Why Your Beliefs Feel Like Facts

We pull apart the difference between facts, opinions, and beliefs, and how identity gets fused to ideas that were never proven. Along the way we examine authority, algorithms, memory, and why healing is an ongoing choice rather than a finish line.

• defining beliefs as temporary interpretations
• the spectrum from I don’t know to fact
• how emotion and repetition harden opinions into beliefs
• evidence versus proof and the misuse of science
• social media, suggestibility, and everyday hypnosis
• the critical factor and why children are more impressionable
• memory, childhood recall, and what really sticks
• reframing harmful self-beliefs and staying fluid
• healing as repeated willingness to let go
• practical questions to test authority and meaning

Chapters

• 0:00 Warming Up And Framing The Day
• 4:20 From Weather To What Beliefs Are
• 8:10 Opinions Versus Beliefs
• 12:40 When Beliefs Become Identity
• 18:30 Science, Authority, And Trust
• 25:30 Algorithms, Hypnosis, And Suggestibility
• 31:20 Childhood Theta States And Memory
• 36:50 Reframing: Beliefs As Temporary

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:11

We are on the line. I don't know why I sing it every day. That's a thing.

SPEAKER_03: 0:17

Very very nice. I like it.

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

Give us a give uh give us a thumbs up or something in the chat if you can hear us. It's Monday morning, and we're just making sure our brains are working well. Everything's turned on. Okay, it's good.

SPEAKER_02: 0:33

Thanks for being here. And you too. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_01: 0:36

Me? Yeah. Thank you. Me and my snivelly, snivelly self.

SPEAKER_03: 0:44

Weather report. It is a clear sky, clear sky we've had in a long time. Sun is just coming up over the horizon. I am looking out there and not seeing a single duck, goose, or swan. Which surprises me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00

There's a bunch of them the other day in a in a group.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02

Yeah, they were hanging out together. Isn't that amazing? What we could learn from animals. If swans and geese and ducks can hang out together, human beings can figure it out, right? It would help.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15

It would help.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16

And there were seagulls in there too. Yeah. And if you can get along with a seagull, you're doing great.

SPEAKER_04: 1:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22

Do you have the right microphone on?

SPEAKER_04: 1:23

I yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:27

It just hit me.

unknown: 1:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29

Let me ask as I leaned back. I thought, I wonder if that might pick me up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32

Yeah. So today we're we're talking about beliefs. Beliefs. Belief, belief.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39

What a stupid idea. You know me. I like to see through these ideas. When you think of beliefs, you know, what do you think of?

SPEAKER_01: 1:49

Well, I think at first I think about spiritual beliefs or religious beliefs or, you know, political beliefs. The biggies, right? The big ones that I think we tend to assume the word goes to immediately. But I guess, you know, as as I start to dig deeper, beliefs are really anything you believe about yourself to be true or others to be true or the world to be true, your environment to be true. And it's all stemming from way, way, way, way, way back.

SPEAKER_03: 2:25

Those are the questions I like to ask. It's funny, I'd like to challenge that which we assume, right? And that's mostly everything, right? Like I talk about, you know, how we're using language right now. Isn't that an amazing thing? The human beings yearn to interact and communicate so badly that they create systems of noises made through their mouth and their nose. And it's not just that it's, you know, get out of my way or don't touch that or that's mine, right? It's that we have poetry, we have prayer, right? We we yearn to connect with each other so badly that it's basically the first thing we teach babies is how to make noises in the form of communication. Mama, dada, right? Papa, mama, right? It's amazing how badly we want to communicate. It's amazing how we take that whole system for granted.

SPEAKER_01: 3:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 3:27

You're smiling, you might be insilly.

SPEAKER_01: 3:29

No, no, no. I'm just laughing at the dog.

SPEAKER_03: 3:31

Yeah, she wants to be heard, so she's chewing her bones.

SPEAKER_01: 3:34

It's like she knows every day at the same time.

SPEAKER_03: 3:38

I like it because it reminds me of that old saying, give the dog a bone.

