In 2016, the Cleveland Cavaliers were down 3–1 against the Golden State Warriors.
No team had ever come back from that deficit in the NBA Finals. The data was clear. History wasn’t on their side.
And yet.
Before one of the most decisive games, Coach Tyronn Lue addressed his players by paraphrasing Mark Twain:
“The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you discover why you were born. I think we were born to be champions. We’ve got a tough road to conquer, but we can do it. We’re down 3–1—but when we step on the court tonight, our mindset is that we’re going to win.”
Belief didn’t guarantee the win. But without it, the comeback would never have been possible.
We celebrate moments like these in sports because they mirror something deeply human and that we rarely teach explicitly in schools: belief as a prerequisite for effort.
That same dynamic plays out every day—in our classrooms.
What Belief Really Is
When I talk about belief, I’m not talking about hype, positive thinking, or motivational slogans.
Belief is the deep, often invisible story students carry about themselves, others, and the world.
It answers a question most students never consciously ask:
Who am I, and what is possible for me?
Belief is not the same as self-efficacy, a concept extensively studied by Albert Bandura.
Self-efficacy is about doing: Can I complete this task? Can I master this skill? Can I achieve this goal?
Belief is about being and becoming: Am I the kind of person who can grow, adapt, persist, and succeed?
That distinction matters. Because belief doesn’t just influence performance in the moment.
It determines whether a student even gives it a shot.
Belief shapes:
- what students attempt
- what they avoid
- how they interpret feedback
- what failure means to them
Two students can receive the same grade, the same comment, the same setback, and walk away with completely different conclusions—not because of the event, but because of the belief underneath it.
In education, we study self-efficacy far more than belief because it’s easier to measure what students do than what they think or feel. And what doesn’t get measured rarely gets taught.
But belief is the differential factor.
Why This Matters
We are seeing more students who are disengaged, anxious, and isolated in schools. We have built systems centered on performance, ranking, and comparison. And the consequences show up daily in classrooms:
- fear of mistakes and risk avoidance
- anxiety around evaluation
- over-reliance on praise
- worth measured by outcomes instead of growth
Motivation research by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan shows that when motivation is driven primarily by external validation, learning becomes fragile and compliance-based.
In a world saturated with grades, rankings, likes, and scoreboards, belief is outsourced. But belief cannot live outside the student. It has to be grown from within.
Where Beliefs Come From
Beliefs are not formed in a single moment. They are constructed over time, through repetition and interpretation.
They are shaped by:
- family and cultural messages
- school systems and social comparison
- repeated experiences of success and failure
- and, most importantly, the meaning students assign to those experiences
If a student believes “I can,” they are right.
If a student believes “I can’t,” they are right too.
Not because belief is objectively true but because belief shapes attention, effort, interpretation, and persistence. Over time, it shapes behavior. Repeated behavior becomes identity. And whatever students repeatedly attach to “I am eventually becomes their reality.
So, how can we help students build beliefs that support growth?
Changing Belief Starts with Awareness of Thought
Belief does not change through slogans or posters. It changes through awareness and practice.
Developmental research on metacognition, first articulated by John Flavell, shows that awareness of one’s own thinking typically emerges between ages 7 and 9, with early awareness possible as young as 5.
This is why elementary school is such a critical window.
According to education researcher Lily Howard-Scott, elementary teachers spend nearly 1,000 hours a year with the same students during one of the most neuroplastic periods of development.
Students need to learn three essential things:
- That they have thoughts
- That having a thought doesn’t make it true
- That they can respond to their thoughts
Without these skills, students don’t just struggle academically—they mistake every difficult moment for evidence about who they are.
What does this look like in practice?
A teacher might say out loud:
“I forgot my book today. My brain is saying, ‘How could you be so careless?’ But I’m going to tell myself: ‘Everyone forgets sometimes. I can fix this.’”
Howard-Scott also recommends using characters and metaphors—the worry voice, the critic, the helper—to help younger students externalize thoughts instead of identifying with them.
This isn’t just a school skill. It’s a life skill.
From Awareness to Choice
As students grow older, they can learn distance from their thoughts—what psychologist Ethan Kross calls self-distancing:
- “I’m having the thought that I’ll fail,”
- instead of “I’ll fail.”
Distance creates choice.
From there, inquiry becomes possible. Students can question their thoughts, look for evidence, and consider alternative interpretations—an approach aligned with cognitive inquiry methods popularized by Byron Katie.
Belief changes when students learn that thoughts are inputs, not truths.
Belief Lives in the Body Too
Beliefs don’t just live in the mind. They’re stored and felt in the body. When the body signals threat, the brain narrows its interpretation of what is possible. In that state, even small challenges can reinforce limiting beliefs.
Neuroscience research on emotion and learning, including the work of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, shows that learning cannot happen when students are stuck in fight-or-flight. When the brain is flooded by stress, limiting beliefs, or disempowering thoughts, it simply isn’t available—for curiosity, flexibility, or growth.
In those moments, belief isn’t argued away.
It’s felt.
That’s why belief-building must include the body, not just cognition.
It requires:
- Emotional literacy and granularity — helping students name what they feel with precision, because what can be named can be regulated. Vague emotions keep students stuck; precise language restores agency.
- Acceptance rather than suppression — teaching students that emotions are data to be noticed, not weaknesses to be ignored or pushed down. Suppressed emotions don’t disappear; they leak into behavior and belief.
- Intentional shifts into regulating states — practices such as gratitude, physical movement, breathwork, mindfulness, or moments of awe that actively move the nervous system out of threat and into rest-and-restore mode, where learning becomes possible again.
When students learn to recognize “I feel overwhelmed” instead of “I’m bad at this,” the meaning of the experience changes.
And when meaning changes, belief can shift.
Belief doesn’t change because students are told to think differently.
It changes when their bodies experience safety, regulation, and the possibility to stay with challenge—without shutting down.
One Takeaway
One Takeaway
Belief is not something students either have or lack. It’s not something they receive through praise or validation. Belief is something they earn through repeated experiences of trying, struggling safely, being supported, and seeing progress linked to effort and contribution.
This is why meaningful challenges—long-term projects, service learning, collective goals—are so powerful. They create lived evidence.
That is belief—not installed, not gifted, but earned, practiced, and built from the inside out.
Want to Go Deeper?
If this topic resonates and you want to explore how belief, learning science, and classroom practice intersect, I unpack this conversation further in a podcast episode with Cynthia Nebel on The Learning Scientists:
🎧 The Belief Factor: The Missing Curriculum of Success
Sources & Research Foundations
- Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations.
- Flavell, J. H. (1979). Metacognition and Cognitive Monitoring.
- James, W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology.
- Immordino-Yang, M. H. (2016). Emotions, Learning, and the Brain.
- Kross, E. (2021). Chatter: The Voice in Our Head.
- Howard-Scott, L. (various publications on inner speech and metacognition).
