#20 Mindset Bootcamp - The Belief Cycle: Rewiring Your Brain After Trauma | Recovery Secrets Series

Welcome to the Overcoming PTSD Podcast. My name is Brad Schipke, and this is the limited series called Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching. Now, these were private sessions that I originally ran as a paid coaching program, but now for the first time ever, I'm making all 100+ sessions available for free for all of you podcast listeners. And this series is over 100 days of practical strategies that have helped thousands of trauma survivors fully heal. So make sure to subscribe because I'm dropping a new episode every single weekday until the archive is complete, and you definitely do not want to miss it. So without further ado, let's dive on in.

All right, we are live here. Welcome everyone to our Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching Session. It is so, so good to be here with each and every one of you. Today's the last session in our Mindset Bootcamp week. Brad and I were just talking about how a week is just not enough. So, you know, we've covered some really, really big topics here this week, and we're gonna cover another huge topic today. But, you know, even with all that we covered this week, we really are just scratching the surface on these things, which is a really good thing because we're starting to get a foundation. We're starting to understand this content and we're starting to implement it into, you know, our lives, of course. And then we'll build on that as the weeks go on here. So we're really excited about that, but we're really excited to bring this session to you today. I'll let Brad say hey and do a little intro while we say good morning.

So good morning, everybody. Great to have you here. Great to be here. Beliefs is what we're talking about today and is, is such a big topic. And we're going to do our best to condense it down into something that's easily understood and very actionable. But I believe this, this lesson will, will give you a really big mindset shift on what's going on in your head and how your thoughts, how your beliefs really affect everything that you do, everything that you say. And a lot of those beliefs are unconscious, right? So again, going back to when we talked about awareness, that's where awareness comes into becoming aware of you know, your beliefs, a lot of the things that you take for granted, a lot of things that are unconscious to you right now, we're going to start becoming more and more aware of them so that we can start to change them. And today we're really going to be digging into how, how to start changing things and how the whole cycle, belief cycle goes together.

Yeah. So there's a lot of, you know, foundational content that, again, we're going to cover the foundations of beliefs. We're going to talk about something called the belief cycle. Really super, super powerful. But what I want you to walk away with today, again, because this is such a big topic, what I want you to walk away with today is an understanding of how beliefs control our lives and then basically how beliefs are formed and change. And so we're gonna, we're gonna just, again, we're just gonna kind of get that into, into your hands today. So beliefs, super, super important. Now we hold beliefs from everything. From the type of car that we think is best and most reliable to our self-worth, to, you know, who we're looking for in a future partner, the type of coffee that we like. We hold beliefs about everything big and small. And so in that regard, we have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of beliefs that we actually hold.

Right.

And so what we're going to be talking about specifically with beliefs are beliefs around or related to your recovery journey? Because typically, your belief in the best car manufacturer is not going to change your life in some big, big dramatic ways, right? We each have our favorite car manufacturer that we believe is best, and there's reasons why we believe that. And we'll talk about that a little bit when we talk about the belief cycle. So I want to tell a story about beliefs. Now, again, there's many, many stories, and As we get further and further into content, you're going to hear some of these different stories. But I'll tell a specific story about someone who had cancer, right? And their name actually happened to be Mr. Wright. For those of you who don't know, my last name is Wright. Okay, so, so this person's name happened to be Mr. Wright. And basically what happened in this story is he had a bunch of tumors, right? He had masses all over, basically. And so he had a special type of cancer And it was very advanced. So he was hospital and bedbound, and he had tumors all over, and they said they were the size of oranges. So imagine the size of an orange. So like really, really super, super sick. And the doctor said that he would not last a week. So he was what everyone thought in the final week of his life, bedbound, hospital-bound, just riddled with cancer, right? And because of, and this says a lot about this patient is a person. Mr. Wright is a person, right? Because he was constantly seeking. He, he believed somewhere in him that there had to be some sort of help. There had to be some sort of aid, some sort of cure for him, right? So he was doing all this research, all this research, and he found this new drug, right? So he was just desperate to find something. He found this new drug and he begged his doctor to give him this experimental drug, but the drug was in clinical trials. And Mr. Wright was too sick to qualify for those trials because he was so close to what they thought was going to be, you know, the end of his journey here. Right. But he begged and he begged and begged and begged. Now, I don't know what year this was.

Okay.

This was not very recently. And the doctor finally agreed to give him the drug. Okay. So he begged his doctor until the doctor finally gave in, injected him with the drug, but did not— the doctor didn't expect Mr. Wright to last the weekend. So I believe they did this on like a Friday. And the doctor had had a conversation with one of the nurses that said, you know, when I get back here on Monday, this guy's not going to be here. This drug, you know, it's not going to work for him. But I just, I want to ale this, this man's mind and give him kind of his dying wish. Okay. And so the Monday after the procedure, just a couple days after the procedure, the doctor found Mr. Wright walking around out of bed. Okay. 10 days after the first dose, Mr. Wright left the hospital. Cancer-free. Okay, now the really cool part about this story is they later found out that the drug they had given him did not work. It did not work. It did not cure cancer. It ended up being something that they just tossed out and they no longer use. Okay, and so the drug didn't cure his cancer, right? This guy had tumors and masses like the size of oranges, and they injected him with that drug. 10 days later, he is out of the hospital. He is walking around. He is living his life. It had nothing to do with the drug that they gave him. Nothing to do with it, because that drug was proven to not work. It was proven to not cure cancer. It was proven to not help. Okay? It was his belief. He believed so strongly that in, in the story here, it was his dying wish that his doctor would give him that drug. He believed so strongly that that would cure him, that it actually did. Now, there are many, many stories about this. I like this one because it is— Very, very dramatic, right? It's, it's very like obvious, right? You have this thing and now you don't. Like, that's almost unexplainable, right? But it comes down to beliefs. So beliefs shape our lives. Beliefs shape our lives. What we believe that we will get, what we believe that we will receive, that is what we are going to get in our life on big scales and our— on small scales. Okay, so beliefs. Shape our destiny. So again, that's one really, really small example. Another small example I like to, to use is the story of Roger Bannister. And I can tell it really quick. You can look it up, do a little reading on it. Roger Bannister was a runner. I forget what year this was too. He was the first runner to ever run a sub-4-minute mile. Okay. Now, before he did this, it was believed to be impossible.