SPEAKER_01: 3:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 3:42

People are turning you on to this podcast. You've just tuned in, and your head, your mind, was somewhere else. It was off in the distance. It was like, okay, maybe I'll listen to this. Or, God, I gotta stop thinking about that, so I'm gonna listen to this. Or maybe, oh geez, it's the end of the day. I can finally stop thinking about all the things I have to think about. Maybe I want to listen to this, you know, and so it just reminds me of that. Give the dog a bone. Just like a dog is gonna chew, the mind is gonna think. If you let the dog chew whatever it wants, you're gonna lose your shoes and your clothes and furniture. So you give the dog a bone. Your mind is gonna think, it's gonna be filled with stuff all the time. So give it something good to think. Give it something worth thinking about. And so today I want to think about beliefs as an idea, as a concept, and sort of the strengths and weaknesses of that. Because for a lot of people, you know, beliefs are considered a strength. Whereas as hypnotists we've learned that beliefs are actually a problem.

SPEAKER_01: 4:47

Yeah, they can certainly get in the way.

SPEAKER_03: 4:49

I don't know. Do they ever help? Can a belief help?

SPEAKER_01: 4:52

I think so. I I think I think if you you know have the belief I'm strong or I'm I'm I'm confident, or is that a belief? I don't know. I think that's a belief, a belief in the chat, a belief in oneself. So like if you believe in yourself, I think that's good.

SPEAKER_03: 5:10

Well, what do you believe about yourself?

SPEAKER_01: 5:12

Me personally?

SPEAKER_03: 5:13

Well, I I ask that question generally, and I hope that anyone hearing the question, I love questions because questions demand an answer. So a question is a great way to communicate if you're trying to get someone to consider an idea. So, you know, are your beliefs about yourself all good?

SPEAKER_01: 5:32

Well, I can't say they're all good, but I do have good ones, I believe. Uh yeah, I I have yeah, I have good ones and bad ones. I think I think everyone would probably have a sliding scale of like good ones versus bad ones. And it just, you know, how messed up you feel kind of is based on if the bad ones are are way more than the good ones, maybe.

SPEAKER_02: 6:02

Well, what's the difference between a belief and an opinion?

SPEAKER_01: 6:06

I don't know. Maybe an opinion can be changed easier. I don't know. Nothing. I need another coffee.

SPEAKER_03: 6:16

Yeah, we're gonna go through some coffee today, that's for sure. No, I'm coming to the table with the experience of having countless beliefs myself over the short span of my life, and how many of them have had to change, they needed to change for me to move forward in my life. And as a hypnotist, how I have to always find a way to sneak in to my client's mind and get them to consider that maybe what they believe is incorrect, and at least even if they are gonna be convinced it's correct, but it's not helpful.

SPEAKER_01: 7:02

An example comes to mind if I can remember it properly. I had a client that uh just kept saying, like, I have scientific proof, or I have empirical proof. Empirical evidence, that's what it was. I have empirical evidence that I'm a failure.

SPEAKER_03: 7:21

That's so wrong in so many dimensions, eh?

SPEAKER_01: 7:24

Well, certainly not helpful.

SPEAKER_03: 7:26

Well, it's absolutely not helpful, yeah. And so and so and it's so incorrect, right?

SPEAKER_01: 7:32

Oh, yeah, it's incorrect.

SPEAKER_03: 7:34

It starts with uh it starts with a misunderstanding of success and failure, yeah. And then builds on that and applies it in a judgment form onto the person. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 7:47

Uh in the chat, a belief has surpassed the critical factor.

SPEAKER_03: 7:52

Well, that's that's what we deal with as hypnotists, isn't it? Right? It has, it's something that has snuck through because it's part of the natural mental processes. Yeah, do you see?

SPEAKER_01: 8:04

An opinion he sees my eyes looking down the computer. An opinion is temporary and can still be influenced.

