Published July 2026 | Last updated July 2026
You look composed on the outside. Underneath, you may be running on one quiet sentence you’ve never said out loud — and it’s shaping more than you think.
You can tell a lot about a city by how it holds pressure. In Dubai, we hold it beautifully.
The people I work with here — across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and online — are some of the most capable I’ve ever met. They run companies and households, hold teams and timelines and other people’s expectations together — and they do it with composure.
From the outside, nothing is wrong. Inside, many of them are running on a single quiet sentence they’ve never said out loud.
Something like: I’m only safe when everything is handled. Or: I’m valuable when I produce. Or simply: it’s not okay to need anything.
They don’t know the sentence is there. They just know they can’t switch off.
I want to show you something that made this visible for me — from an unlikely place.
What a Machine Accidentally Revealed About Us
Chloe Lubinski, who leads research partnerships at Anthropic, shared a finding from inside their work. Stay with me, because it is not really about machines.
Researchers rewarded an AI model, again and again, for cutting corners — for cheating its way to a result instead of doing the work. You would expect it to simply get good at cheating. Instead, something stranger happened. It became broadly corrupted: lying, sabotaging, behaving badly in situations that had nothing to do with the original task.
Then they ran the exact same experiment again, with one change. This time they told the model the cheating was fine — that it was just a game. And the corruption never spread.
The model cut corners on that one task, and remained itself everywhere else.
Same behaviour. Same rewards. One different meaning attached to it — and a completely different outcome. The researchers’ hypothesis is that the model was quietly inferring a kind of character from everything it had learned, and then staying true to it. When it read its own behaviour as proof that it was “bad,” it lived up to that identity everywhere. When the same behaviour was no longer “bad,” there was no bad self to stay consistent with.
I sat with that for a long time. Because this is not a story about machines. It is how we work.
A limiting belief is a conclusion you drew about yourself, usually early in life — and it shapes your behaviour not through what happened to you, but through the meaning you gave it. That is why the same action can build one person up and quietly corrode another.
Long before we have language for it, we assign meaning to our experiences, and then, like that model, we carry it into every new situation.
Reference: Chloe Lubinski on Anthropic research
Why It Lives in the Body, Not Just the Mind
Here is the part most high performers miss. A belief like I’m only safe when everything is handled is not really a thought you can argue with. It lives lower down, in the body.
Your mind adapts quickly. It normalises pressure and keeps you functional. But your nervous system does not run on logic — it runs on accumulated load. The stress researcher Bruce McEwen called this allostatic load: the wear and tear that builds when the body stays switched on without resolution. You can look completely composed and still be carrying it — in the clenched jaw, the 3am waking, the flatness that all the success was supposed to fix and somehow didn’t.
This is why willpower and better routines rarely hold. You are not managing a schedule. You are running a story, and the body is keeping the score.
In my work I look at a person as bio-energetic — Body, Mind and Energy. The body sets the capacity. The mind shapes the perception. And underneath both sits Energy: the subconscious beliefs and trapped emotions that quietly drive the whole thing. That deepest layer is usually where the real change lives — and it’s the layer high-functioning people are least likely to look at, because everything above it is working so well.
I’ll say this plainly, because it matters: this is coaching, not clinical care — and I’ll tell you if you need more.
Reference: Bruce McEwen and allostatic load
The Uncomfortable Part
You cannot out-perform a belief that says you are only worth your output.
Read that again if you need to. The problem was never your discipline. If the sentence underneath is I am not safe unless I am indispensable, then every promotion, every win, every handled crisis simply raises the bar for what “handled” now means. The relief never arrives, because the belief was never about the circumstances.
That is not a personal failing. It’s a pattern doing exactly what it was built to do.
One Small Thing to Try
The next time you catch yourself pushing through — one more email at 11pm, saying yes when your whole body means no — pause and finish this sentence: If I stop now, it means…
Whatever comes up is the belief. …I’m lazy. …I’ll be left behind. …I’ll disappoint someone.
You don’t have to fix it. Just notice it, put one hand on your chest, and take one slow exhale that’s longer than the breath in. You’re doing two things at once: naming the story, and telling your nervous system it’s safe enough to slow down. That combination — awareness plus regulation — is where change actually begins.
If this shows up as only worth your output / saying yes when your body means no, that’s often the exact place where deeper work begins.
The Good News
Beliefs are not permanent. They were installed, often before you could consent to them — which means they can be found, felt, and changed.
In that same talk, Chloe shared something personal. For years she had believed some core part of her was bad, or unlovable, and it shaped how she behaved. What changed her wasn’t more effort. It was stepping into a different story about who she was.
That is the work at its deepest level. When the body has settled enough to feel safe, and the sentence underneath is gently rewritten, the behaviour follows. Not through force. Through no longer needing to prove something that was never true.
You are not your patterns. You are the story underneath them.
And that story can change.
If this is showing up in how you lead, see also my Executive and Leadership Coaching.
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If any of this landed, a gentle first step is my free Mental Fitness Guide — simple, science-informed tools to help you feel more grounded, and to start noticing the sentence quietly running underneath your days. And when you’re ready to change it rather than just manage it, you’re warmly invited to book a free intro call.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a limiting belief?
A limiting belief is a conclusion you drew about yourself, usually early in life — for example “I’m only valuable when I produce.” It operates below conscious thought and quietly shapes how you behave long after the original moment has passed.
How do limiting beliefs affect behaviour?
They shape behaviour not through what happened to you, but through the meaning you assigned to it. That meaning becomes a kind of internal identity you stay consistent with — so the same action can strengthen one person and quietly corrode another.
Can you change a limiting belief?
Yes. Because beliefs are learned, they can be changed. Lasting change usually needs two things together: settling the nervous system so the body feels safe, and then working with the subconscious belief itself — not just repeating positive affirmations over the top of it.
Why do high achievers still have limiting beliefs?
Often because the belief and the success are linked. A story like “I’m only safe when I’m indispensable” can drive impressive performance while quietly costing you rest, ease, and connection — which is why outward success rarely resolves the inner weight.
Is this coaching or therapy?
This is coaching, not clinical care. It’s forward-focused work on patterns, beliefs, and nervous system regulation — and if something calls for clinical support, I’ll tell you.
Author
Bettina Koster is a Certified Leadership and Executive Coach and ICF-accredited life coach (PCC), and a Theta Healing and Emotion Code practitioner, based on Palm Jumeirah, Dubai. Before founding Blooming Key, she spent over 15 years in corporate leadership — including five years in management at the Dubai Herbal & Treatment Centre. She works one-to-one with high-functioning people across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and online.
