5 Limiting Beliefs That Are Quietly Keeping You Stuck

— and the two that ran my life for 39 years

I want to tell you something I don't say lightly.

For most of my life, I was not living my own life.

I was living the life that made sense. The life that looked responsible. The life that kept everyone around me comfortable— and kept me quietly, persistently— exhausted.

And the reason I stayed so long?

Two beliefs. So deeply embedded I had mistaken them for facts.

I don't deserve more than this. It's too late for me.

If you haven't yet read about all five limiting beliefs that quietly keep women stuck — you can find that on my Instagram. Today I want to go deeper into the two that were mine.

"I don't deserve more than this."

Let me tell you where this one started.

I grew up in a household where my parents were doing everything they could just to make ends meet. There was love — but there was also struggle. And as a child, I absorbed a belief without anyone ever saying it out loud:

Keep quiet. You are not important. It is not your turn. This is not your fate.

Nobody told me that directly. But children are extraordinary observers — and what I observed, what I felt, and what I concluded about myself in those early years was this: I didn't matter enough to take up space.

That belief followed me into school; into my early career. I didn't speak up in meetings. I didn't dare to dream too loudly. I kept my head down and got through — because getting through felt like the most I was entitled to.

And then something happened that cracked it open, just slightly.

I relocated to New York.

It sounds exciting from the outside. On the inside, it was one of the hardest seasons of my life. For the first six months I was deeply depressed. No friends. No support network. No familiar ground beneath my feet. No achievements to hide behind.

Just me, and my husband — my boyfriend then. Except he seemed to have a bright career ahead of him. And I had nothing.

In that emptiness, something shifted. When you have nothing left to hide behind, you have two choices — collapse, or build.

I chose to build.

I learnt to speak up. To set goals. To chase them deliberately and to feel the quiet, revolutionary pride of actually achieving them. For the first time in my life, I started to believe that I was someone worth investing in.

But beliefs don't die easily. They evolve.

By my mid-thirties, a new version of the same old story had taken hold. I had built a successful career in finance — impressive on paper. And yet something felt profoundly wrong. A quiet misalignment I couldn't name and couldn't shake.

I felt it in my body before I could articulate it in words.

Something is wrong with the way I am leading my life.

And then — almost immediately — two voices stepped in at once:

You don't deserve to want something different after everything you've been given. And — you're too old to change anyway. The window has closed.

I almost listened. I almost stayed.

But during a vacation with my husband, I had a conversation that changed everything. Not a dramatic intervention. Not a moment of crisis. Just an honest conversation between two people who love each other — and a question I finally let myself answer truthfully.

I made a choice that made no logical sense on paper. I left a high-performing job with no clear plan. I walked away from a version of success I had spent years building.

And six years later, I can tell you with absolute certainty:

The only person who gets to decide if you deserve more — is you.

Not your past. Not your upbringing. Not the beliefs you absorbed as a child sitting quietly at a table, feeling invisible. Not the version of yourself who spent years keeping her head down just to get through.

You.

The moment I stopped waiting for someone — or something — to tell me I was worthy, and started simply deciding that I was, everything changed. My relationship with my work. My relationship with money. My relationship with myself.

When you embody your own worth, life reorganises around it.

"It's too late for me."

Six years into a life I actually chose, I can tell you this:

It was never too late. It was simply not yet.

The version of me who left that job at 39 — uncertain, a little terrified, but more alive than she had felt in years — she is the reason I do what I do today. She is the reason I coach women who are standing at exactly that edge, hearing exactly that voice.

And what I tell them is what I wish someone had told me:

Focus not on how much time has passed. Focus on how much time remains.

If I am lucky enough to live another thirty or forty years — and I intend to live them fully — that is not a footnote. That is the whole story. That is enough time to rebuild, to reinvent, to contribute something meaningful, to feel genuinely alive in my own life.

Thirty to forty years is a damn long time to make a difference.

In your own life. In the lives of the people you love. In the world you leave behind.

So if you are sitting somewhere right now thinking it is too late — I want you to stop measuring backwards. Stop counting the years that have already passed and tallying what you did or didn't do with them.

Turn around and look at what's ahead.

Because it was never too late.

It is not too late for you either.

The Question that Changes Everything

These beliefs feel like facts.

They are not.

They are stories — formed in childhood, shaped by experience, quietly reinforced by fear. And they have been running your life in the background, without your full awareness or your permission.

The question that changed everything for me was not dramatic. It was small. Quiet. Devastatingly simple.

Is this actually true? Or is this just what I have always told myself?

That question is where your freedom begins.

You don't have to fight the belief. You don't have to shame yourself for how long you've carried it. You simply have to pause long enough to question it.

Because the moment you question a belief, you create a gap.

And in that gap is where choice lives.

That is how I rebuilt my life at 39.

Not by having all the answers.

Not by waiting until I felt ready.

But by finally deciding — quietly, firmly, without permission from anyone — that I was worth the risk of trying.

And so are you. 🌸

Which of these two beliefs has been yours? Hit reply and tell me — I read every single one.

Ready to start questioning the stories that have been quietly holding you back? Learn more about coaching with me at themindstudio.sg

Elynn Teo is a CFO, Certified Life Coach and Founder of The Mind Studio — a coaching practice for women ready to live with more purpose, clarity and intention.