Lack of Self Trust? 7-Minute Reset with Jerry Lin

Do you know how they train circus elephants? See, when the elephant is a baby, a tiny brand new elephant to this world, the trainer ties these ropes around its legs and the other end it goes on to this big pole and that pole is buried 10 feet into the ground. See, this baby elephant, it keeps pulling and pulling and pulling, and it strains with everything it has, and that pole doesn't move, right? Because that pole is 10 feet deep and he's just a baby elephant. And day after day, week after week, this baby elephant just keeps pulling, and that pole stays. He keeps pulling and it stays until one day the elephant just stops pulling. Not because it gave up, because it learned it. Its nervous system filed the lesson away in permanent storage. It doesn't matter how hard I pull, I can't break free. And so fast forward, and this baby elephant's now this huge grown adult, 6 tons, the most powerful land animal on Earth, and it could pull that pole right out of the ground in one casual step. But guess what? The trainer doesn't even need a pole anymore. He just puts a stick in the ground with this little tiny string attached to this 6-ton elephant. A stick! That elephant could sneeze that stick out of the ground. And yet that elephant stays completely still, not because of the stick, because of what it learned when it was this little baby elephant, when it was small. See, let that land. See, that elephant isn't weak. It's the most powerful animal in the room, and it's just running a program written when it couldn't break free. And nobody ever told it the pole is gone, so you can now walk wherever you want. It's crazy, huh? It's crazy. See, that's what today is all about. So welcome to the Saturday Reset. I'm Jerry S. Lin, the architect of choice. Where's everybody calling in from? Is it cold out there too? Because it's been freezing here in San Francisco. You see this? Yeah, it's been really cold out there too? Yeah, okay. Well, it's been hailing out here on and off for the last few days. We're such wimps here in California. So let me ask you a question. When is the last time you said or thought, "I don't trust myself"? In one word or phrase, type it in the chat. What does "I don't trust myself" sound like in your head? What versions of that sentence do you have? I always mess this up. I'm a failure. I don't know what I want. I should have known better. Yeah, all of that. Here's what I want you to hear. When somebody says, "I don't trust myself," what they almost always really mean is, "I've broken too many promises to me too many times." Not to other people. But to themselves. See, I'd said I'd leave, but I didn't. I'd say I'd speak up, but I stayed quiet. I said this time would be different, but it wasn't. I'll stop scrolling in 10 minutes. 2 hours later, you're still scrolling, right? I'll start tomorrow. See, Self-trust is not a personality trait. You were not born with it or without it. Self-trust is a pattern, a track record your nervous system keeps, and the patterns can be rewired. See, that's the whole session today. That's what it's about. Let's build a track record starting right now. See, I need to teach you something nobody taught you or taught any of us in school. You don't have one brain, you actually have three. See, the first brain, that's your head brain, the thinker, logic, strategy, analysis, the part of you reading emails at 11 PM and calling it productive. See, that's the part of you that has very detailed life plans that your gut completely ignores. See, your head brain See, that's that friend at the gym who keeps teaching you how to work out, and as your biceps are getting ripped in 8 weeks, his muscles are only getting bigger right here at the cheeks because all he does is talk about it. You know that friend. And brain number 2, the heart brain, your connection brain for love, belonging, grief, joy. This is why you cry at videos of a dog being reunited with its owner. A dog you've never met. And don't lie, you know exactly which video I'm talking about. The golden retriever, the airport. You've done that. All right, and then there's brain number 3, the gut brain. This is the one we're talking about today. Your autopilot, your survival system. It stores everything— your history, your trauma, your wins, your defaults, your routines. Your body receives roughly 1 billion bits, or 1 gigabit, of sensory information every second. But see this conscious head brain here? It can only process 10 bits. Okay, 10 bits. A conversation is about 50 to 60 bits, and that's why most people don't remember what they talked about, right? So when you have a conversation with somebody, you'll notice that they actually forgot about 90% of what you said within a day or two. Crazy, huh? See, that's not a typo. A billion versus 10. Or 10. That's like showing up to a drag race in a golf cart and wondering why you're losing. See, your gut brain is the race car. It was always the race car. And here's the problem: your gut brain doesn't know the difference between a real threat and a remembered one. See, research on illusory Truth effect: when you hear or experience something 7 to 10 times, your body begins to treat it as fact. See, children trust their gut from around age 5, which means decades of "you're too sensitive" or "you always mess things up," it gets hardwired as permanent storage. So whose voice is it anyways? Who first told you not to trust yourself? One name or role. Maybe it's mom, dad, grandpa, grandma, boss, teacher, sister, um, uh, religion, society. See, everyone counts. Every single one. It's that voice in the back of your head. See, I see someone wrote their ex's name in big capital letters. I understand that one. We'll talk about that