Ep 16: Breaking Limiting Beliefs Through Awareness: Why You Are Not Your Thoughts

Let me ask you something. How often do you actually choose your response versus just reacting? Something happens, your body is tightening up, thoughts are firing around in your head, the emotion follows, and before you even know it, you're already in it. You're wrapped up in the tornado. Most of us think we're stuck because we need better discipline or better motivation or better beliefs, but that's not the real issue. The real issue is that we're identified with our thoughts and our emotions. And when you don't realize you're identified, you don't have a choice. Today I wanna talk about how breaking limiting beliefs actually starts with one very simple realization. You are not your thoughts or emotions. Welcome back to Built for Impact. I'm Jake Burhans, and this is the podcast where inner peace meets high performance and where building your dream life starts from the inside out. The BUILD Framework is about changing how you operate internally so you're no longer building your life from pressure or force. We have this subconscious programming that is running on autopilot beneath our conscious awareness, right? That's why it's called the subconscious mind. It's all of our emotional habits, our identities, our beliefs, our patterns, how we react to things before we can consciously think about it. If we're not aware, we can't interrupt this loop. So today we're gonna dive into the B pillar, break limiting beliefs, and we're gonna keep it very simple. This episode is about awareness. We're not trying to fix the, the belief, and that's one thing to understand about break limiting beliefs. We're not trying to break it and reinforce it with like a positive belief. We're trying to break our association with the belief. We wanna reframe how we fundamentally look at our beliefs and our emotions and our thoughts, because awareness is what gives us the choice. Understanding that most of our life is being run on autopilot by what they would call the subconscious mind. Again, this is everything that's happening below our conscious mind that happens automatically. These are our thoughts, our emotions, our programmed responses. Okay, so our nervous system learns these patterns early. Early on, right now they run automatically. So a lot of patterns come from early childhood, 0 to 7 years old. We don't have an analytical mind to filter the beliefs and environment around us. So we're like a straight computer program, just downloading everything that we run across. Life is difficult. Money doesn't grow on trees, you know, don't speak up because, you know, success means you need to stay quiet and not speak your mind and that it's rude to speak up. Whatever those limiting thoughts or beliefs are, we think those are the truth of the world, but really they're just our truths. Truths that our, our system has taken as the truth of the world, and we can't break the cycle unless we're aware of that belief and aware of that limitation. So understanding that our life is being run on autopilot, and I want you to think about this example real quick. It's like your subconscious mind operates. Like I said, below the conscious mind. So think about driving home from work. You might drive home the last 10 minutes of work, your mind's a million miles away, but you pull right into that driveway. Why? Because your subconscious mind was able to execute this highly complex thing, driving a, a vehicle and making turns, and you just pull into your driveway while your mind's somewhere else because you've done that enough times that your body has programmed it. It says, hey, you've done this a bunch of times and it takes a lot of energy for your conscious mind to do things. Imagine if you had to get in the car every single day and be like, right, I gotta fix my mirror, hands at 10 and 2, I gotta put it in reverse, gotta put my foot on the brake, my foot on the gas. It would just be incredibly difficult to do anything. It's a very energy intensive thing. So your body wants to automate that right into your subconscious mind so you do it without even thinking, right? That's why you kind of get into your car before you even, before you even think about anything, you're already turning the car on, just throwing it in reverse while you're thinking about something else. Your body's just programmed to do these things. Now the key thing is that your body does the same thing with our thoughts and emotions and beliefs. It programs them in the same way. So if you repeatedly think something over and over and over again, and you're thinking maybe your knee-jerk reaction is to respond angrily when someone makes a sly comment at you. If you do that enough time, your subconscious mind is just like, hey, let's just automate that for you. That's a lot of energy and effort to think about reacting that way every time. Why don't I just do that for you? And then that's why it's so hard to consciously change because you say, okay, I'm gonna stop reacting to people., but your subconscious mind, which works quicker because it's in the, the subconscious mind is in the body. Everything is stored in the body. It's physiological. So physiologically you are reacting way, way quicker than you can think. So someone says a comment, you're, you're responding emotionally because it's a physiological reaction in your body. And then you're like, oh, and then, you know, so you can't get in front of it. So it becomes about reprogramming this internal operating system, what I call the internal operating system, which really is your subconscious mind. And the subconscious mind runs 95% of your day. Okay, 95%. Think about that, cuz 5% is run by conscious. So conscious mind is like you listening to this podcast right now. You're thinking about the podcast, XYZ, or maybe you're not, maybe you're in la-la land. But the subconscious mind is what you're just doing automatically, right? You're brushing your teeth with your right hand. You're putting your shoe on the left shoe every time, the left sock every time first. Those are subconscious patterns. And you know how we're reacting to people and how we're showing up in certain situations and how we think are these conditioned behaviors. They're not who we are. So the whole point I'm trying to make here is that because these are programmed into us, they are not who we are. We need to look at them with some separation. Okay? So the real limiting belief here is the identification with all of that noise, with that internal program. We think because we respond this way, or because it's hard for us to go to the gym, that that's an identity issue. And you say, I am lazy, I can't get to the gym, you know, I am undisciplined, I can't start a business, I don't have confidence, right? Which really you do. You have confidence that you don't have confidence, right? But the real limiting belief is the identification with these things. And when we can separate our awareness from the actual thought or the belief or the emotion, which are these conditioned things, I want you to look at them as conditioned responses. A belief is a conditioned response to a situation. So someone makes you upset, your conditioned response is to lash out in anger. You then believe that you are just a naturally angry person. This is just how I am. So