Sharpen Your Intuition: This Is How You’re Silently Being Manipulated...

What if I told you that the biggest lies that you've ever believed felt like the biggest truths? We're talking about the art of self deception that we impose upon ourselves, but also how to sharpen our intuition when all the roads out there to hell are paved with good intentions. Right here, right now on wellness and wisdom. All right, so due to some certain circumstances in my life of discernment, I thought it was really important that we talk about discernment and deception when on this special Liberated Life series. This is our Friday show that we release every single week called Liberated Life Series. And it's about mastery of the wellness pentagon, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and financial nourishment of self. I believe that the more we nourish these sides of ourself, the more liberated we become so that we can. It's on my T shirt. Live a liberated life. This is our community over@liberatedlife.com where we go deep into this topic and so many more. I'd love for you to join us over there because this conversation is both timely and timeless. Today we're talking about how the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but also how do we discern the deception that's out there with all these roads to hell being paved? Well, one thing I've learned is that intuition is like a muscle. And if you've been in a phase of your life where you've been struggling or you've been just having a hard time making decisions, this is a perfect podcast for you. My intention with this is that you leave this podcast for feeling more powerful, more empowered to make better decisions for yourself and to have the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual faculty to do so. So let's dig in. What is deception? Somebody that has a interest that they're not sharing with you and they use specific manipulative language to get you to do whatever it is they wanna do. But yet sometimes people can actually be hijacked by deception. So I'll ask the question again. What if I told you one of the biggest lies you've ever believed was one of the biggest feelings that felt most real? Why is this? Well, Saint Bernard says it perfectly. Saint Bernard was a 12th century abbot in France, and he cited as saying the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What did he mean by that? He meant that when most things start, people believe in their heart of hearts that it's good, that it's going to help people. I don't think that when Bill Gates goes to sleep at night, he has a feeling of evil in his heart and he wants to hurt as many people as possible. I think that he, along with Fauci and many other people in the health world, I guess you could say, or the coercion propaganda world, they actually believe in some part of their heart, or maybe their whole heart, that they're doing good. But this is what happens when we get co opted by someone else's narrative. We're going to go deep into the skill set today as to how you can actually grow your own intuition and not be co opted by someone else's narrative. That's harmful to you first and foremost, but also harmful to some other people also. To bring it down to modernity, Milton Friedman, one of the wisest minds ever to walk the face of the earth, once said, one of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. So what I think he's saying here is that everyone starts out in marriage, everyone starts out in relationship, everyone starts out in business, typically most likely with positive intent. They believe that something amazing is going to happen and they're enrolling everybody else in their narrative to make that happen. So then what happens when things shift? When somebody starts to get malice or coercion or manipulation in their heart, they justify it. This is the first point I want to share with you about why we fall into these traps of being co opted and what really happens in the psyche of the people that are co opting us. So the truth is we live in a world that is drowning in propaganda from financial interest, whether it's governments or media or influencers, and everybody seems to have an agenda. So here's the kicker. The most dangerous deceptions aren't always the obvious ones. They're the ones wrapped in good intentions. You've heard this phrase, a wolf in sheep's clothing? Well, the ones that manipulate our emotions and hijack our intuition are the most damaging narratives that we could ever come across. Yet if we hear something enough, it becomes true. And here's why. In this world of phones and social media and influencers and TikTok and all the craziness that is the phone, people are losing their ability to discern truth from deception. Because they rely on the external validation rather than their inner knowing. They get caught up in really this trap of mass narratives, cancel culture, social proof, and confusing popularity with truth. The only way out of this, my friend, is to rewire your unconscious programming. The first step. Let's understand why cognitive biases exist and why we're gonna start with the illusory truth effect. We talked about this@joshtrant.com 698 this is our episode with Corey Clark, the Pro Blame Bias how to Find the Courage to Speak youk Truth and Escape Victim Mentality. We talked about this illusion of truth and how so many people are co opted by someone else's truth. And we're gonna get into the science and also the spirituality of this. But just try this on for size. What do you feel when I read this to you? The illusory truth effect is a cognitive bias where people are more likely to believe a false statement if they hear it