SPEAKER_03: 8:12

But if a belief is really no more true than an opinion, why did one go in? Yeah, and and why do we take like this? This is we're talking in the right territory here because why do we elevate opinions to beliefs? And why do people fight over their opinions and fight over their beliefs? We know unequivocally that a belief or an opinion is something we can't prove. Yeah, that's inherent in the definition. Something we can't prove, and we fight over them. We argue about them.

SPEAKER_01: 8:48

Well, I think we we atta we must attach it to our ego and who we are who we are.

SPEAKER_03: 8:52

Yeah, the the equivocal or sorry, the the most meaningful part of the phrase my beliefs is the word my.

SPEAKER_04: 9:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 9:02

We turn it into a part of our identity.

SPEAKER_04: 9:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 9:06

And here's the awful thing that's how we interpret the world through the lens of our beliefs.

SPEAKER_00: 9:12

My brain is melting.

SPEAKER_03: 9:14

Well, this is this is so yeah, this is so important to me because this is an automatic thing, right? This is something we do every day, all day long, with everything around us, right? We are never seeing things for what they are. We are only ever seeing things for what they mean about me.

SPEAKER_01: 9:34

Yeah, that's true. That's true. And we tell our clients that, like, it's never about you. You know, you can be someone fight me on the not fight me, but like I said, you know, uh you could be you can be Mother Teresa and someone's still gonna have an issue, right? And then they said, Well, have you heard what Mother Teresa has done? And I was like, Oh my god, they do know what do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03: 9:59

There you go. There's this natural, yeah, yeah, there's a natural tendency to challenge everything. That critical factor is a really active thing. Unfortunately, it's not very logical, right? That critical factor is the same as the subconscious mind. It's still a child, yeah, right. And some people are actually raised to believe to challenge everything, right? Challenge everything, don't accept anything anybody says, and they get in the habit of doing that, which I think in some ways is really great.

SPEAKER_04: 10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 10:36

In a world full of crap, yeah, and people trying to control you and get you to do things you don't want to do. Yeah, I can see there's value there. And then there's also the incredible anchor that puts on your life, right? Because at some point or another, you have to decide what you will let in. And I think this is where people get really messed up with science, right? They think that's they label something as science and that lets it in. And science is a method and a process, it's not a thing, it's a method of analysis. And it's a method that can be as easily manipulated as anything else. People do it all the time. You know, for me, the question I always ask, if somebody says, I want, I'm gonna live my life by science, right? I'm gonna say, Well, you gotta ask every time who paid for the study. You gotta ask every time who paid for that study, because they won't pay if they don't get the result they want. So who paid for that study? Who who has something at stake with these beliefs?

SPEAKER_01: 11:39

Yeah. And you would have to be in a way, and I don't think people generally are like this, because I think the idea of basing your opinions and beliefs on on science is sort of in a deep-down way locking things in. But you would have to be someone who is open to change, right? The science says one year coffee's good for you, next year coffee's not good for you. Oh, five years later, coffee's good for you. You know, like it's constantly changing.

SPEAKER_03: 12:14

And the people who share it share it for a reason.

SPEAKER_01: 12:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 12:17

Their own reason.

SPEAKER_04: 12:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 12:19

Whatever they might be. So this is the critical factor that may be very, very uh tightly bound, might be very, very open. You know, we talk about people, we call them maybe naive or we call them gullible, right? And they're people who just believe things because they heard it, read it. It's on the internet, it must be true. But I don't know. We make that joke, but I don't know anybody who really thinks that way.

SPEAKER_01: 12:46

If it's on the internet, it must be true. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 12:49

But I think sometimes when things are published, yeah, right, we have a tendency to let certain forms of information in.

SPEAKER_01: 12:56

Well, my my biggest thing right now that I'm I've been thinking about is, and we don't have to go down this rabbit hole because it might take us in a totally different direction, but what is authority nowadays? Right. I I was going through reels on Instagram or something, maybe TikTok. And I was thinking to myself, everyone scrolling through these reels, like what what is going in? You know, like you're zoned out completely as you're scrolling. And what made me think about it was this random woman popping up in a reel saying, your brain starts eating itself in perimenopause. And that was it. And then she went on to talk about it a little bit. But my God, the amount of people watching that, liking it, comments, tons and tons of comments. Oh my God, I knew it. I knew it. And so who is the authority? Is she really an authority to say that kind of thing? And you you you scroll and it's right there, it's going right in, you know, you're in that zone. And I mean, think about me. Like I remember it. I don't believe it, but I remember it. And where do you start saying to yourself, no, no, I'm not going to believe every single thing that comes across that. So who is the authority? So now we're looking at AI. Yeah. Like Chat GBT has become an authority.