And humanly impossible.

Humanly impossible.

They thought they could not move that fast.

They thought they could not physically actually achieve this feat. And they thought, and they predicted if it was going to happen, if there was any chance that any human could do it, it would be on a dry day, on a certain type of track with a small crowd and, or a, you know, big crowd, whatever it was, like super perfect conditions to have to achieve this feat. And no one had done it up until this point. And Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile, right? He ran a sub-4-minute mile on a wet day, on a different type of track than they expected with a small crowd. And not too far after that, I believe just a couple months after that, people started doing it left and right. Okay? Now, the big question is why? Why? They didn't make big advancements in technology and in sports technology. That didn't happen, right? He didn't have a special type of running shoe. He didn't have a special diet. That started to happen. People then started to break this 4-minute mile. Because they now believed it was possible because Roger Bannister did it. Okay, so Roger Bannister did it, and instead of it being, oh, this is humanly impossible, it's like, wait a minute, that guy did it. Okay, that guy did it. Okay, and so a year after he— so excuse me, over since then, right? So do you— if you're a runner and you know, you know running, okay, runners in high school can do this now. Okay. This is like standard for, for qualifying for any sort of, you know, mile running event. You have to be able to do that. It's like, it's like minimum now.

Okay.

I remember this kid in my high school, like a raw 4-minute mile. Put his name up on the wall. Okay. Now again, this all comes from the belief. It becomes, it comes from, hey, if that guy can do it, then I can do it. Now everyone else at that time had said, oh, it's humanly impossible. They were listening to, it's humanly impossible. It's humanly impossible. That must mean it can't be done. Now, if you don't believe something is possible, How likely are you going to be able to achieve that thing if you don't believe it's possible? Okay? And I want you to think about this, that we like to talk about space. Brad loves space. And I like to think about this when it comes to space, right? So the first people that went to space, they believed it was possible to go to space, right? No one who believed it was impossible to go to space ended up in space, right? Because your beliefs shape and create your reality. Now, from big things to little things. Now, these are, you know, we used an example of cancer. We used an example of— Of running, but also I want you to think about your life. I want you to think about the beliefs that you hold now. All a belief is, is a feeling of certainty. What are some beliefs that you hold about recovery, about PTSD, about yourself, about your future? I used to believe, for example, that healing was impossible, that I was broken, that I was very much damaged and will be damaged forever. I used to believe that I was I was just like cursed, you know, to like an evil life, right? And it's easy to smile and laugh at them now, but I believed these things. They were, they were feelings of certainty that I have over my life. I used to believe I was worthless, right? So I want you to think about some common beliefs that you hold about the recovery journey or that you hold about yourself, maybe that you hold because of trauma or in relation to trauma. And do you have any, do you have any, like, were there any moments in your life that you felt like—

So many. Okay.

So many.

I mean, like, that, that, that's one of the core pieces of, of change is changing your core beliefs, changing the way you think at a fundamental level, which, like I said before, first starts with awareness. Like you, like you don't know your beliefs, like, and I don't know all of my beliefs and I don't like, there's probably there. I mean, there's definitely still beliefs that I have that don't serve me, but I'm unaware of them. And those are going to be the things I need to uncover, just like everyone here. Like we're going to have to uncover the beliefs that are holding us back in whatever arena we want to discover. Right. So, I mean, more recently, Certain beliefs that I've been working with have been around kind of exercise and eating. So growing up, food equaled love, and therefore I would have a tendency to overeat sometimes. And that's something that, like a habit that, like I dug into more and I was like, why am I, why do I like eat so much at certain times? You know, like whether it's around family or whatever else. And, and I dug into it and I, I asked myself, okay, like what do I believe about food? Like what does food mean to me? And then I was like, oh, food, food is love. I feel love. I feel comfort. And then I was like, and then I questioned it. I'm like, is food love? It's like, no, food is just food. Love is something totally different. Is food comfort? No, like comfort, that's not food. Like food doesn't really give me comfort, maybe short-term pleasure, but not really. Like after, after that short-term pleasure, it's very not comfortable, very uncomfortable. So that's, that's one example, but. in recovery, one of the first ones that I was, I became aware of, and you can just become aware of it by, like we talked about before, becoming aware of your thoughts, like the constant thoughts that you're having, like, I hate myself, I hate myself, or like, I'm a failure, or I'll never be able to do this. Those are beliefs. If they keep coming up again and again and again, it's very likely that that's something that you hold as a certainty, right? And if you hold that as a certainty, like Kayleen said, what are you gonna do? What actions are you gonna take? What do you think? Like, All of like, what are you going to do with those things? And the thing about beliefs is that we can form beliefs that are not based on truth, that are not based on reality. We can just base beliefs basically on what somebody said or what somebody did once or what we heard. You know, if like we heard a story from a, from a person who's heard a story from another person who heard a story from another person who heard a story from another person who made it up. And we can base our beliefs around that, you know? And that's why beliefs are so powerful because a lot of times they go unquestioned. And they can, they dictate our life and we never dig into why we believe what we believe. And it's the beliefs that we're not aware of, which is most of them that really destroy us, you know, that are like, put us, can put us in a bad direction. So those are kind of examples for recovery.