repeatedly. The more often we are exposed to certain information regardless of its accuracy, the more familiar and true it feels. There is a documentary on Netflix. It's called Wild Wild Country. Maybe you've seen it. It is freaking wild. If you haven't seen it, please go watch that because this is how the illusory truth effect really starts to take hold. This guy, this mentor, this prophet, whatever you want to call him, this messenger of spiritual truth and spiritual devotion. His name is Osho and he started out in India. He came over to the United States and before you know it, he was wearing like seven Rolex watches and driving 25 Rolls Royces, wearing a fur cap and sitting on a throne. Now you tell me, does that sound like somebody who is really devote in their spiritual practice? Well, if you watch the documentary, you will see things did not work out so well for Osho. Hence why the documentary is called Wild Wild Country. Here's why this illusory truth effect happens. Our brains prefer information that's easy to process. We have shortcuts in the brain. The brain is a very hungry organ. It's actually the most hungry organ in our entire body. If we see something or hear something multiple times, it starts to become familiar and we start to get confused that just because something's familiar, we equate it to truth. This is the cognitive fluency effect. We start to hear something over and over and over again. And just like a frog boiling in water that doesn't know it's being boiled before it can get out, it's too late now. This is how you can spot it. Repetition breeds belief. Even if a statement was initially recognized as false, repeated exposure can make us less critical of it. We have these mental shortcuts that I've mentioned where instead of going and fact checking for ourselves, we. We rely on the shortcuts. Well, if somebody said something that sounds familiar or I have a friend that did the research for me, then I assume it must be correct. We can't see any more prime example of this than politics, the left, the right, all these narratives that really essentially bifurcate and divide people. I've been victims of this myself, especially with the COVID Shmovid theater, the lockdown theater that we all went on the ride for, where we outsourced our agency and outsourced our power. The news and the media are a propaganda machine, and they rely, by the way, primarily on this cognitive fluency and this illusory truth effect. So there's repeated claims in news cycles that can make people believe lies even though they've been debunked. This is why there's always the tinfoil hat people and the flat earthers and the round earthers and all these people arguing. I'm gonna get to the real secret of this at the end of the podcast, how you can just exit this whole game. The one thing that'll allow you to exit this whole game. So make sure you stay tuned. So how does this look in advertising? Brands use repetition to create trust in their slogans and their products. I use this consciously. You know that the Wellness Pentagon is something that I live and breathe and teach. You know that liberated life is something that I stand for. You know that on the Wellness and Wisdom podcast, we allow ourselves to see life through a different lens. These are slogans, these are marketing pieces that I throw out there, but they're really coming from my heart. They're coming from truth. But how do you know that? How do you actually know that what I'm sharing with you is truth? Here's how you can start to know. Before accepting any information as truth, even with everything that I'm sharing with you, you must first pause before accepting information as true. Seek multiple independent sources. And this is a really big take home. Be aware that familiarity does not equal truth. Familiarity does not equal truth. Just because you hear something time and time again does not mean it's true. So this is the question. When you're receiving teaching or guidance or anything from me or anyone else, ask yourself this one powerful question. Do I believe this because it's TR or because I've heard it so many times? This bias is the most powerful tool used in propaganda and marketing and social influence. Just because when people feel something is true, they rarely question it. So the way out of this is to know that feelings are not facts. Feelings are like leaves in the driveway. Feelings are guideposts to emotion, and that emotion can be connected to thoughts and beliefs. But our actions in the BTFA loop that we focus so Much on in the liberated life tribe. This is the belief, the thought, the feeling and the action that creates the byproduct of our life. But if our beliefs that have been installed aren't actually ours and we don't do the work to actually feel the feelings, observe the thoughts and go into the beliefs, we can be co opted. So when you're receiving any information at all, remember you get to ask yourself, do I believe this? Because I've heard it so many times. But even more powerful of a question, did I choose this belief or was it planted in me? How do beliefs get inserted? They get inserted when somebody is susceptible to belief. In other words, when someone's broke and they're open to a financial pyramid scheme like an MLM scheme, when they're coming from scarcity, this is what happens. I actually fell into that, by the way. I fell into that with this company called Purium back in the day and they promised all these great things and I was bought and sold on the mission. But really it's because I was in a challenging time in my business and I saw it as a financial vehicle out of. But you know what I never did, I never asked the most