SPEAKER_03: 14:28

And that bugger just makes things up. Oh my God. That's that's just a people pleaser if there ever was one. That one goes out of its way to give you answers on things it's never considered because it knows you want an answer. It's always polite and loving and kind when it answers you. Oh, Les, that's a really good question. I think we should consider that from a couple of angles. Right? And then it says stuff, and then it's I'll ask it a topic, a question about a topic that I know about, and then I'll get something back and I'll say, Well, what about this? Oh, that's a very good point, Les. We should include that in our considerations, right? And then I'll say, But but you forgot about this. Well, Les, my I have limits to the things that I can access. So I'm sorry, sometimes my answers are incomplete. I really encourage you to double check this research. Like you talk to me like you know, and you're my best friend, and then you say, Yeah, I'm I'm just making stuff up.

SPEAKER_01: 15:28

There's a great um, I don't know who sent it to me. Maybe my brother. I can't remember. Anyway, there's a great comic right now with two panels, and the top panel is some guy asking, excuse me, asking Chat GBT, can I eat this mushroom? Chat GBT is like, yeah, that looks like an edible mushroom, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the bottom panel is this tombstone RIP. And Chat GBT is like, well, actually, I think I was wrong on that.

SPEAKER_03: 16:00

So, yeah. We actually have a story about budding Brian is a runner, and Brian runs like 10, 20 clicks a day. He just runs, and he likes to just get off the roads and into the bush. And so he came across this thing that was on the road, and now he's he's he's funny because he's just in the last year got a phone with data. This is a you know, this is a 65-year-old man who just got a phone with data, right? Yeah, and he takes pictures of things and asks Google what it is. So he took a picture and it was and the picture said it was some kind of mushroom. Google said it was some kind of mushroom. And he he was smart enough to say, I don't I don't think I believe that. And he took more pictures and he kept looking. And then Google said, Well, no, it's an animal scat. Nice. It's poop. Oh my gosh. Anyway, he tells that story, tells it very, very well.

SPEAKER_01: 17:04

But yeah, who is who's becoming the authority?

SPEAKER_03: 17:07

Well, that's the thing about the mind. You know, this is to me one of the valuable things to know about the mind. The mind has a critical factor. We know that. We know that the critical factor forms at some early age in our lives when we became responsible for ourselves. When our parents started making us responsible for ourselves, we started to lock in our beliefs. When we started to interface with the world at large without our parents' intervention, that's when we started to really lock in our base knowledge, our base awareness. That's why so many people, when they come to hypnotism, they want help. That what they're saying is, I'm acting childish. You know, I don't like the way I'm behaving, I don't like the things that I do, I don't understand why I can't do something different, I don't understand why I say this or say that. I want to stop being this way. Their complaints are summed up with, you know, I'm I'm behaving in a way I don't like it's kind of childish. And that's because so much of our mind, in terms of our beliefs, and then the that the guards that we put around our beliefs are really just children.

SPEAKER_04: 18:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 18:14

And they have very incomplete knowledge.

SPEAKER_04: 18:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 18:17

And they hear things like, you know, my beliefs matter, my opinions matter. And that starts to become a belief. My opinions matter. And, you know, you're saying something that I don't like and you should stop.

SPEAKER_06: 18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 18:34

Because my beliefs matter. My opinions matter. We get lots of conflict, right? Conflict, because first of all, my beliefs don't align with your beliefs, but more importantly, my beliefs don't align with my other beliefs. I have beliefs that conflict with each other, and I don't know how to reconcile because they are very child. So I guess I'm get making my way to my first reframe.