Yeah.

I love those examples. I appreciate you sharing those because they're really powerful and it's really powerful to think about. And I want you to, you all, and you don't have to even think about your own right now, just as an exercise. What are some beliefs that are commonly held in the culture that you live in? You know, what are some beliefs that maybe you were commonly told? Because I just, I saw one here from Mimi, and that's something I was told in my house too, right? And I, I see one here from Dale as well, and that's one I heard on my journey, and that's, that's a tremendously tough one and that a lot of people experience, right? And I'll share those in a second if y'all don't mind. And so I want you to think about culturally or in your family or in, if you could see it in other people's lives too, right? So I could step into someone else's life and be like, wow, they have this belief around food, that this is this, right? Just start to think about beliefs in your life. Again, whether you're viewing from the outside or in your culture, whether you're viewing from the outside, it could be in your work culture, it could have been in, you know, your school culture growing up, it could be, you know, family, it could be communication styles, it could be around food, it could be around exercise, it could be around emotions, it could be around recovery. There's all these different areas. Right. And now beliefs are going to control and dictate our lives. That is— that's what's going to happen, right? Beliefs are super, super important. The good news is once we start to become aware of beliefs that we have, and I'm going to explain something called the belief cycle very, very— we're going to again scratch the surface on here today, but I want you to have a foundation on it. Once you start to understand that, you can actually start to change your beliefs.

Okay.

And so Brad had used a term earlier that said, he said, you know, I'm sure I still have some beliefs that don't serve me. So the goal of belief work is to change all of your beliefs that don't serve you, right? That don't have a good purpose for you. Like, I hate myself, I'm worthless, things that cause destruction in your life, and deconstruct them basically and construct form— excuse me, construct strong beliefs that will serve you. Okay, so that's the goal basically, again, to, in a very basic sense, take the negative beliefs, turn them positive. Okay. So I want you to think about, again, what are some beliefs that you've heard in maybe in elementary school and high school and middle school growing up in the school system, or, you know, in private school or at the dinner table, or think about some of those beliefs. So Dale, I wanted to share yours. You know, Dale sharing, my first doctor told me I had a, quote, broken brain. Okay. Now someone in a white coat tells you something like that. They're supposed to have the answers. You kind of put your trust in them. We believe— here's another example. We believe that people with a certain level of education or in a certain field, or that we're seeing for a certain purpose, will have greater knowledge than we do, will be able to guide us in the right direction, know it all. You know, we tend to sometimes think that too. I believe that, you know, because you wear this, this lab coat, that you know it all about this subject, right? And you, then you hear something like that, and that weighs very, very heavily. And a lot of people have that experience. You're, you're broken, or, you know, this is the way that your life is going to be forever. Or what I said, mother, you're treatment resistant. Okay. There's all sorts of things that people will say, and you really need to be, you need to be careful about, about those things. Now, again, the good news being we can change those things. Yeah.

So at its core, what changing your beliefs requires is you questioning the things that you wholeheartedly believe are true, right? Things that you hold as a certainty, as you've heard us say before. Things that you just believe are true. And like, you might understand that logically, but it's a whole, it's a whole different thing to like look into yourself and really be honest with yourself and really question the things that you hold true. Like, this is a certainty, this is a truth. And that can be challenging because you might have believed this for so long and it can be hard to challenge that. But it's like challenging something doesn't mean that that thing is wrong. It just means you're Questioning it to see what if it is or if it isn't. And it's really, this is like where you start to really start thinking for yourself. And like Kayleen said, it's about switching the negative beliefs to the positive beliefs. And I want to touch on that, the positive beliefs, what that is, is a belief that supports you in whatever your goal is. You know, you know, you know how we— wasn't earlier this week, it was last week and the week before, I believe we talked about the recovery hero, right? That's the goal you're aiming for.

Yeah.

Right. The one that you are aiming for, that not the one that, you know, we tell you to aim for, not the goal that we made for you, but your goal. What life do you want to have? And that's what we mean by positive, because you don't just wanna switch just because, you know, like from one thing to another thing. It's like you wanna switch it to something that will actually support you. Because if you're switching it based on what we think is positive or what somebody else thinks is positive, or it's not, it's not gonna be true to you and you're gonna have to change it back to something later on anyway. So That's where a lot of like that independent thinking comes in. But just at its core, it's questioning things that you believe to be true. And that's heavy. That's heavy. Like, I don't know if like you, like, it's right. Because you believe this thing is true, right?

It's like, it's like you're seeing the foundation, you're standing on the ground and all of a sudden you're gonna start digging it up, right? This is something that you, you hold as true and you base a lot of things off of it.

