Ep. 36: You Can't Change a Pattern You Can't See

You can't change a pattern that you can't see. That's the whole game. And most people don't realize this whatsoever. They're trying to fix their behaviors, their habits, their reactions, but the pattern underneath all of those causing it remains totally hidden. So nothing real actually changes. If you keep ending up in the same loop, the same overthinking, the same self-sabotage, the same burnout cycle, the same version of you under pressure, the problem isn't willpower or discipline or that you're not trying hard enough. The problem is this subconscious pattern that is running that you're not aware of. This episode is where that starts to change. Welcome back to Built for Impact. I'm Jake Burhans, and this is the podcast where inner peace meets high performance and where your dream life starts from the inside out. Let's go. Okay, today we're going to go back in through the BUILD Framework. I kind of like to do this every so often because I'm just understanding at a deeper and deeper level, especially as I teach it. And I just want to keep it top of mind for you guys. And because the framework is really that, that's the work, like being able to use it in your day-to-day is what's going to transform your inner world and allow you to perform at the highest level. What are we talking about? I'm talking about building from a place of peace instead of pressure without sacrificing any results and really understanding that peace is a prerequisite for high performance. We are flipping high performance on its head and talking about how peace and inner regulation is the prerequisite for high performance. So instead of that push grind, you know, hustle culture, that's burning everyone out and driving everyone into the ground and ultimately causing them to perform worse because they're dysregulated. We're gonna flip that and we're talking about how do we cultivate a regulated baseline? It starts with awareness. So the first pillar is break limiting beliefs, and it's really like break awareness with your thoughts, your beliefs, and your actions, right? Because before you can break a belief loop or a pattern, you have to be able to see it. You gotta know what you're working with. I talk about when we're fix and flipping a house, that's what the BUILD Framework is. It's like we spend our entire life trying to control the storm. Right, which is the external stresses and pressure of life. That's like going outside and praying in Florida that there's going to be no more hurricanes. Hey, guess what? It's going to be hurricanes. Instead of praying and putting all of our energy and effort and being upset when it rains or the storm comes, why don't we focus on building an indestructible house? And that's what I want us to do here over these next 5 episodes as I go through all 5 pillars again. I want you to think about this fix and flip analogy. So awareness in the fix and flip. So I talk with a lot of sellers and I might have brought this story up before is we talk to hoarders in real estate, right? And hoarders who have like a bunch of stuff in their house, they don't think their house is that bad because they've been living in it for 20 years. And you talk to them on the phone, you say, hey Susie, how you doing? Good, good, good. Yeah. Like, what kind of work does the property need? And she goes, well, you know, needs a little bit updating here and there. Then you go there and you're like, this thing needs to be burned to the ground. I mean, there's stuff everywhere. You can't even, you can't even walk through here. The walls are coming down. That's what your inner world is like right now. You have all these patterns running subconsciously that are dictating your life, the limiting beliefs about how you can't do this and you're not worthy of that. And you have these negative thoughts that just attack you and run your life and your overall system of patterns are just completely unconscious. So we gotta bring those into the light if we're gonna change. How the heck are we gonna change if we can't even see what the patterns are? And the real reason that nothing's changing isn't because you need to try harder, right? Trying to push against those subconscious patterns is like trying to swim upstream. It's like trying to swim across a channel with cinder blocks tied to your feet instead of just building a boat to go right across the channel. So again, using that conscious willpower, cuz our subconscious conditioning runs 95% of our daily habits and actions. 95%. Why are we using the 5% of our conscious mind every single day to try to overrun these patterns? We gotta work at the root. Reprogram those patterns so the wind is at your back instead of in your face. You ever walk outside during like a storm, you can barely walk forward? That's like you trying to use your conscious willpower to go over your subconscious patterns. We need to be aware of our, of our thoughts, our beliefs, and our actions. Okay? So what this, that's what we're trying to see. There's 3 layers here. So there's our thoughts. This is our inner voice, that little inner roommate that's talking about this. Oh, you can't do it. You're gonna run out of money. What if this happens? What if that happens? That is just a voice and it's really just our brain trying to predict the future and keep us safe. But we have to learn to disassociate with that inner voice because the second we put attention and energy towards negative thoughts, we instantly go into a dysregulated state. We instantly go into a negative energy, right? Like a low vibration, as they would say. But keeping it real here, you do go into a lower energy state of being each thought. So think of your awareness like a spotlight, and that spotlight's constantly shining on different things. It can be. You know, you're looking at your computer, you're focusing, then a negative thought comes in. Oh my God, I forgot to call that person. God, why do I always forget things? I always forget things. Oh yeah, there's that judgmental voice. That's how you need to talk to yourself. Oh yeah, there's that judgmental voice. Oh yeah, there's that anxious thought. And you let it go. You literally let it go. When you're unaware of your thoughts like that and you think that you are your thoughts, you're just reacting to everything. It feels like you're in the middle of a tornado. So the first thing is being aware of what, what is the commentary? How do I talk to myself?. And