How Repeated Lies Become Beliefs

My peeps, do you ever catch yourself believing something about, you know, the world, about somebody else, about a circumstance or a situation that just isn't true? It's not factual. Do you ever catch yourself believing something about you that is not true, but you find yourself believing it? Even though you know it's not a fact. Today we're diving into this thing that I have— I've been obsessed with it like the last week or so, and this thing is so interesting to me and why people do it. Welcome to Lead with Confidence Now, the podcast dedicated to helping you grow your confidence and live your best life. I'm Travia Steward, and for the past 27 years I've been on a mission to help you reinvent your relationships in your career. My goal is to show up for you every week so that you can rock your world with the confidence to make the big changes in your life, in the major areas of your life that you want to make. All right, let's get into it. Yo, my peeps, welcome to Podcast Thursday. And like I mentioned in the intro, this is something that I have just I feel like I've gone down a rabbit hole with it because I feel like I've been obsessed with it. And part of the thing I love about being on this journey of entrepreneurship, of life coaching, of speaking and podcasting, is I love learning new things. And as I dive deeper into this, this element of confidence and self-doubt, one of the things I want to talk about this week is how sneaky self-doubt really is and how it, it just creeps in when we don't expect it, and how it makes us question everything about ourselves even when there's no real reason to do it. So we're going to talk about why this happens and more importantly, how to start trusting yourself instead, instead of falling into the trap of believing something that you know is not true. Why do we believe things about ourselves that aren't true? Whether it's we're thinking we're not good enough, we're not smart enough, we haven't done enough— this is all rooted in self-doubt, right? But the crazy thing is, a lot of these beliefs are not even based on facts. Sometimes we just take someone else's word for it. Right? Sometimes they're just stories that we picked up along the way. We've heard someone say it, and, you know, now that means it must be true. I want to ask you right now, what does it mean when we say, I, I want you to believe this thing about yourself that isn't true, right? What, what happens when when you convince yourself that you're not capable of doing something, when you talk yourself out of it to begin with, even when there's no real evidence to back it up, you know. And maybe you're looking at someone else's example. Maybe you've heard sometime in your life that, you know, you're not good enough, you can't do this, you don't have the skills, you're too young, you're too old— those things. Which are not true. When we get down to it, this is the thing that I find so interesting. So I've been really obsessed with this term, illusory truth effect. And so the illusory truth effect is the tendency for people to believe false information is actually true after they have been repeatedly exposed to it. Right now, this can occur even when the information contradicts, goes against even their own knowledge, and they know this thing is implausible, but the repeated exposure to it makes them begin to believe it. So if you're constantly telling yourself you're not good enough, eventually you're going to start believing it, not because it's true because it's familiar, because you've heard it, because someone else has said it to you and you've repeated it. So what this looks like is it starts with you are repeating this thought, and so the language, the words that you're saying, these are the thoughts that's popping into your head. Which shapes how you see things. Now we're seeing— we're saying it in the words. We're saying, even if it's non-verbal, to ourselves. Because what we say and what comes out of our mouth is a reflection of what we're thinking. So now those words become actions, and you start— we start doing stuff based on what we've been saying to ourselves. And then we keep doing those actions, and they become habits. We keep believing these things, and they become beliefs. And so these beliefs really have a major effect and influence on how you show up every single day, right? And this is a— this is a cycle that can really keep us stuck. If we keep feeding ourselves negative thoughts all the time, then we just stay in a loop of self-doubt and we never move forward. We keep telling ourselves, I can't do this. I'm not smart enough. I'm not talented enough. I'm gonna fail. I, you know, I'm— I just can't do it. You know, do any of these thoughts sound familiar? These thoughts, this thinking can hold us back from even trying in the first place. And so one of the reasons why I got— I was obsessed with this term illusory effect was because We, we took a trip a couple of weeks ago and we were in the presence of some kids and something was happening. We were having adult conversations and the kid was asking questions, and one of the kids asked, "Is that true?" And so the comment that was made was not true, but the adult was just repeating something that someone else said. So now I went through this whole cycle of how do we basically explain this thing to a child who is believing in hearing what they just heard. And so they're like questioning the thing they just heard. And what it reminds me of— and you know, this may come across as political or not— but it reminds me of a lot of the conspiracy theories. Like when people believe, like, you know, like when people believe things that they know good and well if they were to use their common sense that that thing is just not true. But when someone who says it, who, you know, they deem as a, a, a good source of information, an honest source, a respected source then they believe what that person says. You know, just like, you know, the news has a slant to it. Whether you're watching Fox News, whether you're watching CNN, there is a slant to each news. And all of it is, you know, they all need ratings, so there is a sense of entertainment with it. But what I believe is, I believe that when I want to know something, I may hear it on the news, I may hear someone say it, but I'm gonna do my due diligence and research that. I'm going to look it up. But you know, first of all, most of all, I'm gonna trust what I know to be true. So when I begin to trust what I know to be true, especially when the information is contradicting my own knowledge and what I know are, you know, things that are just implausible, I'm gonna go with what I know to be true. And so repeated exposure to these false things, whether it's negative statements about yourself that keep popping up in your mind, eventually when you keep saying it to yourself, you're going to believe it. Not because it's true. Again, it's because it's familiar. And so when we keep feeding ourselves, you know, we, we get into the thoughts spiral, right? We keep doing these things, and then we're stuck in a cycle of we keep doing this. And the more we talk ourselves out of something, the more we don't exercise the muscle of doing the hard thing. So I want you to pay attention to the stories you keep telling yourself, you know, the ones that make you, that make you doubt the action you should take, even though you know in your gut, intuitively, you know that this is your next step. But you talk yourself out of something. So what I want you to do is challenge those thoughts, challenge even the thoughts that are coming up in your head. Because there are so many times these things become patterns, and we are saying things that, you know, consciously, would we really be