Now this is going to be just a silly example because I'm, I'm just kind of coming up with this, but it's like, I believe this is white, right? I have a certainty that this is white. Why would I question that this is white, right? But that's kind of what we need to do. You'll have these beliefs of like, this is just the way it is. Like, clearly this is just the way it is. And those might be the things that you need to question the most. I'm trying to come up with another example as I'm saying this, but, 'cause obviously like this is, it's white, but—

Well, no, but I think that's a good example because it can feel like that. It can feel like, how could I question something, right? So, so like this, right? So like for me, like I hate myself or I'm worthless or like I deserve this, right? So that came from a place of guilt that came from a place of, you know, just my whole life having these experiences, right?

And you're like, because of this, because of this, because of this, because of this, this is why I hate myself.

Exactly. Right. And so what, what we have is, is something we call, we call references for these things, right? So you have a belief that something is true. And there are reasons that you believe that's true. So when I say, you know, Brad, like, like, why do you hate yourself? Like, you know, you're, you're so loved. You should love yourself. You're a good person. Let's use you're a good person. You know, you're a good person. Why do you think you're a bad person? He's going to give me all the reasons that he believes he's a bad person, right? So he might say something like, you know, I, I lashed out at my family. Or, you know, I didn't show up to an engagement that I should have shown up to. And now, from my perspective, that's okay. Like, that's what sometimes people do when they're hurt. Little kids do it. They, you know, they're hungry, they're lonely, they're tired, whatever. They freak out, they yell at everyone, and then they fall asleep, right? And so that's what people do when they hurt. Now, from my perspective, that doesn't make him a bad person. That makes him a human being. But from his perspective, that makes him a bad person. And so yesterday, what we talked about Was changing the angle at which we're viewing things, right? So we talked about that positive and negative thinking. This isn't all that different a leap from that. So I'm gonna talk about the belief cycle. So the belief cycle, we're gonna start at the top, right? And so this is a cycle. Now you are, this is controlling your life. Okay? Like ready or not.

Here it comes.

Here it is. Okay? It's controlling your life. Now we're gonna start at the top with a thumb. That's the top of the cycle there. Now, your thought is going to feed your belief.

Okay?

Your thought feeds your belief. Your belief is going to drive your action, which in some cases can be inaction. Your action is going to provide feedback or results, or we can call them experiences.

Experiences.

Your experiences are gonna dictate your thoughts. Okay? So this is the belief cycle. Now, if you notice here, this isn't inherently positive or negative. It is just the cycle. This can be positive. This can be negative. So I wanna go through this with an example, right? And typically it starts here with an experience. Okay? So you're gonna have an experience. That's something you can't control. You're gonna have an experience right now. We're having an experience. I guess you could shut the computer off if you don't want this experience, right? But you're gonna have an experience. That starts right here. What comes next is what dictates if this is a positive belief cycle for you or if this is a negative belief cycle for you. So you have an experience that is gonna dictate your thoughts about the experience. Really important. Your experience is gonna drive thoughts about— so you're gonna have thoughts about this experience. Now, we talked about the foundation of positive and negative thinking yesterday. Okay. And what did we say? You can view it from this angle or this angle. There are basically an infinite number of angles to look at this from, look at this experience from. So if you're not aware of this, your brain's just gonna decide for you and it's inherently going to be negative. Okay? But this is the part of the belief cycle that we can control. So we can control our thoughts about our experiences. But again, I'm gonna go through this here. So you experience, you have thoughts, they're either positive or negative about the experience. Those thoughts drive your beliefs. Okay? So those are gonna become basically your beliefs. They feed your beliefs. Your beliefs dictate your actions, right? If you believe you're a bad person, if you believe you're a piece of garbage, you're probably not gonna take care of yourself, right? You're gonna, you're gonna go drinking and drugging and binging and all sorts of negative things.

Okay?

So your beliefs are gonna dictate your actions. Your actions are gonna give you more experiences. And once you basically start this cycle, It's gonna continue out of your awareness again and again and again. And so we have something over here on this side called the belief scale. It's an old-fashioned scale, which no one was able to tell me the name of, right? Has 2 sides, has a positive side and has a negative side. Now, each time you go through this cycle, it, you know, when you get here, I want you to think of it, right? Each time you complete this cycle, you're putting a piece of gold, a weight on either side of the scale. It's either going to tip negative or it's going to tip positive. Okay, so now we go through, we have an experience, we have negative thoughts, we form a negative belief. This is going to tip negative. Okay? It's going to tip to the negative side. Once it tips to the negative side is when it becomes basically a self-fulfilling prophecy. Okay? So it tips negative. You're going to get negative actions, negative experience, negative thoughts, negative beliefs, and that's going to continue. To feed on itself. Okay? And it's gonna go again and again and drive us more and more and more negative.

Mm-hmm.

