[jvagner]

Not sure I agree.

To some extent, sure.. "Everyone knows that people can learn new things".

It's one of those aphorisms that we can probably agree on, however... if you examine how some people operate, across more than one spectrum of their life, those people may say it and yet not live it.

I believe that people have so many self-limiting factors front-loaded in their thoughts, action and speech that it can cumulatively operate as a hard coded mindset.

I've coached people, as a manager and as a volunteer CPT (certified personal trainer). Working through people's sense of self, typically broadcasted explicitly as a statement of limitation ("I can't do that...") or argumentativeness (as a coach, ask a question or dare to offer a statement of some kind, and the person who asked for coaching may well interrupt you, digressively, before you make any progress with your effort).

This can accumulate, over the course of a life, and embed itself as something that can be really difficult to disrupt, or even acknowledge.