Josh TrentIdentity Transformation Architect and award winning Host of the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast—a decade-strong show with over 750 episodes and 15M downloads.

These 4 questions can change your life... instantly. #podcast

3 Sept 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:29

In this solo‑podcast segment, the speaker shares a personal story about sending birthday flowers to his mother, only to discover she found them half‑dead. The experience triggers a long‑held belief that his mother is judgmental and hard to please, which the speaker identifies as the source of his suffering. He introduces an inquiry‑based stress‑reduction technique that consists of four probing questions: (1) Is it true? (2) Is it absolutely true? (3) Who do I become when I hold this belief? (4) Who would I be without this belief? By applying these questions to his belief about his mother, he realizes the belief is not an absolute fact, that it causes him to act rudely, and that letting it go makes him feel lighter and calmer. He then briefly introduces a follow‑up exercise called the “turnaround,” which challenges the brain to do something it resists, setting the stage for further transformation. The segment is instructional, using personal anecdote to illustrate how questioning beliefs can instantly reduce suffering.

Chapters

Suffering stops now if you want it to, because it's a belief. So one belief that I hung on to for a very long time was that my mom was very judgmental and hard to please. And I remember a couple of years ago, I wanted to do something nice for her. So I sent her some flowers. I stayed up till 1 in the morning calling up the right florist, getting exactly the right bouquet that I was sure she was gonna love. I called her up and I said, hey, Mom, happy birthday. Did you get the flowers I sent? To which she said, I did. Thank you. But just so you know, the flowers that you sent were half dead. So don't order from that florist again. To which I said something like, well, that's the last time I buy you flowers. Inquiry-based stress reduction asks us to consider 4 questions. The first question is, is it true? Clearly, my mom was being super judgmental. So to me, that was a fact. Okay, let's go to question number 2. Is it absolutely true? Absolutely true means in all instances, without exception, 100% of the time. So it wasn't actually a fact that she's judgmental and hard to please. It's a belief. Okay. The third question. Who do I become when I hold onto this belief? I become kind of rude. I become this like 13-year-old version of myself. Yeah. Now finally, the 4th question, who would I be without this belief? Even just talking about it, even just imagining it, I felt lighter, I felt calmer, I felt more like myself. So what did I learn in just those 4 questions? Number 1, that that fact wasn't a fact, it was just a belief. That 2, holding onto that belief was causing me suffering. And number 3, I was much better off without it. Okay, so now it's time for the turnaround. The turnaround asks you to do something that your brain absolutely hates.