What we need to do is interrupt this cycle, which we can do with our thoughts. When we can interrupt that, when we have an experience and we change our thoughts about the experience, we are going to change this belief scale. We're gonna change the side with which we put that piece of weight, that piece of gold. When we tip this belief scale, it now works in our favor. So we have a positive belief that causes us to take positive action. We have positive experience. We have more positive thoughts. Okay. Now again, there's a very, very basic sense here. Okay. So I, I wanna do an example. So I have an experience when I'm younger, I learned to play the guitar and I sing, right? And so my experience is I sing in front of people, right? And they clap. So I sing in front of my parents, friends, and they clap. That's my experience. Now, there are a lot of ways that I can interpret this experience. There are a lot of ways I can think about this experience. Okay? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you 2 different routes. So I can either think like, oh wow, they clapped because they think I'm good. I must be, I must be a good guitar player. I must have done a good job cuz they clapped. Or I can think, and I can interpret that as they just clapped cuz they're my parents' friends. They just clapped so I wouldn't feel bad about myself. I'm actually not good. Yeah, that was a pity clap. Okay. And you see that the experience is the same, but my thoughts about it are gonna dictate something totally different. So if I have this experience and I think negatively and I think, oh, well, they just clapped to pity me, I'm gonna build a belief that I'm not a good musician. Right? And if I have a belief that I'm not a good musician, am I gonna practice? Right? I'm not gonna feel good about that. Maybe I practice, but am I gonna play in front of people again? No, no way. Because I don't want that experience again. I don't want someone to pity clap for me again. And so if I don't practice, if I don't play in front of people, I'm not going to have any more experiences in this case with that, right? So I, that's my only experience with it. So because I don't practice, I don't play, I don't have any more, I don't go out and I don't, you know, try things and I don't, I don't write music, whatever it is, those experiences basically disappear, right? And so that continues the thoughts of, you know, I'm not a good musician, I'm not a good guitar player, right? Which continues to feed those beliefs. Now, if I took, took the positive route, If I took the positive route, I said, wow, they clapped because I'm good. Like, they liked it. That's why people clap, right? And I said, oh wow, they clap because they like it. And I built the belief I must be a good musician. What are you going to do if you believe you're a good musician? What are you going to do? You're going to practice more. You're going to play in front of people more. You're going to write more music. You're going to write more songs. You're going to get better. You're going to have different experiences. Okay? You're going to go out and people are going to give you feedback and people are going to clap again. I'm gonna be like, wow, I am great. That's awesome. Right? And it's gonna feed that belief and that's gonna spiral me in a positive direction. Okay? And so again, this, this right here, focusing, honing in on your thoughts. This is where you can create change with your thoughts about your experiences. And so when Brad was saying you're gonna have to question sometimes what feels like reality, it happens right here. Your thoughts about your experiences. Form your beliefs, okay? And your beliefs dictate all. Your thoughts about your experiences form your beliefs. So your thoughts about, you know, you like, you believe, right? You believe you're an evil person and you have thoughts about experiences that tell you that.

Mm-hmm.

Okay? So you have experiences, right? In, in Brad's case where we use that example where, you know, he lashed out at his family, and this is just an example, he lashed out at his family, he missed an engagement that he should have been at. So he believes he's a bad person. Right? So he has these experiences where he lashes out at his family, and instead of thinking, like, they're, you know, he could have thought and gone down a positive route, like, they're my family, they'll always forgive me, like, I was hurt, and, you know, that was a really bad moment for me, you know, I'm still a good person, it doesn't change who I am. But instead, when he had that experience where he lashed out at his family, he thinks only really awful people yell at people that they love. Okay? And that helps confirm the belief that he's a bad person.

Mm-hmm.

And then he has a You know, and then he believes he's a bad person. And then because he believes he's a bad person and he's— excuse me for picking on you— feeling sorry about himself, he isolates. Okay? He pulls away. And so he was supposed to go to some sort of engagement that he didn't go to. He didn't show up. So he has the experience where he agreed to go to something and then he didn't. Okay? And so he has this experience. Now he's going to have thoughts about that experience. And he's going to say, man, only bad people don't do the things they say they're going to do. Instead of saying, you know what, it was a bad day and it's okay and I'm human. He says, oh man, only, only bad people don't fulfill on their engagements. And that continues to feed his belief that he's a bad person. And it all happens up here. Makes sense?

Yeah. So I wanna add just like 2 things to this, right? That was an amazing, incredible job. So as Kayleen was talking about this, like it really comes down to the re— reinterpretation of the experiences, right? Past and present, right? So to change your beliefs, you're going to have to go back to your past experiences, identify, you're going to go back and what were the experiences that created this belief? And then you can go back and you can start reinterpreting, having new thoughts about old experiences, right? So then that will start to change the belief of past beliefs. And then you can also do it in real time as well. Or like something happens and I might have this instinctual thought about it, but then I can, I can choose to interpret it in a different way. I think that was the, that was the only main thing.

So I love that you said that, right? Because what did we talk about in yesterday's session was positive and negative thinking, right? So we talked about that being important. This is one of the reasons why it's important. The way that you view your life positively or negatively, the way that you view your experiences, even moving forward, can help you change your beliefs. Right? So Brad's saying, like, when you're like, oh man, like, I hate myself, I'm the worst, right? So there's your belief. Now, it's, it's gonna benefit you long-term to go back and reinterpret those experiences. But right now you can say, well, hold on, hold on. And you can start to list some reasons that you're not the worst person on the planet. Okay? You can start to list some qualities that you do like about yourself. Okay? And so again, what we're doing is we're just changing the perspective at which we Are looking at something. It's not something untrue. We're just changing the way that we look at it. We're changing— same experience. We're changing the way that we think about it, the way that we interpret it. And that's going to change your life moving forward. So that's why those little things— we say life happens in the little moments. When you're talking about positive and negative thinking, little things like, I hate the rain, you start to become aware of those things. As silly as they might seem, you're building this muscle. You're practicing. This skill. Yeah.