SPEAKER_04: 18:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 18:57

Right? I put beliefs on the same spectrum that I put opinion. And on one end of the spectrum, there is I don't know. And on the other end of the spectrum, there is this is a fact. Yeah. This is a fact. There are facts, there are things that are inarguable. Right now, the sun is in my eye. There is nothing between my eyes and the sun. It is a clear day, right? I might judge it and say, it's beautiful outside, right? Or I might judge it and say, Oh, that sun is burning my eye. Right. But the fact is the sunshine is making its way directly to my eye. Yeah. Right? That's a fact. Then we use things like judgments, interpretations. You know, I can take my judgment and say that the sun is beautiful. And then I can turn that into a belief that sunny days are better days than rainy days.

SPEAKER_01: 19:48

And then you'll fight someone on it.

SPEAKER_03: 19:49

And then I'll get up in the morning when it's raining and think, well, this is a secondary low qual quality, low-caliber day, right? And I'll approach it that way. Oh, it's raining. The day is crap. Uh uh. Right. So a fact can feed into all the other facts I know. And then I start to form opinions. And when my opinions are really, really important to me, then I call them beliefs. And they're my opinions are often based on my beliefs. So that's kind of like taking fiction and creating fiction from fiction, right? It's taking something that's really, really unreliable and then making something even more unreliable from it, and then making that your fundamental kudo, right? Your, your, your, sort of, uh maybe maybe I mean the word credo, your your absolute philosophical stance on the matter, and that it's mine. So I'm at stake if people disagree, because I'm so darn smart that I've come to this conclusion, and this is my belief. And anybody who believes otherwise is just wrong, right? So I've I have offered a reframe in the past. Opinions are temporary things. If we think of opinions as temporary, because we haven't finished our research yet, right? Opinions are temporary. It's based on incomplete knowledge. I know that my opinion is based on incomplete. So my opinion is an interpretation based on incomplete knowledge. I should treat it as temporary. And if I'm not going to finish the research, then I should throw my opinion out because I don't plan on finding the truth. So walking around holding a not an incomplete truth is not a helpful thing. A belief is an opinion that I hold about myself or about the world, and it's the same kind of thing. So the easy reframe I offer is beliefs can change. And that's the way I get around it with clients.

SPEAKER_01: 21:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 21:46

A belief is is not really, you can't prove a belief, right? Otherwise, it wouldn't be called a belief. If I could prove it, it'd be called a fact. Right? So a belief is a temporary thing that I choose to accept without complete proof. And when it's about me or about the world I'm living in, or about others, it can become problematic and unhelpful.

SPEAKER_04: 22:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 22:10

A belief like everybody is good. That can get you in some trouble. A belief like, you know, all these people of this particular persuasion can't be trusted. Whatever that might be. Men can't be trusted. Women can't be trusted. People from this particular religion can't be trusted. People from this political party can't be trusted.

SPEAKER_04: 22:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 22:30

Right? These are all beliefs.

SPEAKER_04: 22:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 22:32

And they they don't have the quality of fact. They don't have even, in a lot of cases, real facts behind them, though we can claim to have empirical evidence.

SPEAKER_06: 22:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 22:46

And evidence, we use the word evidence and we don't use the word proof as lawyers. We talk about evidence. And talk about proof is a conclusion that you come to from the evidence. And that's an interpretation of the evidence. And evidence can be interpreted in a lot of ways. So we're really cautious about that, or at least we pretend to be really cautious about that at law because people's lives are at stake.

SPEAKER_06: 23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 23:07

Well, anyway, so an opinion should be a temporary thing until you complete your research. And if you don't plan on completing your research, then you shouldn't have an opinion. And it's okay to say I don't have an opinion on it.

