Bite-Sized Teaching Series: How To Break Free From Beliefs That Keep You Small

So if you look at the field of human development, one of the things that you'll discover is that as people grow and evolve, one of the things that happens cognitively especially is that they have the ability to start holding contrary beliefs at the same time. So you can see how maybe you both have free will and you don't have free will, or you can see how the Republican point of view is a great point of view and a horrible point of view, and the Democratic point of view is a great point of view or a horrible point of view. Or that one person who thinks that it's really critical to do marketing in a clickbaity way has some intelligence, and one person who feels like having high-integrity marketing has some intelligence, and that there's some wisdom in both sides, and that you can hold them at the same time. And so what that really means is that if you feel like you have a belief that you can't see the other side of, it's holding back your freedom. Somebody says, okay, I have this belief and this belief is true and this belief therefore has to be false. And that's binary thinking. And that means that your brain is in fear. We do binary thinking when we're scared. And you'll see this all the time in meetings. One person will think that the decision that's being made is gonna cut 20 people outta their department and hand it to somebody else's department. Or they think that they're gonna lose scope, or they think they're gonna get a bad review, or they're gonna think that they're not in control if they allow this thing to happen. And all of a sudden that meeting will go from, oh, let's solve a problem together, to it's either this way or this way. They get in a debate and they debate as if it's like one way or the other way, instead of saying, oh, there's wisdom in what you're saying, there's wisdom in what I'm saying, how do we, garner both of those two pieces of wisdom and make a better solution. And so you see this all the time, that, that fear thinking. And so when you're looking at the beliefs that limit you, what those beliefs that are limiting you are, are beliefs that you are at least only seeing one side of and that are personal to you. I am smart. I am dumb. I am only valuable if I accomplish something. I should be farther along at 40 years old. All of these things are beliefs that limit your capacity. And so let me give you like a real example of it. Obviously, if someone says I'm dumb, then they're gonna go into a situation and they're not gonna learn as well if they have that belief system and that limits them, that holds back their freedom. But they did this study for kids who were told they were smart. And they said, okay, hey kid, you're really smart, you're really smart, you're really smart. And then they gave them a test that it was impossible for them to succeed at. They were definitely gonna just fall flat on their face in this test. So they gave it to them and then they gave them another test that was almost identical to it a couple days later and said, "Hey, we're gonna give you this test, you really smart kid." And what they found out was that all those kids tried less because they didn't wanna prove that they weren't smart. And so if I don't try, then it doesn't prove that I'm not smart. Whereas different kids who took the test, but were told, "Hey, we really like your work ethic. We think you're really hard workers," they did better on the test the second time because their self-definition was different. And so, any way you define yourself limits you. And I know this is such a weird thing to conceive of. Wait, I'm supposed to have positive thoughts. Hey, I'm a good person. Hey, I can do it. All those things. Are supposed to make you go further ahead. And there's some benefit to them. Without a doubt, there's some benefit to them. But if you're using them as a pep talk, what you're saying is you need a pep talk to be that. If I, if I tell you enough times that you're good enough, then you'll act like you're good enough, which is basically saying you don't think you're good enough, right? It's the same thing that happens when somebody comes up to you and says, you know, don't be sad, or you can do it. There's a way in which "you're being made small," instead of, "Oh, I know you've got this," right? That pep talk thing is also a limiting belief because it's also making you smaller or shorter or not enough. This is incredibly uncomfortable for people. And the reason that it's uncomfortable, 'cause at some point you have to look around and say, "Wow, I can't fully believe any thought about myself." So then we're like, "What am I? Who am I?" And this is, like I said, a very uncomfortable thing because what most people do with that when they first hit it, when they first like get in touch with that, is they go despondent. Well, fine then, I could do anything, I guess. Why do anything? Life is meaningless. Like, that's what typically they do. But what it actually ends up being is a tremendous amount of freedom. Oh, wait a second, I'm not confined by anything. I'm free to do whatever I wanna do. I get to experiment and try and interact with life in a variety of ways and see what works for me in this moment. It's like an absolute crazy amount of freedom, but it feels like there's no ground anymore. Oh, wait a second. I'm the guy who always solves the problem. I'm the guy who always gets people to like me. I'm the guy who's always successful. But now it's like, well, I guess there's always somebody who's more successful than me. And what is success anyways? And all of a sudden you're, what the hell am I doing here? And then you're actually really stuck with that. You're stuck with that moment of, oh, the ground has fallen out from underneath me. I have nothing to hold on to anymore. And it feels like you're falling. And then you realize the ground never really shows up. And it's not falling, it's flying, 'cause it's freedom. And that is the place where you can go if you're willing to go through this knowing, this place of like, oh, I know, I have certainty, I know what I'm supposed to be doing. And you go through that into, I have no idea. And you land on this other side where, oh, I'm not actually constrained by my beliefs anymore. And what you see from that place is that every belief I have about myself is both true and not true. Somebody can come up to me and say, hey, Joe, you're an asshole. And I can, yeah, absolutely, I guarantee it. I just made a video telling people that they had no meaning. That totally sounds like an asshole thing to do. And somebody can say, "Hey, Joe, like, I see how much you love and care and that you put your whole life into being a benefit to people." And I go, "Yeah, that's totally true too." And all of a sudden, there's, you know, like, there's nothing that's really gonna trigger me, no judgment that is gonna be thrown at me that I'm gonna defend. There's nothing to defend anymore. That sense of self dissolves out of something very personal and limited by having a series of belief systems and moves into something incredibly expansive and beautiful. And it doesn't have any definition. You can't hold onto it, but it's, it's a bit like the ocean, really. Like, and that's what happens. That sense of self becomes, instead of like this very hard rock, it moves from this very hard rock into this sense of an ocean. And the sword attacks the ocean and the ocean doesn't care. I, you get to do whatever you want to do. It's this really amazing place to hang out. And if you're limiting in your belief, if you say, no, I am dumb, I am smart, I am successful, then all of a sudden you can't do everything that an ocean can do. You're just more of a rock.