Summary
Joe Hudson and Brett Kistler dive deeper into how to see through limiting beliefs, building on a prior episode that defined them. Joe distinguishes two types: beliefs you haven’t yet recognized as limiting (which can dissolve instantly once seen), and beliefs you intellectually recognize but that still grip your body and behavior. The key insight is that limiting beliefs aren’t about truth or falsity — they’re identified by the constriction they create in your system.
Joe outlines three foundational categories of beliefs that keep other limiting beliefs stuck: “I’m bad” (shame-based self-judgment), “it’s hard” (the assumption that change requires suffering), and “I’ll be unsafe” (fear of abandonment, loss, or consequences). Each of these meta-beliefs reinforces the others and prevents integration. He also introduces the concept of a “lattice work” of beliefs — interconnected layers that must be seen through together for real change.
The episode emphasizes that seeing through beliefs is about creating spaciousness rather than proving beliefs wrong. Joe notes that everyone has already changed thousands of limiting beliefs naturally over their lifetime without effort or awareness, suggesting the process is far easier than we assume. The ultimate guidance is to trust awareness itself — if you truly see through a belief, you don’t need to do anything extra to change it, just as you don’t need to remind yourself that two plus two equals four.
Key Concepts
- Constriction, not truth, identifies limiting beliefs
- Three categories of beliefs keep all others stuck
- Limiting beliefs form an interconnected lattice work
- Trusting awareness dissolves limiting beliefs without effort
- You have already changed thousands of beliefs without noticing
- The belief “I’ll be unsafe” anchors other limiting beliefs
Key Quotes
“The way to see through limiting beliefs is just to see that there’s constriction when you have the thought. You have the thought and then you have constriction — that is a limiting belief. It’s not whether the belief is true or untrue.”
“It requires a lot of effort not to evolve, not to shift, not to mature. It requires a lot of effort to do that. So let go the effort, allow for gentleness to do its work.”
“If you are asking yourself ‘what do I have to do to unstick a limiting belief,’ it means that you haven’t seen through it all the way.”
“Your belief of God between the time you were born and now — there’s been multiple versions of God in your mind, most likely, and they have shifted and become less and less limiting.”
“The only safety that you can have, the only security you can have, is the security of knowing yourself.”
Transcript
accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here today with my co-host Joe Hudson huh boy how are you today oh it’s been a lot man it’s been good it’s been good I am I’m in Denver Colorado and uh just did a session with like 350 people at this company it was really fun ah very cool and you can see the hotel room I mean everybody listening to the podcast the podcast look at this thing I mean it’s like sumo wrestler with bunny ears on is the art in the walls of this hotel room yeah that is pretty bizarre and you’ve got some antlers in the back yeah yeah yeah yeah I guess every room it’s a huge hotel 15 stories and every room is decorated differently and every floor of the hotel has um has like a theme so one’s like a video arcade theme and one’s a comedy theme and one’s a horror theme that’s crazy is there are there any rooms with a limiting beliefs theme I don’t know I think with that sumo wrestler with the bunny ears there’s nothing limiting us uh well at least at least we can make a podcast on the living beliefs theme yeah let’s see that great um yeah a little while back we did we did one on limiting beliefs and sort of defining what are they and how is it that they run our lives and when they’re unexplored and how how we can start to explore them and we’ve gotten a lot of questions uh and requests from from folks wanting us to go a little bit deeper into limiting beliefs and really more into how to see through them and dismantle them and to all the all the Jiu Jitsu that we can do to uh find deeper Freedom so yeah how do you feel about going into that today it’s good you know I’ve been we’ve been um creating new curriculum around limiting beliefs so I’ve been thinking a lot about it it feels really good to talk about it awesome I think that the thing I want to start off with is that in the last podcast we talked about the fact that it was like this isn’t like your beliefs don’t disappear that they’re they’re integrated meaning that when you see through a limiting belief it doesn’t mean let’s say the limiting belief is um life is hard and that might be like a compulsive belief in the limit you know and limiting and it doesn’t mean that that belief goes away it means it gets integrated it means that sometimes you might think life is hard or sometimes you might have the thought life is hard but it doesn’t create constriction in your system and it might mean that before you thought about it every time you had a certain emotional experience and now it’s you don’t think about it that way or that it doesn’t have the same trigger the same hold that that the integration is seen through the limiting belief doesn’t make it so you can’t have the belief it makes it so that the belief integrates into a more peaceful existence and I think that’s the before we get started I just want to re-emphasize that yeah yeah so seeing through isn’t making it absolutely transparent and you have you don’t see it anymore or that you can’t see it or that you are in opposition to that belief in any way great that’s the best way to say it is you’re not in opposition to that belief that’s a great way to say it I wouldn’t say it’s I would say that it does remain transparent you’ll start to see that um the belief is is optional yeah but it doesn’t mean that you’ll never