another time. See, that voice back there wasn't truth. It was their 5-second reflex talking, their programming installed in you without your permission. You've been living on someone else's autopilot, running someone else's code over and over again. Now let me show you what it looks like when the code gets updated on purpose. See, I wanna tell you a story about my youngest, Sid. She had a summer program at UC Berkeley. You know, Berkeley's my old stomping grounds. So day one, I went with her. We took BART together, walked the campus, grabbed a Top Dog. If you guys know Cal, You know, top dog, just me and Sid hanging out, you know, Berkeley after— we're just chilling in Berkeley after her classes like it was 1995. Oh wow, man, I had flashbacks of 30 years ago. But anyways, you know, her mom, my ex-wife, didn't want Sid taking Bart alone. She thought it was too dangerous. She wanted to keep Sid inside the perimeter, right? So she could control— like, she can control this perimeter inside. And I want to be clear, that love was real, her fear was real, but we had completely different 5-second reflexes about what love required. We had different reflexes of what protecting her is. See, my ex-wife's reflex, it was to protect her from danger. My reflex is to build her ability to face danger. See, neither of us was wrong about loving her, right? We were just arguing from different sides or completely different operating systems, which is, if you've ever been married, it's basically a Tuesday, right? So that's what happens. Day 2, Syd goes alone. See, partway through the commute, a BART train goes down right at the transfer station that she needed to switch trains to get back to San Francisco, and the whole line was stopped because a train fell off the track or something. Most adults would even panic, but Syd, she was what, 13 or 14? She calmly figured out the alternative. Took the BART to the next station and then transferred back on a different train back. She called me when she needed a pickup from a different station, but she actually made it back to the original 24th Street and Mission station. Calm, clear, right? She problem-solved. And by day 4, she came home by herself all the way from Berkeley through Mission District BART station walked home, which for those of you who know San Francisco, it's pretty raw over there. It's pretty chaotic, disorganized, people dealing with addiction right on the platform. And my oldest daughter Sherry's been to that same station before and she scared herself. Sid walked through it like she owned the city. She came home with something in her eyes that that I've never seen before. That look of, "I just did that by myself and the world didn't break me." That's not just confidence. See, that confidence isn't something that I gave her, right? That's confidence that she built rep by rep, day by day, from a broken train to the Mission District. Here's what was happening in her nervous system across those 4 days. Day 1, dad is there, it's safe, there's a reference point established, right? Day 2, something goes wrong, but I handled it and the new data was installed. Day 3, I can do this, the reflex updated. Oh, I remember on day 3 too, she came back and she said there was this crazy person just mumbling to himself on the train. But what did she do? She just moved to a second section of the train. Pretty cool, huh? At 13 or 14 years old. And then day 4, I've done all the hard things before. So the new reflex is confirmed. That's not 4 days of motivation. That's 4 days of reps of a new program. See, I'm not worried about my girls getting around the world. They've proven they can navigate that. What I worry about is their future relationships, but that's for another conversation for another Saturday. You know, watching us as adults run our toxic 5-second reflexes is probably not good for those kids. But you know, self-trust isn't a feeling, it's a track record your nervous system keeps every time you figure something out. You make a deposit and every time someone else figures it out for you, the account stays empty. And like the elephant, you can be 6 tons of power and still stand frozen next to a stick in the ground because nobody told you that pole is gone. The rules that protected the child are caging the adult. That cage doesn't have a lock, it just feels like it does. So what is the 5-second reflex? It's this tiny gap between a trigger and your reaction, and the window where that nervous system decides before your conscious mind catches up. See, your partner sighs at dinner, and 5 seconds, your body has already decided what that means. What does it mean about you? And how to respond. See, somebody doesn't text you back after about 3 hours. By hour 2, your gut brain has written a full streaming series about your relationship, your worth, your future.. It has a title, a villain, a twist in episode 4. And the villain is never "they probably just got busy." It's always "I'm unlovable." It's a full production. None of it actually happened. See, your reflex went rogue, not because you're broken, but because it's been getting the wrong reps. Day 1 at the gym, You need to pick up a 10-pound weight. It's heavy. Your form is off, as you can see. You feel ridiculous. Across the room, someone looks like they've been born doing bicep curls, right? And you hate that guy over there, right? You've never even spoken to them, but you hate them anyways. It's totally normal. But here's What they did, they got their reps in before you. Not when they were motivated, not when the stars aligned. They showed up week after week until their body just knew what to do. You don't think your way to lifting heavier. You lift your way into lifting heavier. Information doesn't build muscle.