SPEAKER_01: 23:18

Yeah. Yeah. Uh but I think, you know what's interesting, what's coming to me is when I do interviews, there's always a question that I don't know the answer to, right? Of course. And uh I I don't sit there and make something up, right? I'll say, I I'm not sure. I don't know. I I haven't done that yet. Something like that. And you wouldn't believe how many people, when they reach out to me, say, quote that, like, I noticed you said this. And I felt like I that was the moment I trusted you because so many people are out there, and I'm not trying to toot my corner or anything, but like so many people are out there trying to grab for authority. And in grabbing for authority, they're just making they're they're just, I don't know, making stuff up. I don't maybe not, but like they are positioning themselves like I know everything. And I think you can read it. I think I think more and more people know when they're watching that. I don't know, that just came to mind.

SPEAKER_03: 24:20

Well, I think that feeds into many people's mistrust of authority, right?

SPEAKER_01: 24:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 24:25

That becomes a that that becomes a belief. How do beliefs come about? They come about from repeated experience. And let's remember that experience is an interpretation.

SPEAKER_06: 24:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03: 24:36

So we go back to that simple equation. Things happen, events. We put the meaning on those events. That meaning will evoke an emotion, and that emotion becomes part of our experience. The event, what it means, and the emotions that it evokes is the experience.

SPEAKER_04: 24:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 24:54

So that's why beliefs are so hard to shake, because there's an emotional component to them, right? Based on the meaning we put on them. And the best way to shake a belief is to change the meaning. And I just think all beliefs, we can shift the meaning of beliefs right across the board just by saying, a belief is not a fact, my beliefs can change.

SPEAKER_01: 25:16

Yeah. And that's sometimes scary for people. I I've I've had numerous people sit in our first meeting. And once they realize what we would be doing together, they still go through with it, thank goodness, but they they realize that change is coming. And it's scary for a lot of people. Who do what does that mean? Who am I after that happens? Do I lose myself if I if I think differently about myself? How do I get through this world?

SPEAKER_03: 25:45

Our beliefs, our opinions, we identify with. And, you know, that was the conversation we had last week. You know, if I was to lose my tone, would I disappear? Well, heck no, right? It might change the way I view the world, depending on how I interpret it, but I don't disappear. If I lose my beliefs and realize my beliefs aren't facts and they can't be universally applied, and they don't need to be thought of. It's not something to fight with somebody else over. Then maybe I'm still here and I'm a fluid thing. I'm not a solid thing. You know, I'm not this body, I'm not a solid thing, I'm a fluid thing, I can change. My opinions can change, my beliefs can change, I can change, I can change my body, I could change my mind, I can change, I'm in constant change. I have lots of evidence to prove that I am in constant change.

unknown: 26:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:46

And I think you want to be in constant change. I know a lot of people going through the healing process, they're like, well, I'm back at this thing. I'm working on this thing again. When is this going to end? When am I going to be healed? I think that that I think there's a belief there that needs to be looked at that there is an end in healing. There isn't an end in healing. You you don't, I don't think you want an end in healing. And that's, you know, hindsight. That would be hindsight. I think that if we're not constantly changing and healing and growing and learning and all these different things, then we just become, you know, the visual that I get is that I don't know where it's from, maybe an old movie or something, but that old man rocking back and forth on a porch near a cornfield with his dog and the gun. And like he just becomes this doing nothing person and just wasting away on the porch, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 27:46

Fighting for your beliefs.

SPEAKER_01: 27:47

Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, exactly. So I think I think that like the Tetris game, like we talk to people about, you're constantly clearing rows of stuff, you're healing, you're learning, you're doing. And that's getting lighter and lighter. But I don't think there's like suddenly one day you're healed of everything, you know?

SPEAKER_03: 28:08

Well, I think it's important to think about how the world is multidimensional. And so healing is going to be multidimensional. You're going to bump into many different kinds of circumstances that are going to trigger old wounds. And though, in certain circumstances you've already got that figured out, maybe you know, there are other circumstances that haven't come up yet that will trigger that old wound and you got to heal some more there. But I also think that there's yeah, there's another way of looking at healing. The instant I want to be healed, the instant I want to let go of something, the instant I'm willing to forgive it and release it, in that moment I am healed. Now, what happened is that the mind is habitual. The mind repeats itself. Even when you have had a unique new thought that is healing in nature, the subconscious mind is going to drag you back to old thoughts. And when it drags you back to old thoughts, it reactivates the hurt and puts you in a place where you have to heal it all over again. So the power starts to become your ability to dispose of old experiences that haven't proven to be helpful. How much can I cut ties with my past? Right? We have fridge magnets that we give to clients. And, you know, one of my favorites is the past only matters when I drag it into the present.

