build a sense of self that's evolving and open to new outcomes.

How To Work On Your Self-Concept

When you think of changing your self-concept, remember that it isn't about overhauling everything at once. Take it one step at a time. This is going to start with awareness of the beliefs that tend to hold you back.

Limiting beliefs often show up in situations where you feel stuck, patterns of repeated emotional responses or in repeated thoughts that feel true but disempowering.

Start by noticing what keeps coming up for you. When something triggers you or makes you feel small, journal about it. What was the situation? How did you interpret it? Over time, this may help you spot patterns. Since these are often rooted in beliefs you've internalized over the years, it can seem like an overwhelming process, but a rewarding one in the long run.

Once you've identified a limiting belief, try to consciously affirm the opposite. An affirmation is simply a thought, and a belief is just a thought repeated enough times to feel true.

By practicing daily affirmations and searching for positive evidence in your everyday life that directly counters your limiting beliefs, you can start to rewire your internal script. It's one of the simplest yet most powerful tools to reshape how you see yourself.

However, some beliefs are deeply rooted and may be hard to identify and untangle alone, especially if they stem from childhood experiences or long-standing emotional wounds. In those cases, seeking professional help can offer the support and tools needed to shift those deeper layers of your identity.

The idea is to consciously become the author of your internal story, one belief at a time. Because when you shift how you see yourself, everything else begins to shift too.

Curious how confident you truly feel about your goals and capabilities? Take this science-backed test to find out: Growth Mindset Scale

A similar version of this article can also be found on Forbes.com, here.