Reps build muscle.

So what wrong rep story have you been running? One phrase in the chat: I'm not enough. I'm a failure. I always choose wrong. Nobody stays. I'm too much. See, those are reps. Today we start with a new set of reflexes that went rogue because faulty data, Because here's the truth: you have made good decisions in your life. You've survived things that should have stopped you, and you've navigated broken trains in the middle of a commute. You've also figured things out, alone, in the most chaotic stations life has put you in. See, the question isn't whether you're strong enough. The question is, do you know what pole is gone? Right now, we're gonna start the 7-minute Guided Reset. We're gonna install the answer in your body, not just in your head, okay? So find a comfortable position. Let me get a drink of water first. Okay, now find a comfortable position.

Now close your eyes or soften your gaze and let the music come forward and let your body Settle exactly where it is. Feel the ground beneath you, the surface holding you up, the weight of your body supported. You don't have to do anything right now. You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to perform. Just be here. Take a slow breath in through the nose and release it all the way out. Let your shoulders drop. One more in and out. Good. I want you to place your hand on your chest. Right over your heart. Feel the warmth there, the rise and fall, the steady rhythm that has never stopped for you. This hand on this place, this is your anchor, and every time you place your hand here, your nervous system will know, I am here, I am safe, and I can trust what I know. We're gonna lock that in before we're done today. Now I want you to think of one moment Just one where you trusted yourself and it was right. Maybe it was a small thing, a decision, a direction you chose, a moment you stood on the platform nervous and brave and figured it out. Find that moment and let it come forward. Now notice how you see it in your mind.

Is it clear or fuzzy? Close or far away?

Bring it closer and make it bigger. Make the colors more vivid, like you're stepping back into that moment. Now notice what you feel in your body right now as you hold that memory. Where is it? In your chest, gut, throat? That sensation that is the feeling of self-trust. Remember it. It was always in you. Now I want you to hear something true. You have made it through every single hard thing in your life so far. Every one. The moments that felt impossible, you got through them. The decisions that terrified you, you made them. The versions of yourself you had to leave behind, you found the courage. That was not luck. That was not an accident.

That was you.

Knowing, choosing, even when you were scared, even when you were wrong, even imperfectly. The voices that told you that you were too sensitive, the rules that said stay quiet, keep the peace, don't trust what you feel.

Those rules weren't wrong to protect you then.

They kept you safe when the world was too big, when you needed someone else to hold the map. Now take a deep breath in. And as you breathe out, thank that part of you. It did its job. And now you can let it know, "I've got it from here." Now I want you to imagine one week from today, something happens, a trigger fires, someone says something, a situation comes up that would have sent your old reflex into overdrive. And instead, you notice it. You feel it in your body first. You know exactly where it lives. And before the old program runs, you do one thing. Your hand comes to your chest and you ask yourself one question: What do I actually know here? Before anyone else's voice gets involved, see yourself asking it. See what happens when you do. Notice how differently the moment unfolds when you are the one choosing the response. That's not a fantasy. That's your future, and your nervous system Just rehearsed it. Now with your hand still on your chest, hold everything you just felt. The memory of you trusting yourself, the feeling in your body, the image of yourself one week from now choosing differently. Hold all of it right here and say this to yourself slowly: I trust what I know. I have earned the right to trust myself. Again. I trust what I know. I have earned the right to trust myself. Now when you're ready, take one big breath in, and as you breathe out, we're going to lock this in together. Clap! That's it. That's the new program locked. Every time you hear that clap from now on, your nervous system knows what it means. You know what it means. You just installed it. Now I'm gonna count you back from 5 to 1. And with each number comes a little more present. 5, becoming aware of the room around you. 4, feeling your feet on the ground. 3, wiggle your fingers and your toes, taking a breath. And 2, almost back. Bring a small smile to your face if you have one. And 1, open your eyes. Welcome back. In one word in the chat, how does your body feel right now? Not your mind, your body. Is it calm? Warm, lighter, tingly, clear, emotionally grounded.

