Our conscious and unconscious are always in conflict when we find ourselves in situations that doesn’t make sense. This internal conflict leads us to go autopilot on our beliefs that shape our perception of the world, how we need to act, and how we want to live our lives. The power of belief sometimes doesn’t seem to make any sense, but as long as you see the thin line between logic and emotions, you will be aware of how you respond to situations. Find out where the beliefs you hold on to come from and how your mind uses them and how to change the ones that limit you to live your best life.
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Harnessing The Power Of Belief In Your Life
We have an amazing episode where we start dissecting what it is that creates your reality. What is it that creates the perception of the world that you’ve got? One of the most important building blocks of how you experienced the world are your beliefs and beliefs are unquestioned commands that determine your behavior, communication, and results. For this episode, I’d love it if you took away one thing, which is awareness of how your beliefs play in your life and what results you’ve gotten from them, good and bad, wanted and not so much wanted so that later on, you’ll be able to identify which beliefs you want to change, and then we’ll give you the tools to change it.
The biggest thing here is becoming aware of exactly what those beliefs are. Are they your beliefs? Did you pick them up from someone else? Are you wearing someone else’s beliefs as your own? Really being able to break these down so we can start to step into and understand. The most exciting part about all of this is understanding what are the beliefs that you need to have in order to create the life that you really want to live. It really is about awareness. We’re going to be diving deep into all of the fun stuff, the science, the fiction, and really talking about a bunch of different theories behind all of this, but really for you to take away what makes the most sense for you.
Let’s get into a couple of places where people can get a little confused so we can clear this up. First of all, going back to the definition, beliefs are unquestioned command that determine your behavior, communication, results. They’re unquestioned because they’re in your unconscious mind. We are not always aware of them and that can lead people to thinking that they believe in something else than they actually believe in. A lot of times, we’ll believe stuff we don’t want to believe. We may tell ourselves that we’re smart enough, that we’re good enough, that we’ll be successful, and we can tell ourselves until we’re blue in the face.
We don’t want to believe anything else. Remember the difference between the conscious and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is like the backseat driver. It can get really loud, but it doesn’t have this hands on the wheels. Your beliefs are all inside of your unconscious mind. If you say that you’re going to be successful and you’re going to crush it in life, but deep down you don’t believe it, that is the thing that is going to be unquestioned because it’s in your unconscious and it will guide your communications, your behaviors, your habits, and all of your results.
Oftentimes, what you’ll see is people say, “I don’t understand why I keep doing this or why I self-sabotage.”Oftentimes, when you’re looking at your life and where you’re going and what you’re trying to do and you’re saying, “I’m trying to be successful,” or, “I’m trying to achieve this thing,” or, “I’m trying to reach this goal,” and you catch yourself self-sabotaging. Where you’re doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing, you consciously are aware of it, but unconsciously you can’t seem to move past that. That’s really understanding that the relationship between your conscious mind and your unconscious mind and how a lot of the time, we are living on autopilot when it comes to these beliefs and where they come from. What we’ll oftentimes do is we’ll start to make up all these stories and all these reasons for why we are the way we are rather than looking at the root of it, which does come down to these beliefs.
That’s because we have beliefs that can expand us or we can have beliefs that limit us. We can have a salad of these things. It doesn’t always have a very clear rhyme or reason and that’s also why it can be really hard to see, “Why is it that in this situation, I’m totally confident and amazing and in this situation, I feel so insecure. Why is it that I feel like I’m sabotaging myself in certain places?” It can get a little confusing. It’s important to understand that there is a difference between your logic and what you tell yourself and what you actually believe.
One is much more of an emotional thing. It doesn’t need to make sense. Your beliefs are there for whatever reason they got there and it’s very challenging to say, “It doesn’t make sense. I have a lot of people tell me, “ I know this, but I still feel this.” I know that I’m good at what I do, but I still feel like I’m a failure. I know what to do and yet when I’m in the situation, I never do it.” There, you see another conflict here between your conscious mind and your unconscious mind. What you know to be true, that’s logic and reason and conscious and what you feel and what you do, it’s on your unconscious mind.