SPEAKER_04: 29:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 29:35

And if I'm not thinking about my past and double-checking everything in my present as it relates to my past, then my past can just be released, it can just be gone. It can just because the past is gone. The only place it can exist is in your mind when you dig it up, right? It doesn't exist anywhere except in your mind. And then that's subject to an interpretation. Because when you experience this, There was an event that you interpreted to mean something, you stacked an emotion on top of it, and then you filed it away under experience. And then you use all those experiences to create beliefs, most importantly, beliefs about yourself. And those beliefs about yourself can be really, really limiting. Really, it's like a cage. It's like a box, your beliefs about yourself. And sometimes the best thing you can do is just ditch all your beliefs about yourself and see what you discover. Just, ah, let's see what I do today. Let's see who I am today. Let's see what happens today. I'm just not gonna care about anything that's happened in the past. And I'm not gonna cling to my beliefs. People come about their beliefs honestly, and then they get reinforced by the people who love us, our parents and our friends and the people we admire in the world. And we get ourselves in a place where we're trapped and limited by our beliefs. And to just keep them soft, my beliefs can change. My opinions are temporary. I'm always open to new information that is trustworthy. And I will determine trustworthy as I meet the information. And I will do my best.

SPEAKER_01: 31:18

Yeah. In the chat, there's an opinion that's temporary and can still be influenced. I wonder what influence, what how who influences it? Or again, back to that authority.

SPEAKER_03: 31:29

Yeah, there it is.

SPEAKER_01: 31:30

Is it just like pig pong?

SPEAKER_03: 31:32

It's authority, it's trauma, and it's hypnosis.

SPEAKER_01: 31:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 31:36

Right? So when I say hypnosis, I don't mean sitting in the chair. I mean sitting in your chair at night with your face stuck in YouTube.

SPEAKER_04: 31:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 31:44

Right? That's hypnosis.

SPEAKER_01: 31:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 31:46

Right? Your AI feed is deeply hypnotizing.

SPEAKER_01: 31:51

Think of the visual that comes to me as kids. And they marketing agencies do this stuff on purpose, like kids looking at TV when they're when they're kids, obviously. And you just see them glaze over. They're just watching, watching, watching. They like their show. And then bam, there's a commercial with lots of great colors and this toy. And it's going, it's all going right in. It's no different than, I don't think. It's no different than scrolling.

SPEAKER_03: 32:23

No, it's completely the same. You know, and and you know, the many scientists will tell you that the dominant brain state of people under the age of seven is the theta state. The theta state is a suggestibility state. I think that it's important to realize that when they're very young, they haven't accumulated a lot of experience. So they don't have a lot of strong beliefs. So it's very easy to shape their beliefs about the world. For us as adults, we've crossed that time where we've become locked in. We've developed a critical factor, we've developed critical thinking methods, for better or worse, and we've become locked into our beliefs. And so we defend them a lot stronger and a lot better. A child's mind is very much different. I mean, child psychologists have been advocating for 50 years about children's TV. I mean, that was the reason why they invented the children's television network, and we had Sesame Street and all those things. It was very much about knowing that the child's mind develops and is easily shaped and the stuff we expose them to on a medium like television, in a medium like children's books, right? There are so many children's books out there. Like you think about reading the kids who grew up on Grimm's fairy tales. You gotta figure they they got a completely different mind than the kids who grew up on Dr. Seuss. And even that's kind of a green eggs and ham kind of mine.

SPEAKER_01: 34:05

Mine was mine was the green forest. So I'm I'm all fairy tales and talking blue jays.