That's the new program setting in. Someone said hungry. Valid, valid. Emotional program is real work. Your brain burns actual glucose doing this, so go eat something real after the reset. We're actually leaving for my niece's 22nd birthday dim sum lunch in, uh, what, 20 minutes? And I'm getting hungry too. So that clap you just did, that's your anchor now. Anytime you feel triggered, overwhelmed, or about to run an old program, hand on your chest, that question, or just clap. Your nervous system just rehearsed the new response. Now we're gonna give it something new to practice this week. See, last week and the week before, I gave you some homework, right? Setting those 3 alarms a day on your phone, morning, one in the noon, and one at night. Yeah, I told you to name it sit. So someone DM'd me the other day and said, Jerry, I stared at the screen for 20 seconds trying to remember what sit meant. So I hear ya, we're fixing that right now. So go ahead, uh, here's your updated homework. Go ahead, we're gonna start stacking this week. Step 1, we're gonna rename your alarms. So go to your phone right now and pull up those 3 alarms and rename them to Reflex, not Sit, not Pause, not Reminder, but Reflex, because that's what you're training right now, your 5-second reflex. So please do it right now. For those who never put in the alarms, go ahead and put it right now. Every day, 3 times a day, right? And I'll wait for you. So go ahead and write Reflex as the name of it. 3 times a day: one in the morning, one at noon, or in the afternoon, and one in the evening.

Let me know when your alarms are set.

You ready? All set? Okay, so step 2. That's when the reflex alarms go off.

Mm.

So when these reflex alarms fire off, you stop and then put your hand on your chest and you ask yourself two things. Question 1: How does my body feel right now? This is the same one from last week and the week before. How does my body feel right now? And then question number 2: What do I need right now? What do I need? Not what does your head think, not what does your logic say, but what does your body feel and what does it need? That's it. Now we're gonna shrink it down to 30 seconds a day, 3 times a day. Not 2 minutes each time anymore. That's a total of 90 seconds a day. If you get the reps in, you can do it in shorter periods of time. So we're stacking now, okay? So if you can't do 90 seconds a day, You have no choice. You got it. You, you need to be able to do 90 seconds a day. Nobody here has an excuse to not do 90 seconds a day. Okay, so you need it even more if you don't have 90 seconds for the day. Now step 3, it's the stack. When you get triggered this week, anytime you feel triggered, anything big or small, we add one more move. You stop and you notice that trigger. Okay, that's all. You notice where you feel it in your body. Is it in your chest, your head? Did your gut feel like it dropped, right? Where do you feel it? Could be your throat, your jaw. That's it. That's the rep. You don't have to fix it. You don't have to do anything to respond to it. You just notice it. Name where it lives. See, awareness is the first rep. Of the new reflex. Okay, you can't rewire what you can't locate. So next week we'll stack a new layer on top of that. But before I let you go, I need to ask you guys something. Think about one person in your life right now who's standing next to a stick in the ground and is frozen, right? They're convinced they can't move. They're running somebody else's old code. You know somebody, you're thinking of them right now. Please send them the session. All right, I'll share the link. Shane, later on, can you, um, drop the link in the DMs, in their DMs, uh, or I mean drop the link in the, in the chat, or I guess we can get a process that we'll, we'll put it in the reset room and then you can, uh, drop it in their DMs, right? Send them the reset room. Not because I need the numbers, but because they need the tools. And you showing up for them is the most powerful demonstration of self-trust you can make today. This isn't just a Saturday reset. This is a movement. And every person you bring in, this one more person who stops running on autopilot and starts choosing their life. So help me get this into hands of people who are still standing next to a stick. Thinking it's a poll. See, the link to share is in the chat right now. And one more thing, invite one person, just one person, next Saturday, okay? For those of you who felt some shift today and you're ready to do something deeper, not just this weekly resets but actual permanent reprogramming of your reflex architecture, I'm about to launch something new. Don't go anywhere. When I stop the stream Uh, stay in the room. I'll tell you about it, the new masterclass, and what's in it, who's it for, and why it's different from anything I've built before. So I'm Jerry S. Lin, the Architect of Choice, and when you change how you react, you change what happens next. So I'll see you guys next Saturday. Now, uh, go rename those alarms, go grab some lunch, and I'll see you guys next week.