"What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are"
About this Quote
The rhetoric works because it feels both accusatory and liberating. Accusatory, because it implies your “impossible” might be self-inflicted. Liberating, because if the cage is belief, then the key is internal and immediately accessible. Robbins is selling agency without the bureaucratic wait time of “change your circumstances.” It’s self-help’s most potent product: permission to revise the self-concept.
Context matters: this comes out of late-20th-century American motivational culture, where psychology gets translated into performance language and personal transformation becomes a consumer experience. Robbins’ brand is built on high-intensity interventions that treat belief as a lever you can yank hard enough to move behavior. The quote distills that worldview into a clean binary: capability is quieter than identity.
It also smuggles in a challenge. If your limits are mostly belief-based, then comfort becomes suspect. The line nudges you to interrogate every “I’m not the kind of person who…” as a script, not a fact, and to treat identity as editable rather than inherited.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Robbins, Tony. (2026, January 18). What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-we-can-or-cannot-do-what-we-consider-14075/
Chicago Style
Robbins, Tony. "What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-we-can-or-cannot-do-what-we-consider-14075/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-we-can-or-cannot-do-what-we-consider-14075/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2026.