saying it? But we're allowing ourselves to think it. So the most important thing here is I want you to always talk to yourself more than you listen to yourself, because your brain has an objective to keep us safe. It wants us to always feel loved, to feel enough. So it's going to protect us. So sometimes it's going to send that dramatize information so we don't put ourselves out there because we know what it feels like the last time we put ourselves out there and we failed at it. So the point is, your brain is going to make up all kind of stuff. Challenge those beliefs, challenge the negative thinking, and talk to yourself more than you listen to yourself, to yourself. Because I want you to imagine what could happen in your life. What could you actually do, have, be, become if you started trusting yourself instead of doubting yourself? I mean, just thinking about it, you'd probably take more chances. You'd probably push yourself further and harder. You might even surprise yourself about what it is that you're actually capable of. And so starting with just believing you are enough as you are, because we all are enough. When we were created, God made us as enough. But I also have been there, so I'm not sitting here saying it like I'm immune from these things. I've been there. There are things that I thought I couldn't do, you know, from throughout high school, throughout college. There were things that I carried a huge amount of self-doubt about. And then it wasn't until I learned the tools through coaching that I was like, huh, okay, I'm gonna challenge these thoughts. I'm not going to keep repeating the cycle and get into that thought spiral. Because some of these thoughts that became beliefs were not based on fact or reality. They were just stories that I kept telling myself about why I couldn't do something. But when I began to trust myself and challenge those beliefs to begin with, I changed how I started showing up. I changed how I viewed myself in the world. And so an example of that would be, let's talk about someone who, you know, like, believes they're bad at a subject in school. Like, they're bad at math. I thought I was always bad at math, you know. And then they're told their whole life, maybe by a teacher, friends, whoever, parents, that they're bad at math. You can't do math. That, that belief, that statement becomes a part of their identity. And what happens is when they begin to start questioning it and giving themselves a chance, they doubt it because they don't want to take that chance to begin with. But if you did challenge it and start believing in yourself and giving yourself the chance, that person who was told, who believes that they're bad at math might actually discover that maybe if they did math in this kind, you know, this tactic, this strategy, that they're actually pretty good at it. Or at least they can learn math and that they're not actually bad at it. You know, the same thing goes with relationships. If you're someone who believes that you don't deserve love that everybody, you know, no, relationships don't end unless they end badly. I don't believe that. I don't believe that every relationship that ends ends badly. Now yes, there are some relationships that end badly, but I don't believe that it's 100% of the time because it's not. I have examples in my own life that relationships that ended, it was just the close of that season. I believe that people come into your life for a season. Some people are there for life, some people are there just for a season. And before, I used to have a, a more challenging time of accepting that, but now that's one of the philosophies that I live by. I believe that everybody comes into my life for a reason, and they may not be there forever. It may just be for a season, and I don't make that mean something negative. Or something bad. I just mean that we've closed that chapter. And so what I want you to start doing is questioning the things that make you feel negative, that don't empower you, that make you feel like you can't do something. And so question the source of things. Question this term illusory truth effect. Because there's so many times we fall into— in line with believing things because someone else said it, believing things because our friends said it, believing things because we heard on the news, believing things because our parents said it, our loved one said it. Do the research for yourself and trust what you know to be true. We're all human and we all have moments where we, we slip. I've slipped. I have slipped in believing something even about myself. You know, for a long time I didn't think I was acceptable. I wasn't accepting myself and who I was at my core, which was a complete total lie until I began to trust myself. But I made people's actions mean something negative toward me. So what I want you to do as I bring this episode to close. How can you break free from the cycle of, you know, one of these things that really contribute to a huge amount of self-doubt? You can start by, by really thinking about being mindful of the things that you're telling yourself, and ask yourself and be aware if you are repeating negative beliefs. Challenge them. And most importantly, practice trusting what you know to be true about you, because we all have the answers about us. No one knows us better than we know ourselves. No one knows how we work better than we do. And so when we think about repeating and taking things into our subconscious, into our brains, repeating it If it doesn't empower you, don't take it in. Don't repeat these beliefs. Don't repeat things that you don't want to believe about yourself, especially these negative things, because trusting yourself is the key in this situation. And we all have the ability to change our beliefs and rewrite our stories, rewrite those negative thoughts that we've been telling ourselves. But of course it takes time, but I 100% believe and know that it's worth it. We do not have to keep going down that, that same train track because the train will travel down the tracks that were laid. And if you're laying negative track, that's where your train will go. When we are thinking about doing something that's unfamiliar This element of change can be a little fearful, can be a little scary for a lot of us, but I don't want you to let the fear of challenging your thoughts stop you, because I know the best things in life— I know for me— happen when you, when I step out of our comfort zone and start trusting yourself to handle whatever comes your way. So my peeps, look up that term illusory truth effect. And it just, it really was insightful for me when, uh, we were out of town a couple weeks ago and I was watching this kid question something another adult was saying.. And then I was watching the news and, you know, thinking about all these conspiracy theories and things like that. And it's like, oh my God, how can people believe some of the stuff that they're believing? That's when I got— I came across the illusory truth effect. So look it up, my peeps. All right, my peeps, have a beautiful rest of your week. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please share it with other people. So that we can— that I can reach more people, that other people can start overcoming their limiting beliefs, their self-doubt. And I would love it if you could send, you know, write a review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you're listening to this podcast episode. Again, it helps more people to find the podcast. I believe that it's my mission to empower and inspire as many people as possible. To live the highest vision for their lives without settling. There's no more settling. This is 2024. There's no more settling. It's your time. So let's get it. We'll talk next week.