And there's, you can go so deep into this whole thing. We could do, literally do a whole week, probably multiple weeks on just beliefs and belief change because it is that deep. But this is the overall top-down view, right? Because then you can go into like, okay, how do I, how do I reinterpret past events to have the thought that I want? And what is the, what is the goal thought that I want to have? Right. These are all different thoughts that you can, or questions that you can ask yourself. And I also just want to reiterate, it's easy to draw things in a, for like understanding and things like that. It's easy to draw things in a binary position, right? Where you just have positive and negative, right? It's one or the other, but you can interpret things any way you want. There aren't just 2 choices. That's something I want to say too, because it's easy to be like, oh, I'm going to go from this side to this side, right? But it could be like, let's say I want to give a quick example. So going back to like my food, like recently I've been questioning like my beliefs on food, you know, why, why in certain instances I overeat or eat too much or things like that. And I went back and I found this belief of, you know, food is love, right? And what made me aware, aware of this belief was I actually witnessed my mom doing this to my nephew, right? In a very, in a very loving way, but it was, it was also very interesting because then it got me thinking where the experience was my mom making my nephew eat a certain food or eat, eat his, eat his dinner or something, or he had to go home or something like that.

Right.

Not a super big deal, but like, that's what it was.

Right.

And then also the experience of when he does eat a good meal or when he does eat a lot of food, he's praised. Right? So that's, that's a different experience. And to me, I had to go back and I had to reinterpret that, right? And if I was looking at it in just a kind of binary positive-negative way, I could be like, oh, my mom, like, or like food, food is love. Food is great. And like, I, like everybody loves me when, when I eat food, right? And there's other beliefs of like, there's competitive eating. Like with my brother growing up, it's like I wanted to eat more than him and You know, something around like my friends, it was like you wanted to eat more than your friends and that was like cool or something. So like there was experiences and beliefs around that as well. But I could go from like, you know, food is good, food is awesome. Or like, I'm, I'm loved when I was, um, or I'll go back to the one with my mom. It's like my mom loved me when I ate a lot of food, right? That's one side of the belief. If I just look at it binary, the other side would be, oh, my mom was trying to hurt me. Or my mom did something really bad. You know, and that could be like the binary stance. And that's not a belief that would serve me because my mom, that's not the truth.

She's an angel.

My mom is freaking awesome, right? Like, I love her freaking dead. You say anything bad. So it can be, because that can be the temptation just to be like, oh, I'm going to flip to the other side. And that can be a good way to experiment and to like kind of discover new ways.

But in most cases, you can start there because you can start there and then, and then ask like, does this serve me? Or do we need to still, because it's not one side or the other. And it's also not even a spectrum. So it's not even here, here, here, here, here, or like we're in between somewhere. This is— it's a very dynamic thing. And I'm glad that you brought that up because, you know, again, flip to the other side. And then if in this case, like it was in Brad's case, like it doesn't serve you and it, you know, it doesn't do what you're wanting it to do, take a different angle. There's plenty of angles to take on this.

Yeah.

So it's not like my mom hated me. Like, it's like my belief was my mom loved me when I ate fruit. It's not like my mom Hates me if I don't eat food or that whatever. But I had, I think I had to switch it to my mom loves me and food is not an expression of love, but it doesn't take away from the love that my mom has for me. Right. So I'm still loved regardless of all the food that I, regardless of the food that I eat, my mom will still love me regardless of the food that I eat. I still get love. And that's not a determining factor to the love that I receive. Right? So like it gets a little bit more complex and you can say 2 things can exist at once. Like my mom can love me and food cannot be, might not be the best thing for me and food cannot be love. You know what I mean? So I just wanted to say that about the binary aspect because that's, that's something that can be easily hung up on and just like just switching, but it is good. You know, it is good to, to experiment with the binary, to go to the other side and be like, okay, what is this? Just to explore, to get a different To get a different perspective, right? And sometimes going to those extremes give you ideas of how it needs to shift. So it's actually a powerful tool to look, look at things by, in, in a binary way, because you might have this one radical belief and then you look at it on the other side and you're like, oh my God, that's this one. This, this belief definitely isn't true. Now this one's a, this one's more true, but it's not completely true. Let me course correct it from there.

Right, right.

That's awesome.

So your action for today. Start to identify some beliefs that you have. Start to, as things come up in life, because we're going through this cycle all the time. I mean, multiple cycles are like ongoing at every moment, right? Because we have beliefs and it dictates some sort of action. We have, we're constantly having experiences based on, on the choices that we make, right? And again, this could be an internal action. It could be an external action, but start to identify where the, where beliefs are. changing your life, where you can see them in your life very obviously, where you're having experiences like Brad said, where you're like, oh, I hate myself, or like, I'm not good enough, or I deserve blah, blah, blah. Use that as a moment to say, wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on. Is that full truth? Is that the whole truth? Or is there another way that I can look at this? Is there another way that I can interpret this? Okay, so that's your action for today. Really start to just identify some of these beliefs. And we will do later sessions on the belief work.

Definitely. Because you can go so deep. Like I said, you could do a whole week just on beliefs. You could do a whole week just on any one of these topics. That's it.

Yeah.