Have a lot of patience with yourself. You’re going to be learning a lot of stuff throughout this entire episode. This entire podcast series that may make you question your previous behaviors and especially when you start making some significant changes to all of the sudden start judging what you had done or who you had been. Just remember that these beliefs don’t always make sense and it’s okay, they’re not supposed to.
The beautiful thing in this is understanding how logic and reason tend to be the language of the conscious mind. It’s how we understand the world. Feeling an emotion tends to be the language of the unconscious mind or of the body. Oftentimes, we misidentify in a way to where we start to believe that our beliefs are who we are. This can be dangerous in the sense of if we believe that at an unconscious level that we’re not good enough and we’re not worthy of love, we try to go out and get into a relationship or go and do something that is expecting us to really show up at a different level. We’re going to be living from that identity, that belief system that I’m not worthy of somebody of this level and we’re not going to be able to attract what it is you really want to experience.
Unconsciously, you’re going to be beating yourself up saying, “I don’t understand why I can’t do this. I don’t understand why I can’t talk to these kindhearted or great men who are attracted to me, but I don’t feel attracted to them or I run every time.” We can use a million different scenarios, but it really is understanding that how your unconscious mind can in a way become addicted to these emotions, these feelings because that’s what’s familiar to it. It starts to live in that place where your conscious mind is saying, “Look at all this new stuff.” There’s all this logic and reason. We should feel good. We should feel happy. I believe we talked about this and in earlier episodes when we were talking about how emotions work in episode four. Understanding that your body, your unconscious mind in a way can become emotionally addicted because that can become your body’s new place of home. It’s understanding where are you living? Where’s your unconscious mind living emotionally and what are the beliefs around it?
This reminds me of a study that was done quite a while back who’s done on kittens and some of the kittens were raised with vertical bars over their eyes, so they believe that the world was vertical and some kittens were raised with horizontal bars over their eyes, so they believe that the world was horizontal and after a little while being raised like this, they were put into an environment where some of the furniture was painted vertically in some of the furniture was painted horizontally. The kittens who had the vertical bars over their eyes would walk into the furniture that was painted horizontally and the kittens with the horizontal bars over their eyes, they would walk into the furniture that was painted vertically.
You can see that these addictions, these habits of believing and then reacting to the world, it’s all going in to your unconscious mind. It all goes back to what you believe is real and you can get hooked on that and it. It really happens because we have a cognitive bias called the confirmation bias, which essentially means that we need to be right and it’s really hard for us to have two conflicting beliefs inside of our mind at the same time. It creates cognitive dissonance, essentially the psychic discomfort. Just think about if you’ve ever tried to convince someone that something they don’t believe is true, is true, and how much they fight. They don’t even want to deal with it. They don’t even want to consider it. They’d rather die than believe that what you’re saying is true. That happens to all of us. It’s a human thing.
What that does is that whenever we have a belief, we will seek out evidence that supports it. Our minds, remember how much it deletes. Remember how the unconscious mind deletes information. If it doesn’t believe something, that’s a really good excuse for him to delete it right out. This thing can’t be real. This thing isn’t real. No reason to even pay attention to it. That’s like the kittens walking into the furniture. It’s like, “Everything comes vertically. It can’t possibly come like this so it doesn’t exist.”Bumping right into it. That’s one of the ways that beliefs can change your experience of reality and what you do.
[Tweet “Where’s your unconscious mind living emotionally and what are the beliefs around it?”]
When you have a woman who can’t understand why her communications with men are just going wrong, a lot of it could be because she’s got a belief that men don’t like her, could be. They could be a lot of men showing her actual love, but her brain is saying, “We don’t believe that men can like us,” and so she might come up with all sorts of reasons to discount those men or not see them. She might go on the defensive or maybe even attack them because of that confirmation bias, the need to support that belief. That’s one of the many ways in which beliefs can completely shape your experience of reality.