important question, did I choose this belief or was it planted in me? We're susceptible to beliefs being planted in us when we're in seasons of growth, when we're in seasons of hardship. So breathe and check in with yourself and ask yourself, was this my belief to start with, or was this a belief that I osmotically absorbed from someone else? So now let's get into the manipulation tactics that you don't always see. What if I told you that you're not as free thinking as you believe and also that it's not your fault? From the food we consume, to the television we consume, to the mass media that we consume, we're consumers. And how we can flip this script completely on its head is to move from a consumer to a creator. Now granted, we must eat, we must drink water, we must sleep. There are certain things that we have to do that involve our consumption. But the reality is that people are being hijacked through fear and guilt and virtue signaling. If you feel pressure to agree with someone because you don't want to be ostracized, you don't want to be separated from the tribe, you don't want to be labeled as bad or ignorant, you're being controlled. You're literally being controlled. If your manipulation and your emotions are on the table, being pushed around by the person that's giving you that Narrative. This podcast is never about a narrative. It's about a voice of truth. And that truth is both objective and subjective. So let's break this down. Objective truth is like when I pick up this glass, if I poured out the water, it would obviously go on the table because of gravity. When I breathe in, when I breathe out, I get to survive. If I held my breath, if I was underwater, I would perish. There are certain objective truths that scientifically and just anecdotally we know collectively that can't be refuted. But objective truth and subjective truth are two very separate things. And if it's the first time you ever hearing this, think of objective truth as something we all know to be true. Now, by the way, objective truths can be changed over time depending on environment. But as it stands right now, we know that murdering someone is not a good thing to do. We know that causes pain. We know that physical abuse is objectively wrong. We know that abuse of all kinds are objectively wrong. The paradox is that those things actually help us grow. But that's on another podcast. So the specific solution to not be co opted, to flex your intuitive power, to sharpen your intuitive sword, is to recognize, to identify the three most common types of of manipulation. The first one is fear mongering. The next one is social proof pressure. And the last one is false dichotomies. Look, the second that you realize they have your grip, the second you see it, the grip releases. So what is fear mongering? Fear mongering is exactly what happened during the Shmovid theater. Everyone was afraid of an airborne virus, when really, if you listen to Dr. Zach Bush that we had on the show during that time, we all could have actually just gone out and beat the virus by going camping together. Fear mongering is typically the opposite of objective truth. Fear mongering is what is deciphered and disseminated by someone with a financial interest, by someone who is power hungry, by somebody that wants to control another person. So if you ever are in the space or in the sense of being a victim of fear mongering, you know how it feels when you're out of their presence. You feel relieved, you feel light, you feel, you feel free. Check in with that in your intuition. The next is social proof pressure. I had so many people write into me during Shmovid theater. Oh my God, Josh, I can't believe you're having the courage to speak out about this. And in my mind I'm like, how could I not? How could I not be talking about what I believe is really going on here with the control? How could I not be talking out about the transgenderism and children whose parents are virtue signaling and having them cut off their sexual organs? How could I not speak openly and freely about the propaganda that exists with Republican and Democrat that put us at war? These are all things that I can objectively see as truth. Yet if I'm subjectively harnessed in my amygdala, then things can go really haywire. Let's break down the portions of the brain that control us from a very ancient old school perspective. The amygdala in the center of our brain is where fight, flight, fight, freeze and fawn happen. The amygdala is a very ancient structure. It's what keeps us safe and it's what predicts potentially threats that could happen. It's always scanning, especially when you attach it to our default mode network that we talk about in the Breathe program at Breathwork IO. One of the most powerful tools that I've ever found to get out of fear mongering or social proof pressure has been breathwork. It is my go to whenever I'm feeling stressed, when whenever I feel like I'm getting trapped by fear mongering or social proof, AKA fear of what other people might think of me, the answer is right below my nose. I take a big deep breath. And especially I might do it 20 times. There's specific practices that down regulate the stress hormones in your neural tree in your nervous system, and we go deep into those. I hope you'll join us over at Breathwork IO. It's a program that I built after traveling the world for four plus years. I did trainings with some of the best masters in the world and then through life experience I realized I can actually share this with other people. Now this isn't something that you have to buy. You can go look up and do free breathwork anywhere. But if you want to be guided from A