A wrap on our Mindset Bootcamp week. Now, next week, I'm really looking forward to Monday's session. We're talking about short-term pain, long-term pleasure, which is a big topic. And we're going to talk more about basically how to make that short-term pain, that short-term discomfort, how to make that actually enjoyable, which I'm excited about. So make sure you stick around for that. And then this coming Friday, a week from today, we're going to dive more into meditation, which is really, really good. Because a lot of people have a lot of misconceptions, and, and it can be an amazing, amazing tool. Even if you've, you know, you've done it before and like, you know, it hasn't been for you, you know, we have some kind of tweaks to change the way that, that it kind of presents. So amazing job, everyone. Amazing. Nancy, that's an amazing realization. So Nancy sharing a realization, which this is the kind of awareness that you, that, that you want to start to build, right? So Nancy sharing, I realized last night in the late evening when I'm tired and it's time to wind down and move into wrapping up the day and moving into the evening routine that what I really need is love, but what I do instead is eat anything. Right? Okay. So that's amazing awareness. I believe the food is love and is a habit. It's a habit. And I spiral down from there every night and end up staying up late and becoming chronically sleep deprived. So you have the habit, right? So I'm so proud of you for having the awareness to say, what am I seeking? It's not easy to make that connection always. To say, I'm, you know, I'm snacking or I'm eating or, or whatever. And what I'm really seeking is something totally different because you're on this one like playing field, but your brain is somewhere else or your emotions are somewhere else. And it, it can be really hard to make that connection.

Yeah. And that's a belief, right? Like you have a belief that that food is, is love similar to me that you're kind of identifying that. So you can look back and try to reinterpret some of those past experiences that you interpret it as As love and correct, craft a new belief, kind of like what I was saying, to support a new behavior that will actually make you feel loved. Because food doesn't actually fill that void. It actually makes you feel worse, makes you stay up later, and causes you to be sleep deprived, deprived, which is awesome that you realized it.

Judy sharing, I've always believed that I'm weak. Now I actually know that I'm strong. And looking back yesterday at my whole life, I was strong then too. It feels good. This is a belief that changed this week. That's amazing, Judy. You're looking at those experiences and you're saying, wait a minute, like, wait a minute, I actually, I, I am strong. Like, I've, I've survived all this and I'm here and I'm still working at it and I'm chipping away. That's amazing, Judy. So, Jen sharing, I now say, is that true? That's a great place to start. Is this true? Is that thought true? And then you question yourself about that belief and switch the belief to a positive. I found that I kept saying I'm stupid, and now I know where it's coming from and realizing it's not true and saying the opposite. I'm intelligent.

I'm smart.

And look at everything I'm doing. The belief work has been a huge game changer. The belief work is, and I hate to say this because it's like, it's unbelievable.

Okay.

It's, I mean, it really is unbelievable how much of a game changer the belief work is. It's, it's awesome. Awesome.

It's the core of everything. Like, you wonder why you do something, why you take a certain action. You look back and be like, okay, what belief it is? And then you just trace it back further.

Okay.

What are the experiences that I'm interpreting, right? It's like you can be like, oh, I'm taking this action, right? I'm overeating, right? What are the beliefs that are supporting this, this action, right? And then you go back to the experiences, reinterpret those experiences, change that belief, change that action.

So Dale asking, what's the difference between thoughts and beliefs? So a thought is part of something that makes up the belief. So another way to think, so I have something called the belief formula. So if you, if you were to write it in a formula, it would be your experiences plus your thoughts about those experiences equal your beliefs. So thoughts are part of what makes up a belief. So they're, they're an essential piece, but they're, they're just a piece. They're different from the belief itself, but they're part of what makes up a belief. Changing beliefs is important. Thanks for teaching this. It's been huge in my healing work. It's foundational. I mean, it really is foundational. Awesome. Lisa, I love this share. I have an alarm on my calendar several, several times a day to check in to be sure I'm nailing the voice choice and the positive attitude is at the podium. So, so just making sure that you're checking in. I did that for a while. Oh, there are gratitude reminders. I would just set my alarm just to go off a couple times through the day to just go off and just like, oh, like just express some gratitude throughout the day. So that's, that's amazing. And I wanna point this out, Lisa. That's an amazing independent healing move that you made. That is not something that we have, we have recommended in this content, right? And that's an amazing thing that you said, whether you said it actively or not, right? You said, how can I best implement this into my life? And you said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna set alarms and I'm gonna, I'm gonna put it on my calendar. That's amazing. I'm, I'm super proud of you for that, Lisa. Judy's sharing, we've all been through bad things, but it's awesome to think no matter how bad the situations were, We've survived. We're here. It just feels good to think like this. It changes everything to start to think like this, to start to question those negative beliefs, to start to reinforce the positive beliefs. It changes everything. It's the foundation for a reason. So Dale's sharing, there's also the fact that 95% of thoughts are the result of habitual thinking. You have to change the habits to change the subconscious paradigm of the system of beliefs. That's, that's true, right? And so, you know, one of the Pillars of recovery is is habits, and part part of habits—it's not just external habits. It's not just morning routine, evening routine, right? Those are external habits. It's also internal habits, right? And so you'll you'll you're going to see all these pillars continually come together. We have mindset, right? Which of course there's awareness in mindset. There's beliefs. There's positive negative thinking. We have routines. What are we habitually doing? How do we change those habits internally and externally to reflect what we want out of life? To reflect what our Recovery hero would do. So we're controlling our recovery hero, which is mindset. And then we have processing, which is kind of digging a little bit deeper and basically undoing damage, for lack of a better term. There's different ways we're going to describe that, but to allow ourselves to be whole and I don't want to say make ourselves whole, but make ourselves whole.

Yeah. And I was going to say this cycle, Right here could almost be renamed to the habit cycle, right? Because your beliefs are the things that influence your actions. And also your actions are things that, that can be changed as well. But you can take an action that you don't believe is true. We all have free will and we can do whatever we want and we can exert our willpower to have a different action, to have a different experience that will give us a new thought, right? We focus on this because this is That's the first step is like changing the thoughts up here, but you can also change it down here because if this isn't correct, you can change your actions and still kind of interpret those in a, in a negative light. But it could almost be renamed to the habit, habit loop as well, which is funny.