have it yeah it’s just gone yeah right exactly right yeah transparent in the way that you can see it see through it yeah yeah okay well then how do we do that how do you how do we see through okay two-step process let’s go so I believe I believe these things I believe these beliefs yeah just go go go go to somebody who he’ll pump you up and convince you that might last a little while no um so there’s two kinds I think the the thing that I’m seeing really clearly now is that there’s the kind of limiting belief that gets stuck where and that’s one that you’re aware of oh I’m aware that this is a living I believe but I I still believe it and I can’t get out of it and when I say believe it I don’t mean intellectually believe it it means that like it’s the rest of your body believes it and maybe even intellectually you believe it yeah and what does that mean like for the rest of your body to believe it uh so everybody here and listening to the podcast knows that um it’s better for them to be healthy physically healthy and so you can know that that’s an intellectual knowing but until your whole system gets it you’re not going to take action to be healthy so so what I mean is like the other word that they use for this is like rock right so meaning that it’s understood not just intellectually like you fully get it and so when I say that the whole system hasn’t gotten it means that the actions aren’t aren’t um coming from that understanding they’re coming from a different understanding got it so I’m sitting on a couch and I’ve got this belief that it’s better to be healthy and I see all the ways that I could do something to be healthier and my body doesn’t actually produce and follow through on an Impulse to become healthier correct yeah instead it beats it’s it’s instead of Beats you you beat yourself up for not doing the work or whatever that would be or you just ignore it or you do avoidance or whatever it is yeah got it so how do you how do you see through limiting beliefs yeah so the the first thing is that there’s two kinds I would say two ways of looking at let me beliefs there’s the ones that are um the ones that you just haven’t seen you don’t know that they’re a limiting belief and then you find out their elodian belief and and then there’s the kinds that you know are a limiting belief that you haven’t fully um integrated and and therefore you’re still acting as if is still acting by those limiting beliefs even though you might intellectually see through them so the first one for instance might be something like oh I have a boss and you’d never think about the idea that you have a boss being a limiting belief but you notice one day that you say it to yourself and you’re like oh my gosh I have a boss and it causes constriction which is how you know it’s a limiting belief and then you might really be able to see actually I don’t have a boss what I have is a client who um I’m a business and I have only one client I have an undiversified Refuge stream and so I I don’t actually have anybody who’s in control of me or is an authority over me I just have a client and that might create a lot of freedom for you and and you just see it the Epiphany happens and it’s over the limiting belief is gone as compared to the second kind which would be something like oh I should be healthy and intellectually you know it’s good to be healthy but the rest of your system hasn’t gotten on board with that and so there’s no action that shows that being healthy is an important thing to you instead there’s maybe self-abuse or avoidance or something like that and so those limiting beliefs are usually something that have two components the first component is that there’s an emotional hook that’s sticking them in place and the other one is that there’s some basic beliefs that are in play that are holding it in place and so how to unstick the emotional stuff is not something we can do on this podcast maybe on a future podcast we can talk about it there just won’t be time but I would love to talk about seen through limiting beliefs and how awareness can just do that and some of the basic limiting beliefs that make a whole bunch of other ones stick in place yeah awesome so I mean let’s let’s start with what makes us not see limiting beliefs yeah um the first one is that there’s a logical fallacy so we just have like a an error in our thought like we haven’t we haven’t really looked at it deeply enough to see through the belief system the other one is just ignorance like we don’t know that there’s a possibility like maybe nobody’s ever conceived of the fact that their boss is just one client um and then but the the most common one is that there’s some consequences involved where we don’t want to have to face those consequences so we keep ourselves in the dark around the limiting belief so um for instance the consequence of the boss one might be something like oh oh if I don’t have a boss I don’t actually have a safety here and so I don’t want to look at that I like to work under the illusion that because I have an employer that it’s safer than being an entrepreneur and so I’m going to not want to see those consequences or maybe a limiting belief is uh something like um I can’t do it and but if you do do it it means that you’re going to have to or if you believe that you can do it then it also means that you might fail and and you don’t want to have to suffer the consequences of feeling like a failure so it’s easier to just believe that I can’t do it and so that’s the other thing that keeps the Unseen ones in place and and and the kind of the quickest hack to seeing if if you have one of those things is you just look for a comparable in the space you just say oh wait is there entrepreneurs that feel safe oh is there entrepreneurs that are actually more secure financially than me in the job oh yes there are therefore there must be something that I’m not seeing or um is there um people who can enjoy failure is there people