This is a useful question far beyond the subjects we study or the information we collect. It can be applied to the way we think about ourselves and the beliefs that influence our lives. We all carry ideas about who we are, what we are capable of and what we believe is possible.
You might believe that you are not confident, that you are bad with money, that you are incapable of making good decisions or that you are not intelligent enough to succeed. You might even have decided that you are an anxious person, an unlucky person or somebody who never finishes anything. These beliefs can feel like facts because they have been repeated for so long, but that does not mean they are facts.
The more interesting question is where those beliefs came from. You may discover that something somebody said to you many years ago became the foundation for the way you see yourself today. It could have been a teacher who told you that you were not good at something, a parent who was constantly critical, a relationship that damaged your confidence or a failure that you interpreted as evidence that something was wrong with you.
Equally, the belief may have developed from an experience that you did not understand properly at the time. A child who struggles with something might think, “I can't do this,” while an adult looking back might realise, “I couldn't do it then.” One statement describes a moment, while the other can become an identity.
Importance of positive thinking
This is why awareness is such an important part of positive thinking. Before you can change a belief, you have to recognise that it is there. The difficulty is that beliefs can become almost invisible because we stop questioning them. If you have spent twenty years telling yourself that you are not creative, that you always make the wrong decisions, that you could never start your own business or that you are too old to change direction, those statements can begin to sound like objective descriptions rather than opinions you have formed about yourself. Yet a familiar thought is not necessarily a useful thought and repeating something for years does not turn it into a fact.
This is where I believe positive thinking needs to move beyond the idea that we can change our lives by replacing every negative thought with a positive statement. If you are struggling with confidence and tell yourself repeatedly that you are incredibly confident, your mind may have a very reasonable question: what evidence do you have for that? If you do not believe the statement, you have not changed the belief underneath it; you have started another argument with yourself.
A more powerful approach is to become curious about the belief. Instead of telling yourself, “I am confident,” ask, “What makes me believe that I am not confident?” That question takes you underneath the surface and allows you to examine what is actually getting in your way. Positive thinking becomes less about pretending and more about understanding.
The same principle applies to the labels we give ourselves. We might say that we are an overthinker, that we have low self-esteem, that we are perfectionists or that we are not the kind of person who takes risks. These descriptions may contain some truth, but they can also become convenient explanations that prevent us from looking deeper.
If you describe yourself as an overthinker, for example, it is worth asking what you actually mean by that. What triggers it? What are you thinking about? Why does your mind keep returning to those subjects, and what are you afraid might happen? The label may describe something you experience, but it may also be incomplete, and an incomplete explanation can become a limiting belief.
Understanding your behaviour
There is an important distinction between understanding your behaviour and turning that behaviour into an identity. If you avoid difficult conversations because you are afraid of rejection, that may explain why you avoid them, but it does not mean that you are a coward. If you procrastinate because you are worried that your work will not be good enough, that may explain the behaviour, but it does not mean that you are lazy.
If you seek approval because you learned that being accepted made you feel safe, understanding that connection gives you somewhere to begin. It does not mean that you are weak. Understanding gives you something to work with, whereas judging yourself tends to close the door on further investigation.
This is central to the idea that you are not broken. There may be behaviours you want to change, beliefs that no longer serve you and patterns that have caused difficulties in your life, but recognising those things does not require you to conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with you. There is a world of difference between saying, “This is something I need to change,” and saying, “This is who I am.” The first creates the possibility of action; the second can become a sentence you impose on yourself.
The questions we ask ourselves matter because some questions contain their own conclusions. If you ask, “Why am I such a failure?” you have already decided that you are a failure before beginning the investigation. A more useful question might be, “What happened, and what can I learn from it?” Instead of asking why you can never get anything right, ask what specifically went wrong this time.
Instead of asking why you are so nervous, ask what you are expecting to happen. Instead of asking why people do not like you, ask when you feel most connected to other people. The difference may appear small, but one set of questions attacks your identity while the other examines your experience.
Understanding creates choices because once you know what is happening, you have something you can work with. If you discover that you avoid opportunities because you are frightened of being judged, the fear does not automatically disappear, but you can begin to examine it. You can ask whether the criticism you fear would actually matter, whether the possibility of criticism is worth accepting and whether you could take a smaller step rather than allowing the fear to make the decision for you.
The important change is that you begin to separate the feeling of fear from the assumption that something terrible will happen. Understanding why you react to criticism, why you compare yourself with other people, why you seek approval or why you procrastinate can give you the opportunity to respond differently.