that becomes a belief for you, but it's really just a conditioned response. Your brain is a prediction machine. It's trying to keep you safe and in the familiar and out of harm's way. So it's always trying to predict outcomes. How can we best navigate this situation based on what we've done in the past. And it's not there to make you happy or to help you grow. It's there to keep you in the familiar because it associates familiarity with safety. That's a key point. It associates familiarity with safety. So if what's familiar to you is lashing out at people when they make a comment at you, your brain's automatically gonna, gonna react to that cuz it's the path of least resistance. You've, you've run those neural circuits in your brain so many times, it's like a superhighway. So consciously you can say all day, yeah, I wanna change. I want to, I want to respond in a, a grounded way. But when that happens, what happens? Your subconscious mind works quicker than your logical mind and you, and you respond in anger and you're like, oh, I don't know why I'd lashed out, lashed out like that. That's not like me. And then you come back. So we have to, again, 95% of our behaviors are this, this underlying operating system that we need to reprogram. And it all starts with being aware that we are not those things. Because if we are wrapped up in it, we're wrapped up, I say, in a tornado. How are you going to, to move past that? You're, you're wrapped up, you're in the middle of the tornado, you're so disoriented you can't get out. It's not, you know, you're saying, I am anxious instead of I am experiencing anxiety, or, or you're noticing, oh wow, that made me anxious, right? I'm feeling anxiety from that. That gives you separation, and when you separate, you regain the power to choose. So those thoughts and emotions and beliefs feel less authoritative, and now you have the power. You have the power instead of the thought to disassociate with them and break the loop. But you can't do any of the other things in BILT, regulating your nervous system, imagining your future, letting go of old emotional conditioning and transcending into your new baseline. You can't do any of that if you're not aware. So you gotta build the muscle of awareness. That's what I'm talking about is a muscle. Just like going to the gym and lifting, you're building a muscle. So the more that you are aware of these old patterns as they come up, the better you get at noticing them. And, and the, the measure of success here isn't not having these old patterns. It's how quickly can you kind of return to baseline? And we'll get into that in the next pillar, but really all I want you to focus on with this episode is being aware of your thoughts. Your beliefs, and your emotion. What's happening before you can even think about it? How are you responding? And try to think to yourself, how is my system trying to keep me safe here? Right? Maybe you are, you know, lashing out at someone because they, they made you angry. Maybe you're trying to defend your, your self-worth. You think you won't be accepted, you know, if, if, if what this person says gets out and, and people believe it's true and all this stuff. Try to figure out how is my system trying to keep me safe right now?, and that just helps you understand it a little bit better and let it go. But creating that separation, now this is called metacognition, okay? Which is basically noticing your thinking instead of being inside of it. So metacognition describes how we think about thinking. You know, it's not positive thinking. I'm not saying, and here's why positive thinking's not going to work, because your negative thoughts and beliefs are a programmed pattern into your physiology. Of your body and your brain. Okay? It's a programmed pattern, right? It's a learned response. So if you're consciously like, yep, I'm gonna be happy, I'm gonna do this, you're just putting a bandaid over this massive gash, this massive wound, right? It's just not going to work. You're putting a bandaid on something instead of fixing it at the root. Okay? It's like, think about your body as a tree and the soil and the roots are just destroyed. So the leaves are all withered, but you're just trying to paint the leaves green, you're like, no, this is gonna bring the tree back to life. This is gonna bring the leaves back to life. It's not okay. You can't just say, I'm happy, I'm positive. You have to feel, you have to reprogram the patterns. 'Cause if you don't reprogram the patterns, you're gonna be doing that your whole life, just trying to think positive. But it feels like force and willpower because at your root, you don't feel grateful, you don't feel confident, you don't feel loved or happy. So we gotta change the root. But all of that starts with awareness. So we're practicing metacognition. Noticing your thinking. So break limiting beliefs isn't about actually breaking the belief and trying to change anything. We're not judging ourselves for having these limiting beliefs. We're just being aware of them. That is literally it. We wanna break our association with the belief. That is the point. Break the association with the emotion, with the pattern. Awareness breaks the loop and then it dissolves naturally. So awareness gives us choice. That's all I want you to think about with this, with this episode. Okay, so. Where in your life do you notice the same emotional response happening on repeat? I just want you to notice it. I don't want you to fight it or judge yourself, but I want you to begin to look at this. This is the reframe, looking at this as a conditioned response. It's an old outdated operating program. It's like Windows 95, and you're trying to install this new software of building a business or doing whatever you want to do, this new version of yourself on a software from 1995. It just ain't gonna work. We gotta do the inner work to reprogram all that subconscious conditioning, and it starts with awareness. So where in your life do you notice the same emotional response happening on repeat? I just want you to notice it, not try to fix it, not to, not try to change it, just notice it. And when a thought or emotion comes up, you just quietly say, oh, I'm noticing a limiting belief. Oh, you need to stop posting on social media. People are gonna be laughing at you. Oh, that's an interesting thought. That was a limiting thought right there. Right? So see just how that mindset helps me deal with that thought. 'Cause I don't believe it as truth. It's just a thought that came up, or I'm noticing an emotion, right? So no fixing, no reframing, no correcting. I just want you to be aware, but that's how you begin to build this muscle. So in closing here, breaking limiting beliefs isn't about becoming someone new, like I said, or slapping a positive affirmation on these limiting patterns. It's about realizing you were never your thoughts to begin with. Okay, so this awareness creates space, space creates choice, and choice is where we can then begin to replace peace or pressure with peace. That's the whole goal of all this. If this episode helped, share it with someone who feels stuck inside their own reactions. Please make sure you're subscribed with notifications on so you are reminded when new episodes drop every Monday. Until next time, folks, all the peace, all the power.