It’s so crucial that we become aware of not just what we’re deleting, but also the references that we’re pulling in to solidify our beliefs. Have you ever had that experience when someone says, ” I know this is true because of this experience and this experience,” and then they have this whole list of references that they solidify that belief with. Oftentimes, especially when we get into how you change beliefs, it’s recognizing where those references are coming from because when you have so many references for a certain belief and I will use an example here. We use the example, that all men are bad, all that are assholes, and you have all of these references about all of these times when some man or some guy in her life was just a terrible person, we’re going to strongly believe that because we have so many references to hold onto that belief.
Trying to disprove our say, “Is that really true?” That individual, because they have so many references is going to be holding onto that so much stronger than somebody who maybe only has one reference. Part of when we get into the idea of how we really shift and change beliefs, number one, it’s recognizing what are those references and starting to disprove or look for other evidence of a different belief, of a different possibility. Where we can start to say, “Is it possible that there are men out there that are loving? That are kind?” and starting to build references for a different belief. That is how we can start to really wire in and create new belief systems within ourselves.
That’s such a really powerful thing that you brought up there and fortunately, I have a belief that men are pretty freaking awesome, in general. Fortunately, I’m good with that. My mind’s just going to completely delete that belief. The thing is that especially now, the news is chock full of very disturbing news about men in power acting despicably, acting in a way that it is just so damaging to everyone. Men and women, and I’ve spoken to a lot of women who are starting to develop this belief that men or just a bunch of creeps who can’t control themselves.
I’ll tell, “Why do you believe this?” They’ll look at all point it, this news article and that news article and this politician and that influencer and over and over and over again, and they develop this case. The problem is that once this case is made, all other men will be judged by it. When that belief is men are pieces of crap, then even the good ones will be judged. Then these women will look at these men and find reasons, “He couldn’t be so good. He’s hiding something.” “He bought you a ring? He wants something,” because all men are crappy, so that can’t be a genuine compliment. He’s just trying to get in your pants. That smile, don’t trust it.”
We do this to each other, we do this to situations, we do this to ourselves, and that also brings up a really interesting question is what came first? Especially when we have beliefs about ourselves, whether we’re good enough or not, whether we deserve love or we don’t. Then we come up with these cases as evidence. My question and this is something to really think about is what came first? The event that you point at as evidence or the belief? If someone thinks that they’re not smart enough and then they go in and they have a conversation at dinner and they say something that’s wrong. They mentioned some case in politics and it turn out, they just botch it or they’re botched your name and then the whole table laughs and like, “What are you some kind of idiot?”
Then the person goes home and, “You guys will see, I’m not smart enough.” My question there is it possible that the person going into that dinner had that belief, I’m not smart enough. Then questioned their own knowledge, blocked themselves off or distracted, or maybe they changed their answer, changed what they were going to say because of that belief and actually ended up saying the wrong thing. Maybe that belief actually created the evidence. It’s a weird chicken or the egg thing, but that’s got to be considered when we go into beliefs. A lot of times when people say, “I have these ten examples that support my belief. My question is, is it possible the belief created all ten of those examples?”That by clearing the believe, the events would stop?
This is a beautiful concept and a beautiful point because not only is it, the concept of is it the chicken or the egg, but it almost brings up this creative part of, “Let’s experiment with this. Let’s start to experiment and play with the idea of if I were to start to feel a certain way, what is it that I would then do or how would I behave right to create their reality outside of me?” If we’re diving back into some previous episodes, I believe it was episode four, where we started to talk a lot about emotion and how our emotions influence our behaviors and our actions and how we generate certain results.
If that belief comes down to an emotion inside of us, and that emotion affects the way that we think and the way that we filter and it affects how we behave, then it can start to be conceived very, very clearly. How our emotions and our beliefs can influence the way that we experience the world and how we experience and what we do in that experience. What I love about what Dan brought up here is really starting to dive into how would I need to feel, or how is this belief making me feel? What’s the emotion that’s coming up? Identifying that emotion so you can start to look into how that emotion is influencing your behaviors and your thoughts and your actions.