to Z, then head over to Breathwork IO. Now the big takeaway here. If you were to just get one thing from this entire lls from this entire Liberated Life series podcast, take this to heart. The third and most powerful way that we can be co opted into this illusion of truth is from false dichotomies. False dichotomies present two either option A or option B. It's a very binary choice, right? A good example of this might be a professor offers a lecture to his class and he says, well, you can either be a high paying trader or you can have your passion, but you can't do both. This is obviously a false dichotomy because what he and many people in the propaganda world are doing is they're presenting only two options. But I'm here to tell you there is always a third option. When you're in a relationship, you can stay or you can go, but if you're unhappy, you can't just keep going on because that's going to force you to either one of the two. What if I told you that if it was relationships or financial health or any of the five sides of the Pentagon, that there is always, 100% of the time a third path? This third path, when it comes to this example of finance, means that you can actually love what you do, make it a passion, and it can be both. But it's going to require a breaking of the mold of this binary thinking. The third path is the spiritual path. This is where you take the false dichotomy that's presented to you, whether it's through school or through media, AKA the Republicans and the Democrats, and you can actually say, you know, I don't believe in any of this and I'm going to create my own path. I'm going to forge my own way in life. I'm not going to listen to what has been force fed to me like a goose that's trying to make his liver fat. I'm actually going to be healthy, I'm going to be well. I'm going to learn how to make my own decisions in life. So when you're presented with a false dichotomy, this is the deep breath question that you must ask yourself. Ask yourself, who benefits from me believing this? Who benefits from me believing this? Whatever narrative, whatever propaganda is being put forth, if you've ever caught yourself being emotionally manipulated, this is where you can share your story in the comments. Have you ever been co opted? Have you ever believed something that somebody presented to you because you were in a state of urgency or a state of fear and you went down the road and you realized, yeah, that wasn't the right path? Well, give grace to yourself because that's the whole part of learning how to sharpen your intuition through life experience. How else, y', all, how else are we supposed to sharpen our intuition than by receiving the outcome of what we don't want? It's just impossible. Nobody has the perfect map, nobody's the perfect parents. But many of the roads that were paved to hell were paved with good intentions. Things that started out pure in people's hearts and then they got co opted themselves. And they started to put their integrity on the side because they saw the selfish gain that they might get from convincing you that their narrative is the truth. But if you ask yourself that question, if you really ask yourself that question, who benefits from me believing this? Like everything I'm sharing with you right now, Do I really benefit from you believing this? You don't have to buy anything I'm selling. You don't even have to believe me. But of course I benefit from this because I'm practicing the very thing that I'm sharing with you. Who benefits from believing that we're co opted. Well, we all do, because we are. I don't have any financial gain that comes from that. So, you know, if you follow the money in politics, or if you follow the money in pharmaceuticals, or if you follow the money in almost any industry, it essentially, almost all the time leads to the truth. It's a 10 out of 10 if you follow the money, really. Because all decisions in this modern world, at least the ones disconnected from love, are financially motivated. So the goal obviously here is to create a life that you can live peacefully in. Peace is the foundation of all that we're seeking. We're all seeking peace. And these narratives and these co ops and these propaganda machines that try to force feed us to get us out of peace, we can just simply put our hand up and say no. We'll talk about how to exit the game right at the end of this podcast. I'm saving the best for last. Next, let's talk about the war on your mind, the war on your intuition. If you ever have intuition that feels foggy, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's by design, literally. Your inner wisdom has been systematically eroded. Religion, politics, corporate agendas, they have conditioned us to outsource our decision making. They tell us what to believe, they tell us who to trust, they tell us how to think. It's because we're dealing with a specific problem. Most people no longer trust their gut feelings because they have been trained to seek approval before they form an opinion. So when there's a specific problem, there's always a specific solution. If your intuition has been dampened and watered down, then you get to rebuild your intuition by practicing what I call radical self trust. Radical self trust means listening to your inner no just as strongly as your inner yes. When was the last time you felt an inner no that was so powerful that you trusted it and you acted on it? When was the last time you felt such a strong inner yes that you Trusted it and you acted on it. Many of us are pulled so many directions by phone or computer or even relationships where we haven't done the healing work that's required to notice