if things aren't supportive, if you have like a negative thought, it doesn't mean anything. Just let it go. Novak Djokovic, the tennis player, there's, I just retweeted on, uh, or repost on Instagram. He talked about being present in a tennis match because you get in your head and you go, what if I, what if I lose? Am I gonna win this and that? The longer you're in your head, he says, uh, the lower chances you have of winning the match. You have to let that stuff go and get back to the present moment. That's the single greatest skill he attributes to his success. Awareness. Secondarily, you gotta be aware of your beliefs. Beliefs are just conditioned filters. So what we believe about the world is what we perceive, basically, because our brain is a filtering mechanism, right? Predictive processing. It's depend— based upon what we believe, we're taking in that sensory information. I've shared the fact before, our nervous system gets hit with like 11 million bits of information at any given second, and we only consciously take in like 40 of them. And it's dependent on what we believe about the world. So what are our beliefs? That we never have enough time, that we're not worthy of money, that it's hard to make money, that I've never been a good leader, that I've always been the black sheep of the family. What are the beliefs that we have? Because Whatever those beliefs are, your brain is just filtering out information in your environment to support that belief. And it's like a self-fulfilling loop or prophecy. Your brain skips all of their data that could indicate otherwise, just looks for what you believe. And then you think, oh, that's just the way the world is. No, it's just the way that you've made the world. So we gotta be aware of our thoughts, our beliefs, and then overall our identity patterns. So thoughts and beliefs are part of our identity patterns. Our identity to our system is all of the patterns that make us us, pretty much. How we've been thinking, feeling, and acting for the last 20 years is our identity, right? Our thoughts, our beliefs, our emotions, our self-talk, our reactions, our little quirks, everything about us that we've been just running so consistently becomes who we are, but it's all changeable. They're all just patterns. You've just been acting this way for so long. Oh, I've always been, I'm just an overthinker, or I just get nervous for this. No, that's how you've conditioned yourself. Doesn't mean you have to be that way though. Understand, like, all of your identity is a system of conditioned patterns. That's what we're trying to understand here. And when you get that, then you can be aware of those patterns and let them go. Now, the key point here is awareness without using it as a weapon, because everyone has all this awareness and what do they do? They go and judge themselves for feeling this way, right? Oh, why did I do that? Why did I have this thought? You know, I'm trying to clear my mind. I can't do it. If you judge yourself, you're closing your system off. Your system treats that like an attack when you judge yourself. So we have to take responsibility. Responsibility is noticing it. Okay, there's that pattern. It doesn't let you off the hook, but it puts you on the right hook. So you're understanding, hey, this is a pattern I have. I take responsibility. Move on. And I know that I'm working to change this, but we can't be judging ourselves, guys. So tons of research on self-compassion and how it is extremely ineffective. Okay, so what actually shifts when you start seeing these patterns? It's nothing dramatic, but it opens up a little bit of a space, a little gap between the thought or the emotion or the impulse and the, and your reaction. Little pause, little huh, just a little gap. The gap is the whole point though, because that's where choice lives. And without that gap, you're just, you're just reacting to everything. With the gap, you can actually choose how you want to respond. So that's the whole point of awareness. It's to wedge a little gap between our conditioned patterns so that we can choose to let them go and choose new patterns. But if we don't have that wedge, that little gap, a little opening, it's impossible to change. All right, so what I want you to focus on this week is noticing your patterns. And a little verbal thing you can do with yourself is just, you notice a negative thought or you catch yourself in your head talking negatively about yourself or worrying, oh yeah, there's that worrying pattern. Oh yeah, there's that anxiety pattern. Oh yeah, there's that stress pattern. Just a pattern. And once we can be aware of it, we can begin to let it go. All right. So the core of this one is simple. You cannot change a pattern that you cannot see. And when you finally start to see, the move isn't to attack yourself. Okay. The move is just to let awareness be, let it be. And that awareness, that noticing is the ground that you build everything from, right? It's not another thing to beat yourself up with. That's a shift from pressure to peace. Okay. This one landed. Send it to someone who keeps trying to outwork a pattern they haven't seen yet. They'll know who they are. Also, if you're not in the Built for Impact community, get in there. I just came out with the Foundations course. $297, guys. $297 to completely change your life. It's like an introductory— I realized, like, I, I created the Built Blueprint System, which is the main flagship program. It was deep, guys. It was a lot of information. I had been studying it for years, but it's a lot. So I created the Foundations. Put a lot into it. Hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours into making that course or that program. And it's like an introductory. So anyone who takes any Built program, I'm going to mandatory make it that they go through the Foundations first to give them the understanding, and then they dive deep in the Blueprint. So this is a valuable thing. It's not like a light version of the Blueprint. It's like, it's the first step. It's about— that's, that's where you start the transformation, right? Is in that program, and then you, you start the transformation, start doing the work, start seeing the thing, and then you cement the transformation. You hardwire it in through the Built Blueprint. But either way, get into the community. The link will be in this bio. It's free to join. Can't wait to see you in there. Until next time, all the peace, all the power. Thank you.