Something that we’ve been aware of, especially in medicine for a long time that’s completely based on this thing, it’s called the placebo. I think we’re all familiar with the placebo. It is a substance or a procedure that is believed in so much by the subject that it actually creates a medicinal effect. This happens with all of the medicines that are tested, at least in America where they’re all tested with three different groups of people. One, takes nothing. They take no substance at all and another group takes the medicine and another group takes a sugar pill. Then they see which group gets the most positive benefit out of taking that.
It’s really interesting that in the World Psychiatry Journal, October 2015, there was a meta study of anti-depressants versus placebos and they found out over the whole course of the study, antidepressants helped 40% of the test group that took the drug, placebos 30%. That means that only 10% of the benefits that people get out of taking antidepressants come from the medicine itself. The rest is on pure belief. When you believe in something so much that your emotions, your whole chemistry changes in accordance with that belief and it becomes true. A self-fulfilling prophecy.
Another way to think about it in a not so good way because there are nocebos by the way. Nocebo is the exact same thing as a placebo, instead of being positive though it goes the other way. I once overheard a friend of mine talking about his girlfriend who had accused him of cheating on her so many times, he started wanting to. She believed that he was cheating on her. She believed that he was that guy and she believed in it so hard that she acted towards them in a way that got them to almost like, “You know what, I might as well.” In that way it also became a self-fulfilling prophecy is something, a belief that changed the emotions, that changed the chemistry within a person so much so regularly they became addicted to that reality and that reality became true.
I’m trying to decide how will we want to get there? This is really, really, really huge. If we can start to grasp the power behind our thoughts, behind our emotions, and behind the beliefs that we carry and just like Dan is talking about here, when we really truly believe and can emotionally experience and feel in our body, it literally does change our chemistry and we can really go into the science of it just briefly. Different emotions create different chemicals like serotonin and dopamine, all the stuff is going to release different chemicals. It’s changing the chemistry in your body. If you can understand that when you start to believe and/or think something different and you start to feel, you are literally changing your biology and your chemistry.
Because of that, I believe we went into this belief a little bit at one of our previous episodes talking about how we start to attract different things into our life in really paying attention by the emotions that were living with. This is interesting because oftentimes you’ll meet different types of people in the world and we’ll use a really black and white example. You can meet somebody who just has a negative perspective on the world. They’re always angry, they’re pissed off, they’re frustrated, they’re tired, and they just can’t seem to cut a break. They’re always looking at all this crap that has to happen and they’re always running late and everyone’s just never smiling at them and people are just terrible and life is just unfair.
Then you meet the person that’s the opposite. They’re so freaking positive and happy all the time and they’re just glowing and they’re beaming and they’re so grateful and they’re so full of joy and it doesn’t seem to matter what happens in life. They always seem to find the good in it, the gift in it. They’ve seemed to find a way to be grateful for it and take whatever obstacles and turn them into opportunity. Regardless if it’s even the same situation or circumstance, the way that those individuals experience it is almost in a way predetermined by the emotions that they’re experiencing it with. Are they experiencing it from a place of love and joy and gratitude and abundance? Are they experiencing it from a place of loss, of depression, of frustration, of anxiety, of scarcity because of what they believe? We really start to look into how much these beliefs and these emotional addictions and are these emotional identities that have influence the way that we perceive and the opportunities that we have in our world. We can really start to see the way that we can start to change our lives through simply changing our beliefs.
This reminds me of a conversation that I had with my mom once a while back. My parents are scientists, my mom a little less, my dad, hardcore. He’s got to be able to see it. It’s got to be peer reviewed study. He’s a professor in college. You can blame him. He’s amazing. I remember talking to my mom about the idea of miracles and blessings. I think she heard me say something like, “This little miracle happened or this is a blessing, “She asked me if I really believe in it, and I do. I do believe that miracles and blessings exists. She said, “How do you know that these are real? How can you really believe? That’s not science. There’s no proof to that. How could it possibly exist?”