SPEAKER_03: 34:13

And my and my eldest son could continues to be just madly in love with the book Where the Wild Things Are. Right? Which is really a story about you know, a kid who who was bad, was told to go to bed without supper, and then had a nightmare when he fell asleep.

SPEAKER_01: 34:36

You know, something just come came to me, and I don't know, this is probably already a thing, but we we think about how kids are living in their theta state mind. And when someone goes through hypnosis, they're living in their theta, alpha theta state mind. And as much as they come out of hypnosis and they they're like, oh yeah, I went through that, I worked on that. It it's not, it's like daydreaming, right? You just it's easily forgettable, right? And so you have adults, and I hear it a lot when people come in. Well, I don't remember my childhood, so it must have been really messed up. Like I must have tons of trauma. But what's coming to me now, and and and sometimes those people don't have tons of trauma, but what's coming to me now is like if they if as children we're in our theta state, then maybe that's why we don't really remember our childhood, is because it was all dreams. It was all hypnosis, it was all dreamlike, right? But we think there's something really messed up with us if we don't remember our childhood. Well, but we were in that theta mind, which is easily, easily forgettable, right? Unless there's emotion attached.

SPEAKER_03: 35:45

Well, I think, you know, I I think there's a simpler way to to soften your thoughts on that. Um, first of all, go back five years and realize that you know, the years five years ago to ten years ago, you lived them the exact same way you're living the present. And then go back to those years and ask yourself how much you remember of them.

SPEAKER_01: 36:07

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_03: 36:09

And mostly what you remember are the upsetting thing or the really, really positive thing. You certainly don't remember, you know, what socks you were wearing on the Wednesday of the seventh year, eighth month, right? Like you just don't you don't remember the little things that quite quite confidently happened, yeah, but you don't remember them. So then go back another five years, and guesses are that your memories are limited to just the highlight. And you actually have to think about them and you'd have to make reference to the year, the date, the moment, the event, yeah, and then go back another five years, as many years as it takes you to be five years old. Like I know I went to kindergarten, I remember the name of my kindergarten teacher. I remember thinking that she was so pretty and she was so nice. Right? I don't really remember much about kindergarten. I remember when Bobby May puked on the carpet. I remember that. I remember playing on the snow hill and getting in trouble from the teacher. And really, other than that, I don't remember kindergarten. But it was, you know, a few years ago. And I think that to say I don't remember my childhood is pretty darn normal.

SPEAKER_04: 37:25

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 37:26

And that if events stand out that are negative in your interpretation, I think that's pretty darn normal.

SPEAKER_01: 37:33

I'm I'm, I don't know, this is not really pertinent to the conversation, but I remember what's what's coming to me is I remember my kindergarten teacher, she had these slip-on shoes that had these frills and tassel things on them. And I would sit there and play with them while she was talking to people. I don't know why she would let me do that. Like what?

SPEAKER_00: 38:02

Oh my god. And oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01: 38:05

I also like uh, you know, my my after kindergarten, I was put into French immersion. So like the very first years of learning was pretty mixed up, right? So there are, you know, there's words that when I look at something, the English word does not come to me first, which is interesting. But anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 38:33

Anything else from the questions or comments?

SPEAKER_01: 38:34

Not right now.

SPEAKER_03: 38:36

So with that said, yeah, I'm ready to close the book on this one. Yeah, beliefs are not facts, they are temporary things, they are changeable things, they are based on experience, which is based on interpretation. They're loaded with emotion because they're based on experiences, and we tend to think of them as mine, which makes them part of our identity and makes us somewhat unwilling to change them. Yeah, but for the vast majority of people, the willingness to change your beliefs is what opens the door to a better life. So they're not as important, they're not as valuable, they're not as essential to who you are as you think they are. And it's in allowing yourself to change your belief, which will change how you interpret what's going on in your life now. Yeah. I am an eternal child of the universe, and nothing can change that.

SPEAKER_00: 39:32

Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for joining us today, talking about beliefs. Be a leaf floating on the wind.

SPEAKER_01: 39:42

There you go. I don't know, God. I do need more coffee. All right, we'll see you later.