that we're most likely in a relationship that is toxic for us or that's not really of service to us or the other person. Yet we stay. Then why do we stay? We stay because good people fall for evil agendas. Good people fall for evil agendas. Try this experiment. For the next 24 hours, every decision, make it on your gut instinct. Make it on your gut instinct without any second guessing and then come back here and tell me what happened. What we fear is the flinch. We fear being co opted, which then brings the co optedness towards us. We fear making the wrong decision, which then puts us in idleness. And then we make no decision at all, which sometimes can be a really good thing. But this good people falling for evil agendas happens all the time. And by the way, the evil agendas come in and many times people don't even know that they're the harbinger of this evil agenda. Case in point, Bill Gates or Fauci. Although, I don't know, part of me feels like maybe when they go to bed at night, they're snickering like they know it might not be the totality of them, but I just feel like it's definitely part of them. So let's get to the meat. Good people fall for evil agendas because hell is full of well meaning people who never questioned the road they were walking on. They literally never questioned it. They did exactly what they were told. And most people that push harmful ideologies, they don't think they're doing something evil. They actually think they're helping. That's what makes deception so effective. It doesn't feel like deception. So if the road to hell is paved with good intentions because people confuse emotional righteousness with actual wisdom, they get trapped. They get trapped in this collective virtue signaling and they lose their moral compass. This is a really big tool that I'm about to share with you and I promise you this can change your life. So really take this to heart. It's on the screen right now. Use the contradiction test. Anytime someone tells you something is absolute truth, look for contradictions. If their stance requires exceptions, emotional coercion or censorship, it's probably deception. This is a really powerful question. Can you make decisions and be in that other person's shoes before you take any belief as truth? After you've done the contradiction test, ask yourself, if I had to argue on the other side? Could I, Could I argue on the other side of this? And if the answer is no, you've been conditioned, not educated. So now we've set a foundation of the ways we're co opted and manipulated. We've also given some really unique strategies and solutions that you can exit this game of coercion and manipulation. But what is the cost if you don't? The hidden cost of ignoring your intuition is that every time you ignore your gut feeling, you make it weaker. Now, this is not to shame you. I've done a lot of work on this and I'm going to continue to do so. But what is the price? What is the price of not trusting yourself? Living a life that isn't truly yours? Because people that constantly override their inner knowing, they end up stuck in toxic relationships and bad jobs and meaningless pursuits. The solution to all of this is to start small. Do small tests, reorganize your GPS so that you know what's true and what's not true. The small test is the next time you're learning something, the next time you're hanging out with a person, if your gut tells you something, even if it feels irrational, follow it all change when it begins feels counterintuitive. We can't always know that feelings are facts, because they're not. Sometimes feelings are just guiding us towards the truth, towards the emotion that's wanting to be moved. Energy cannot be created and destroyed. Just like you train in the gym or you train your muscles, your intuition in your somatics is like a muscle. The more you use it, the sharper it gets. So three ways that I love to sharpen my intuition are. Conscious breath work like we practice in the breathe program, Meditation, microdosing. And I'll give you one more conscious reflection. Microdosing is very powerful. It allows some of the parts that are hidden by our brain, hemispheres and coping mechanisms to go away for a minute. I love this Eons product. It's the first Amanita Mascaria legal microdose that's out there in the world. It's absolutely amazing. We'll link it in the show notes. The reason I love this is because it works on the GABA receptors. You're not going on such a huge trip and it just allows you to center yourself and take a deep breath. Microdosing is a way that you can pause the washing machine. You can pause the washing machine, you can lift up the lid, you can see what's in there and you can make a choice. If you Want to wear these clothes or not? If you want to listen to this narrative or not. But if we never have any time to pause, if we never are doing breathwork, if we're not doing cold therapy, if we're not microdosing, if we're not doing any conscious reflection or meditation, we are so completely open to the hooks of modernity and to manipulations of others. And it might be easy for me to share with you. You get to do breath work, you get to meditate, you get to microdose, you get to be still and go in nature. But are you actually doing it? I don't have anything to gain by telling you this other than the practice of it myself and the empowerment of you doing the same. So really, here's what we're all working on. We're all working on feeling peace and fulfillment. Everybody wants peace, everybody wants fulfillment. But on the road to hell that's paved with these good intentions of people that probably wanted peace, probably wanted fulfillment, they're actually