A Couple Counselors

We were in a small group working through a career development lesson on limiting beliefs. The discussion was about how sometimes we carry beliefs that we picked up somewhere, but never actually checked if they were true.

One of my students, Kyree, said: “An example of that would be that white people can’t be good at cornerback.”

Before I could even respond, another student, Elijah, jumped in: “That might be the belief, but that can’t be true.  Cooper DeJean is out there killing it at cornerback for the Philadelphia Eagles, and he’s white. 

I’m not even going to lie—I was lowkey happy in that moment. Not just because they brought up the Eagles, but because they were actually doing the work. They weren’t just repeating something they heard. They were actually challenging it in a way that was productive.

Kyree just shook his head and said, “Yeah… that’s true.” And that moment right there is the whole lesson.

Kids absorb messages.

Kids repeat messages.

Kids rarely audit messages.

Kyree couldn’t even tell me where he heard that belief from. It wasn’t like he had a source. It just… existed in his mind. And that’s how most of these beliefs show up. Quiet. Unquestioned. Just sitting there shaping what kids think is possible.

As we kept going with the conversation, another student said, “Men shouldn’t be nurses.” I told them how, when my mom was younger, people used to say “your mom wears combat boots” as an insult. They looked at me, confused. That doesn’t even land the same way anymore. Because now they know women belong in the military, too, not just men. 

But that’s the point. A lot of beliefs don’t age well. But they still get passed down anyway.  And kids carry them without realizing it.

This is where the conversation matters, because this isn’t really about confidence. That’s what people usually jump to. “We need to build confidence.”

But this is deeper than that. Limiting beliefs don’t just affect confidence—they quietly eliminate opportunities before a student ever gets a chance to try.

A kid doesn’t explore something they already decided wasn’t for them.

They don’t ask questions. They don’t build skills. They don’t even imagine themselves there. Not because they can’t, but because somewhere along the way, they absorbed the message that they shouldn’t.

And most of the time, they didn’t choose that message. That’s the part adults miss. We tell kids, “You can be anything.” But we don’t help them notice what they’ve already ruled out.

This isn’t about telling students they can be anything if they just believe hard enough. That’s not real, and kids know it’s not real.

This is about helping them notice the messages that narrowed their options in the first place—and giving them a way to reopen that map.

In the lesson, we talked about where beliefs actually come from. Not in a textbook way. Just real life.

Family. School. Social media. Music. Conversations. Roasting.

Messages show up early, and they show up often. And over time, some careers start to feel like “for me,” while others feel like “not for me,” even if there’s no real reason behind it.

That’s where the shift happens.

I told them, “Anything we learn from the world, we can unlearn or update.”

You could see it land.

Not because it was motivational. Because it made sense to them.

Then we got into what those beliefs actually sound like in their heads.

They’re not always loud. It’s not always “I can’t do that.” Sometimes it’s just, “That’s not really my thing,” or “I don’t see myself doing that or “that’s not for me. Or People like me don’t do stuff like that.” 

And when you ask kids where that came from, most of the time the answer is some version of, “I don’t know.”

That’s when you know you’re dealing with something learned, not something chosen. This is where the research lines up with what we see every day.

What we’re seeing in moments like this is actually explained by Gottfredson’s Theory of Circumscription and Compromise.

Kids don’t explore careers and then decide what they like. They eliminate options first—based on what they think fits who they are. That could be based on gender, race, social class, or what they’ve seen modeled around them. They’re not choosing from a full map. They’re shrinking the map before they ever get to explore it.

So when a student says something like “that’s not a job for people like us,” they’re not making a decision. They’re repeating a boundary that was already drawn for them.

And once that boundary is there, it shapes everything.

It shapes what they try, what they avoid, and what they believe is even worth thinking about.

That’s why the conversation matters. It’s not to correct them. It’s not to lecture them. But it’s to help them see it. Once a student can see the belief, they can question it. And once they can question it, now they can do something different.

In the group, that’s all we did. I didn’t try to convince Kyree he was wrong. Elijah did that naturally, just by bringing up a real example that mattered to them both, sports. 

That’s how you reopen the map. Not by arguing. By exposing students to something that doesn’t align with their beliefs. Then you build from there.

Instead of “that’s not for me,” the shift becomes, “maybe I just haven’t seen enough yet.” That’s a completely different starting point.

Now the student might look something up, ask a question, or try something small. That’s when those small moments start building something bigger. It doesn’t build confidence out of nowhere, but it builds belief through experience.

That’s what actually changes behavior. That’s exactly what Social Cognitive Career Theory explains.

Beliefs shape behavior before outcomes ever have a chance to. If a student believes something isn’t for them, they won’t try it, won’t build skill in it, and won’t even imagine themselves there. So the belief ends up becoming true—not because it was accurate, but because it was never challenged.

And that’s where this connects to the bigger picture of career development. Most students don’t need more motivation. They don’t need another speech about working hard or believing in themselves. They need help noticing what they’ve already ruled out because once they see that, you’re working with something real.

That’s the work we’re trying to structure in our Tier 2 career development lessons—helping students notice where they’ve already narrowed their options and giving them a way to reopen them before those beliefs become permanent decisions.

Not surface-level conversations. Not generic encouragement.

But real opportunities for students to surface their beliefs, question them, and start building something more flexible and more honest, because the goal isn’t to tell a student what they should become. It’s to make sure they didn’t eliminate something before they even had a chance to consider it.

That moment in the group with Kyree and Elijah wasn’t about football.

It was a student realizing, even if just for a second: “Maybe what I believed isn’t actually true.” And once that happens, you don’t need to push much after that.

You just gave them something they didn’t have before… Options.

Middle School Career Exploration Small Group Curriculum

– Charles