Admitting that you do not understand
There is also considerable freedom in admitting that you do not understand something. We sometimes imagine that confidence means having an answer for everything, when genuine confidence can involve being comfortable enough to say, “I don't know,” “I might be wrong,” or “I'm not sure why I believe that.” Those statements create space for learning rather than closing the conversation.
The same applies to understanding ourselves. We do not need to have a perfect explanation for every emotion or behaviour, and we do not have to turn every experience into a lesson immediately. Sometimes the most honest and productive starting point is simply recognising that we do not know yet.
The deeper questions are often more revealing than the obvious ones. You might ask yourself why you are unhappy, only to discover that the more important question is why you are living a life that no longer feels like your own. You might ask why you are afraid of failure and eventually realise that what you really fear is what failure might make you believe about yourself. You might ask why you need people to like you and discover that underneath the question is a fear of what their rejection would mean. Looking beneath the first explanation can reveal the belief that is actually driving the reaction.
We all carry assumptions about ourselves, other people, relationships, money, success, failure and what is possible. Some of those assumptions are useful, while others may have outlived the circumstances that created them. A belief that once protected you may eventually prevent you from moving forward. Being cautious may have served you at one point, while later it might stop you taking a necessary risk. Wanting to please people may once have helped you feel accepted, but it may eventually prevent you from saying what you really think. The answer is not to reject every belief you have, but to examine them and ask whether they still belong.
Try taking one belief you hold about yourself and explaining it honestly, as though you were explaining it to someone who knew nothing about you. Ask what evidence supports it, what evidence contradicts it, where it came from and what it has prevented you from doing. Pay particular attention to words such as “always”, “never”, “everyone” and “nobody”, because life rarely operates in such absolutes.
“I always fail” is very different from “I failed at this,” just as “Nobody likes me” is very different from “I felt rejected by someone.” Changing the explanation can change what becomes possible because it gives you a more accurate place from which to act.
Perhaps this is the real lesson behind the statement “If you can't explain it.” Knowledge is more than collecting information. You can read books, watch videos, listen to podcasts and take courses, but information only becomes useful when you understand what it means and what you are going to do with it. The same is true of positive thinking. You do not need to fill your mind with more positive statements. You may need to understand the thoughts already occupying it, question the beliefs underneath them and decide which ones deserve to remain.
You Are Not Broken
That is where the philosophy of You Are Not Broken comes into its own. The objective is not to create a perfect mind or become somebody completely different. It is to become more aware of the mind you already have, to listen to the beliefs it has collected, understand where they came from and question whether they still deserve authority over your life. Sometimes the greatest change comes from removing what was never meant to be there rather than adding something new.
You may discover that the thing you have spent years trying to fix was never actually broken. It may have been misunderstood. And if you cannot explain why, you believe something, that does not mean you have failed. It may mean you have finally found the right question to ask.
10 FAQs: If You Can’t Explain It
1. Why is being able to explain something a sign of understanding?
Explaining an idea in your own words forces you to understand its meaning rather than relying on memorised information or repeating somebody else’s argument.
2. What does “if you can’t explain it” mean?
It suggests that if you cannot explain an idea clearly and simply, you may not understand it as well as you think you do. The same principle can be applied to your own beliefs.
3. Why should I question my beliefs?
Some beliefs are formed through childhood experiences, criticism, failure or other people’s opinions. Questioning them can help you discover whether they still reflect who you are today.
4. Can a belief feel true without actually being true?
Yes. A belief that has been repeated for many years can become familiar enough to feel like a fact. Familiarity, however, does not make a belief accurate.
5. How can I question a limiting belief?
Start by asking where the belief came from, what evidence supports it, what evidence contradicts it and what might change if the belief were wrong.
6. Why isn't positive thinking about repeating positive statements?
Positive thinking can become more meaningful when it involves understanding and questioning your thoughts rather than trying to cover negative beliefs with statements you do not genuinely believe.
7. Can I change the way I think about myself?
Your understanding of yourself can change as you examine old assumptions and recognise that a past experience does not have to become a permanent description of who you are.
8. What is the difference between behaviour and identity?
A behaviour describes something you do, while an identity describes what you believe you are. Understanding why you behave in a particular way can help you change it without turning the behaviour into a permanent label.
9. What questions can help me understand myself better?
Ask questions such as: Why do I believe this? Where did it come from? What evidence supports it? What am I afraid might happen? And what would change if this belief were wrong?
10. What does “You Are Not Broken” mean?
It means that having behaviours, beliefs or patterns you want to change does not mean there is something fundamentally wrong with you. Understanding where those patterns came from can give you the opportunity to change them.
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