leading us like lambs to slaughter. Now we can get out of this. And this is what I promised you. This is the way to exit the game completely and not play it at all. Remember how I told you that all change when it first starts out feels counterintuitive. What I'm about to say is going to feel very counterintuitive. The only way to win the game is to stop playing it. The only way to win this game of self righteousness, blue or red, democrat, conservative, this or that, is to take a deep breath and just stop playing it. You have the power to just stop playing it. But in order for you to have that power, you have to work on the peace in your nervous system, in your mind, in your heart, in your, in your beingness. By all of these strategies, all of these powerful tools that we've talked about today. These are the ways that you set a foundation of peace in your nervous system and in yourself. And what keeps I, and many of us, all of us, really what keeps us playing the game is we want to be right. We want to be right. We want to be self righteous. We're playing a rigged game. This is a rigged game. But once you see the game, you can just simply opt out. The problem we're all dealing with is wasted energy. We're trying to prove that we're right. We're trying to prove that our narrative is the best instead of just presenting how we feel. See, because when I present how I feel and I'm not attached to you believing it, I'm not attached to you believing exactly what I believe. There's no charge. You don't have to believe anything I'm telling you. But I know the words that I've been speaking so far are landing. They're feeling good. And that feeling is your intuition. That is your intuition telling you that you're on the right path. That's why this podcast has gone to so many different tens of millions of people over the decade plus because this proof that we're trying to do where we're right and they're wrong. It's just a false flag. It's a false battle. We're actually not here to prove anything to anyone else. It's about seeing reality for what it is. So what is the way out of this? We must adopt the observer mindset. It can be challenging because we're the player and we're the programmer at the same time. We're literally coding our video game that we're playing here, but also we're watching it happen. So do this the next time you feel like you're in this war with yourself. Instead of reacting to the war, instead of reacting to the world, I want you to just watch it like a movie. Take a breath. Do your microdosing, do your meditation. Go to your cold tank. Just get still. Just be still with yourself for a moment and see the patterns. Recognize the programming for exactly what it is. Once you start to see the patterns, you will not be sucked into the vortex. You will act from a place of peace and clarity. And that is all that we want. We just want peace and clarity. So there's a lot of concepts here. Rewind this. Share this podcast with somebody that's been struggling with being co. Opted. Maybe it's somebody that's got like seven jabs in their arm and you're worried about their health. Maybe it's somebody that thinks everyone else is out to get them. Share this podcast with them, because in summary, it's on the screen right now. These are the eight things that you can take from this conversation. Put them in your journal, put them to practice, and start wearing them like new sets of clothes. The first thing is all truth is objective and subjective. The second is be aware that familiarity does not always equal truth. Know that feelings are not facts and understand that false dichotomies ignore the third path. Ask yourself whenever you're confused about what direction to go, who benefits from me believing this? And lastly, take the contradiction test. Ask yourself in contradiction if their stance requires exceptions, emotional coercion, or censorship. It's most likely deception. Know that your intuition is like a muscle. The more you use it, the sharper it gets. I've given you the tools for breath work, the meditation, the microdosing, the conscious reflection, and number eight, my absolute take home. You can exit at any time. The only way out of this is through it. The only way to win the game is just simply to stop playing it. I hope this hit your heart. I hope that you know that my intention with this was really just to bring you closer to peace, closer to fulfillment. That's what I'm working on. That's what we're all working on in the Liberated Life Tribe. And that's what this podcast really is all about. My journey with this podcast is about doing therapy, learning in public, learning out loud so that I and all of us can get to peace, can get to fulfillment, and we get to meet ourselves along the way and unpack all the stories and the beliefs that truly aren't serving us. So let me know what you thought of this episode in the comments below. Share a belief or share how you've been co opted because by writing it out or typing it out, you exit the game. You can also write to me at podcastellnessandwisdom.com if you'd like to go over more deeper topics or different topics. I really enjoy these. It's an opportunity for me to teach, for me to share, and for me to give you my opinion and my learning and my wisdom without the aspect of you having to learn it. I'm not attached to you learning it, but I am committed to finding the truth. And if you are committed to finding the truth, stick around. Subscribe to this podcast and share it with somebody who you think it'll make a really positive impact. All right, until next week, I'm wishing you love, wellness, but most importantly, peace and power. We'll talk with you soon.