I remember asking her, “Let’s say let’s say that they don’t, who do you think has an even happier life? Someone who believes that everything just happens out of coincidence, and if it just happens, it just happens and after that it’s no big deal. Or someone who looks at it and says, “That little synchronicity. I can’t believe the universe aligned for me to experience and love this little thing. What a gift. What a blessing. Who do you think has even more of an enjoyment in life?” I think it’s the people who believe in miracles and blessings. Especially the ones who believe that it happens to them.
We do get into that perspective that you’re talking about here, Sophie, of just how do you see the world? What are you looking for? What is your confirmation bias focused you on? How does that make you feel? Do your beliefs support the way that you want to see the world? Making you feel all of those juicy hormones that Sophie was saying? That rush of dopamine that makes you feel so freaking good. Does the world look gray and boring and without magic and without luster? It’s just another day of life?
That’s all about beliefs. That’s the magic of beliefs as well, of being able to change them and I can’t wait until we get those episodes going. We really get into the mechanics of how to change it, where you can really feel the difference. The first step is awareness and that’s really what this episode is all about. Paying attention. What do you believe about life? What do you believe about yourself? We talked about self-image and identity or we’re going to the very next episode. That’s all about what do you believe about yourself and how does that create the reality that you’re in? Just start thinking about that. What do I believe about anything and how does that create the reality around me?
It really is starting to pay attention to not just what you think or what you logically know but how you feel. That’s really the biggest difference that I would love for those of you listening to take away from this. Your beliefs are on just what you think and what you know, it comes down to how you feel. A great test for this is when you think about, “I’m amazing and I’m so lovable and I’m so worthy,” when you’re saying that, how does it feel? It’s that feeling that will start to allow you to connect with not just your conscious mind, but your unconscious mind and really listening to does my unconscious mind really believe this?
Does it feel congruent and comfortable and like home or does it feel kind of like you’re an imposter in that? We can get into more of this a little bit later, but does it feel like, “I don’t know if I really believe that,” like, “It’s true, but not really.” Part of me thinks that, but the other part of me is not sure. This is where we can start to understand.” There’s nothing wrong with you.” It’s just identifying, “I want to believe this.”I have the logic and the understanding behind it and recognizing that at an unconscious level, maybe there’s something in there that we need to do a little bit of work on.
[Tweet “The beautiful thing about life is to go through it and experience it and then discover what do you believe.”]
There’s nothing bad or wrong about having a belief that doesn’t support you. We all do. Sophie does. I do. How do I know this? Because we’re alive. That’s it. That’s all it takes because we’re alive. Other people, Tony Robbins, he’s got a mess of them, I’m sure of it. Why? Because he’s that’s it. The beautiful thing about life is to go through it and experience it and then discover what do you believe? It’s this constant state of learning about yourself and just being aware of what you’re getting in life and where does it come from? Then doing everything in order to shape it and sculpt it. That’s your task for this episode is awareness.
I want you to take some time and write a list of all the times you believed in something so much that you made it happen, good or bad. Believing that you’re going to fail a test so much that you completely botched it, believing that you were going to get fired so much that you did, even if you didn’t have any evidence or maybe believing that this amazing thing was going to happen in your life. Believing that even though everybody told you that you wouldn’t be able to run this marathon, that you did anyway because you just believed. Even though all the evidence was pointing in the wrong direction.
We start with these big things because they help train you pay attention to even smaller things. Then, that exercise that Sophie talking about becomes really critical. Then you can think, you can try things on. Say, “I’m a genius or I deserve all of the good things in life and see how you feel. Then write it down, if you can pinpoint words. Then go through your life and see if you can identify a few different places in which that belief took you to either where you want it to go or you didn’t want to go, all through that confirmation bias of you creating your reality around this belief and in doing this work, you’re going to start seeing the matrix of your own life. You’ll be able to start seeing what’s going on and what’s where things are coming from. Then we get to the juicy parts of changing stuff.
Stay tuned because in the next episode, we’re going to be diving deep into really understanding the next part of this, which is self-image and identity, where we’re going to be talking a lot about how your beliefs impact who you believe you are and how you can really start to understand and create the person you really want to be, the person that’s already in you and how we can start to bring them out even more. Stay tuned and we will see you on the next episode.
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