This is a spoken lecture by Rich Bello about mental habits: how mindsets (habitual thought patterns) and beliefs shape perception, decisions, and life quality. The talk distinguishes beliefs (often from indirect experience) from knowings (direct experience), contrasts limiting versus empowering beliefs, and gives examples of common mistaken beliefs about money, relationships, aging, and happiness. It uses Roger Bannister’s 1954 four-minute mile as a case study showing how changing belief can remove perceived limits, then introduces cognitive biases (recency, anchoring, stereotypes) and notes humans’ negativity bias rooted in survival.
Chapters
We need to remember that habits and instincts are not just physical, but mental as well. For example, mindsets are mental habits. A mindset is a habitual thought pattern and an attitude that results from that. That's been created by experiences that we tend to believe or know about ourselves. Maybe something we know about other people or events. These attitudes are a result of thoughts that have arisen out of either the things that we believe in from indirect experience or. Or things that we know through direct experience. Often we think we know a belief to be true, but later find out it was an erroneous belief wasn't true. What seems to be isn't always what is real. We'll see that these beliefs and knowledge shape everything about our lives as they are the determining factors about decisions we make and the actions we take. Both consciously and subconsciously. Our actions have consequences known as effects. So now we're going to take a look at beliefs, a prevalent type of mindset we instill. These beliefs are ideas or thoughts that are repeated often, usually shared by those who we associate with. For example, political beliefs. They influence our behaviors by controlling our decisions and perceptions. We see what we believe rather than believing what we see. Our beliefs become our reality, literally. We act consistently with our beliefs because it's a natural function of the mind to act in accordance with what it is that it believes and because we act consistently with our beliefs. What we believe in in large part determines the quality of our lives. We have two types of beliefs. We have limiting beliefs and empowering beliefs. Limiting beliefs are those beliefs that hold us back from our goals. It's important I understand these. Those beliefs exist and we believe that we're limited in some way. It might be true or false, but it's usually false. An example is public speaking. Many people believe they could never do it. That's a limiting belief. They can. Many people believe they would rather die than do a eulogy. That means they'd rather be in the coffin than delivering the eulogy. Now, empowering beliefs are those beliefs to give us the confidence and conviction that we have the ability or skill to accomplish the goals that we set for ourselves. We feel confident now that we can take these risks. It's important to know that the belief may not even be true. You may be a horrible public speaker, but because you believe you can do it, you go out there and you take a shot. Fake it until you make it. It's important to instill these empowering beliefs, really important for your quality of life. Let's consider some global beliefs that people have Just to show you that things aren't you believe or as they seem. So common belief is that money will make you happy. Okay. Now the reality is that money is what's known as a means goal. The actual goal is to be happy. Not to have money, not to have all this paper. Right? It's just paper, right? But it's potential energy. Studies show that the level of happiness only increases up to the point of the poverty line. When you cover your basic needs. Above that line, more money can either make you happier or miserable. Studies show that. Another one. Commonly a relationship is necessary in order to be happy. In reality, this too can go either way. A loving, supporting relationship can indeed make you happier. But also remember that nothing's permanent. Single people have many friendships and other deep, meaningful relationships that can serve to provide them with the love that a single relationship can provide. In addition, they have a lot more freedom. The bottom line is that this is really up to you whether you're happy or not. Another one. I like this one. Common belief, happiness declines with age reality. Study after study shows that happiness actually increases with age. Older adults are more satisfied with their lives. They have more positive emotions and less stress. This is the happiest time of their lives. Another one. Happiness is based on your genetic code. Well, the reality is, while it's true that your genetic code has an impact on your happiness, studies show that it's only 50% of the picture. 10% is due to life circumstances and the other 40% is due to our actions and choices. Like listening to webinars like this. I would also argue that many, if not most of our life circumstances are due to life choices. So think about it as half of your happiness is directly proportional to you. You are in control and thus responsible for your happiness. An important distinction between beliefs and knowings. Just important to know this. Mindsets can come from either indirect experiences in which they are beliefs, or they come from direct experiences in which they are knowings. You know it happened. You believe it because you know it happened. Today we're only really focused on those that come from beliefs. Why? These are the ones we have control over and we may want to change. We don't want to change knowings. That's reality. So here's a good example of a limiting belief. I love this story. So nobody had run the four minute mile in the history of man. Roger Bannister did it in 1954, an example of a limiting belief mindset. So most people, including doctors, said it was impossible for a human being to run a four minute mile a second as a result of her own physiology. Roger, however, believed that with the right training and more importantly, with the right mindset, that it could in fact be done. He turned this limiting belief into an empowering belief. He trained and more importantly, he believed and he decided he would do it. Then on May 6, 1954, on a track where all the conditions were against him. High winds, rain, it was horrible. Roger ran the race as hard as he could. And then the announcement came. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event 9, the 1 mile. The time was 3. And then the crowd drowned out the rest. The rest of the announcement was drowned out by the crowd delirious with amazement at the feat of human excellence that they had just bore witness to. Bannister had finished in 359.4 seconds. He did it. He broke the world record. Crushed through the barrier. He'd done what so many people believed was impossible. He, he'd made history. Now here's the first moral. The hurdle was not the human being's physiology. The hurdle was the belief that it was impossible. Once that belief was eradicated, Roger believed he could do it. Right. The four minute mile hurdle was also eradicated. Now what's even more fascinating, once Bannister accomplished the feat, another person did it only 40 days later. People hadn't done it in thousands of years. Right. Why? Because this is a knowing that is more than a belief. This is a knowing. We knew it could be done. The next guy knew it could be done. There are many different documented cognitive biases. But in general, we as humans tend to have a predisposition towards negative biases. Why would the Great Architect program us in this way? Cruel joke? No. As usual, the answer always comes back to survival. We're programmed to constantly be on the lookout for dangers to us. This used to be the case in the old days when there are lions and tigers and bears all around us. But that's not the case today for most of us anyway. Our programming hasn't kept up with our environment. We're going to take a deeper look at that later in our story. So a few of the more well known cognitive biases are. Recency bias. When somebody relies on something that has happened recently, when, when they're making a decision or something in their judgment. For example, favoring the latest option seen rather than the best option. Anchoring bias is another one. So when somebody relies on an initial piece of information, for example, favoring the first option seen rather than the best option, then there's stereotypes, an over generalized belief and expectation about a particular group using that when you're making a decision. So discrimination based on race or gender or nationality. These are some examples of cognitive biases. There are many more. There's a bunch of them actually listed on our website@ruta.com.