I mean, so you're going to see basically if you really pay close attention to the content that we teach and you dig a little bit deeper than what we're teaching now, we give you a lot and sometimes we'll go deeper than other times. But if you dig a little bit deeper into the foundation of where all this comes from, it, it all very much comes from a place of logic, which we'll talk about when we talk about more processing tools. But it, it also covers a lot of this, a lot of the same things in different ways. And so what we're, we're dealing, we're dealing with one thing. We're dealing with your brain, the internal workings of your brain. And we're having a lot of different basically angles that we're going in to do this work so that we can make These deep, big changes. So beliefs, awareness, positive-negative thinking, self-love— at the core, it's all just stuff that's going on in your brain, right? And we're just working to make those changes, and we're taking very specific kind of routes and angles to ensure that we're able to make changes as a whole. But we're really dealing with one, one singular thing, which is pretty cool. So you'll see them And kind of overlap in different ways, which is really, really neat, and, and come together, which is really cool. So, Lena sharing, yesterday someone said I was old after I couldn't sleep. I know it's dumb, but it still bothers me. How do you get rid of other people's sayings that imprint a negative thought pattern now? So, you know, when it comes to stuff like this, I mean, you can start to kind of introspect, start to inquire why, because there's a reason. There's a reason that that's sticking. There's a reason that that hurts. Right? And it's it's the reason underneath someone actually saying something that we can control and that you can actually do something about. So I want you to what I want you to do is I want you to introspect and figure out what basically what nerve did that nick did that strike that's hurting because then you're going to find a way to make change because if someone just says something you know if if like my brother for example I use him as an example. He's brilliant. He's brilliant, right? And if I was like, Devin, you're stupid, he would just be— he would just ignore it. It wouldn't bother him because he knows he's not stupid. He knows how brilliant he is, right? He has a certainty about that. That would not affect him, right? Now, if someone told me I was stupid when I was going through school, it would have really, really hurt me because I believed that I was, okay? And so it might not be direct like that, But there's a nerve basically that it struck that once you, you know, if someone calls me stupid now, it doesn't bother me, right? Because it doesn't matter to me because I know that I'm not stupid, right? Because—

Because there's overwhelming evidence proving that. Yeah. Proving the opposite way that you have done a lot of work on, right? And a lot of it is like, what weight does that hold? How much does that person know about you? You go deeper into like, what are they really judging you on? And A lot of times we just hold that on without, like, that's the way that we're, we're interpreting that. You're interpreting that to have a certain belief about yourself, right? And you have to identify for yourself what that certain belief is, and then work to reinterpret all of the things that are supporting that belief and, you know, come up with a new, new belief for yourself that you have a certainty around.

And then those things won't, they won't stand. That's a good question. Joe asking, should I continue trying to, trying coaching if my mind is caught up in grief? That I can't focus and get what you're teaching. The short answer, Joe, is absolutely. So you know, in grief is gonna—it's gonna be overwhelming. It's gonna be really, really challenging. A lot of the things we talk about, specifically when it comes to mindset, can be really elemental in helping you through this time in a healthier, more filling—isn't the right word? Kristen, in a healthier way. So for me, one of the times where like this concept was really, really tested. who were in times where I was grieving, and it changes the grief process. I mean, it really, really does. And in a positive— again, for lack of a better term, fulfilling. That sounds really weird, but that's kind of the feeling that it is. So I absolutely recommend staying around, specifically showing up for the mindset content. You know, like, continue with those gratitudes, continue working on what's going on up here, because that's going to dictate If things go in a more negative way, or if things go in a more positive, healthy way.

But Joe, there's a simple thing that you should do. Last week, we talked about releasing emotions. And what you need to do is allow yourself time and space to really feel that grief and to let it go. And I would recommend using the butterfly hug while you're letting those emotions out to help keep yourself calm. And then ultimately, you want to switch into a mindset of gratitude Of, of even having that thing in the first, that thing or person in the first place, right? If you're grieving, grieving a person, you want to look at it as like, I'm so grateful to have this person, right? There are realities in life that we can't change. We're all here for a limited time. I'm so grateful for having to be, to being alive. You know, my limited existence lined up with their limited existence and I'm, my life is so much better for having them in my life. So you want to move into a place of gratitude. After, after you get the grieving out, right? So you want to get all the emotions out, but you need to give yourself time and space to do that. You know, a lot of times we want to push it down, push it down, push it down, and not really allow ourselves the relaxation or the space to just feel and just cry and just let it out. And it's not going to happen overnight. I mean, it might take a while, but give yourself the time, give yourself the space to release the emotions, or you could just write out your emotions as it's, as you feel it, just Honestly, bluntly, this is how I feel. And then using those relief tools to kind of regulate yourself through it. And if it's overwhelming, just do it little chunks at a time. We talked about also like the shaking up soda bottle, releasing it a little bit at a time in ways that you're comfortable. So that's what I recommend in a short kind of condensed version. I do have to jump off now, but make sure you stick around for next Monday where we're going to be talking about short-term pain, long-term pleasure, how to push through those short-term, those moments of pain and really change Your actions, your habits to have the long-term view. So stay well, buddy.

Bye for now. See you on Monday.

Good job this week.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about how you can coach with me directly, there's a link in the description you can check out. There's absolutely no pressure. The main thing is I wanted you to get value from this episode here, but I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next one.