who failed several times and then succeeded in I.E Abe Lincoln or Sam Walton uh and that can allow you to see how your your limiting belief is untrue or can be untrue from a certain point of view yeah yeah so you’re pointing towards there’s there’s the possibility that people can have different beliefs and it can be easy for them to have failure or to experience failure or to experience whatever emotions come from the consequences that we might be avoiding behind our own limiting beliefs and so how do how do we make it easier to see them how do we make yeah so the first thing is that it it the the belief is to see that the belief it’s not about being true or untrue so usually that’s where somebody gets stuck he’s like is that a true belief or is that a non-true belief and that is just not the way to see through limping beliefs the way to see through limiting beliefs is just to see that there’s constriction when you have the thought you have the thought and then you have constriction that is a limiting belief it’s not whether the belief is true or untrue and so an example of this would be um uh let’s say let’s say you have two people that you’re gonna hire for a job and they have identical resumes they have the same experience there’s no nothing differentiating them except for one thing and the one thing that’s differentiating them is one of them thinks I can do this job well and the other one thinks I can’t really do this job well who are you going to hire and it doesn’t matter if that idea is right or not right true or not true and what matters is that they have the more useful belief system they have less constriction in their system around taking this job and and that’s what you’re looking for it’s never about a good or a bad idea the other the same thing with like the the metaphor we’ve been using the I have a boss metaphor uh or belief for some people I have a boss is not a constrictive thought at all so it’s not a limiting belief for them they’re like yeah I have a boss it’s great my boss is great I love having a boss this is wonderful and for some people it’s like every time they think that they have a boss they get constricted and so then that’s something for them to see through so it’s really not about and and in one way it’s absolutely true for both people that they have a boss and for another way it’s absolutely true that they don’t have a boss that they have a one client and they have an undiversified Revenue stream and so it’s never about right or wrong it’s about what’s the thought that serves you best the way we know it serves Us best is if it’s creating constriction in our system and so as soon as you get that it totally helps you see through limiting beliefs yeah that’s more it’s more about the limiting aspect of it yeah than that there’s a belief that you have and it’s true or not true it’s not even that you’re trying to prove these beliefs as false right except as an exercise to believe them a little bit less or to see through what you need to see through to let go of the constriction and find Freedom and it’s about the limitation and as the limitation lifts you can have the belief and other beliefs yeah so that’s exactly right the whole thing about working with limiting beliefs the the underlying principle is that you’re constantly creating spaciousness and so you’re taking something that creates constriction and you are finding spaciousness with it and one way to do that is to see the untruth in it and one way to do that is to um see that it’s not your thought that it was given to you one way is to visualize yourself um in a world where that isn’t your thought anymore one way is to see that there are people who’ve been very successful with a different thought around the same subject so all of those things can create more spaciousness in the system and so you’re not looking for your brain to tell you oh I don’t believe this anymore you’re looking for your body to tell you oh that thought doesn’t create constriction in my system and and I have other thoughts that I believe that that are more useful to me and I know that because they don’t create constriction in my system so so what are some of the basic beliefs that keep these stuck ones stuck yeah um there’s three main categories of these beliefs the first one is I’m bad the second one is it’s hard and the third is um I’ll be unsafe those are the three categories of beliefs that and it even works with like letting go of learning beliefs I can’t let go of limiting beliefs because I’m bad I can’t let go of living beliefs because it’s hard I can’t let go of limiting beliefs because it I won’t be safe those are kind of the three main categories that that help a belief get stuck in you know halfway understood where our mind might get it but the body doesn’t get it what do you mean by bad and what would make that be a stuck belief yeah bad with me like um you you should be ashamed you’re responsible you tried and you can’t I’m you know broken uh I’m broken there’s something essentially wrong with me um it’s it’s any way in which you tell yourself that something can’t change because you’re flawed by Nature what would make us think that we’re bad by Nature yeah I mean oftentimes we’re told that most of us were raised um and with shame as a tool of control so we’ve been shamed to um you know guilted or shamed you know you’re naughty like I mean I I’ve seen parents tell their kids they’re naughty five times in an afternoon and so it’s really hard if you get told that for your whole life to come out of it and think oh I’m not naughty I’m good I’m inherently good so that’s one example um the other thing is that um you can you start looking for evidence that you’re bad because other people attack you so instead of somebody attacks you and you think to yourself oh that’s because they’re having a bad day they haven’t had enough coffee they are projecting they’re having an issue you think oh I’ve done something wrong I’m bad and so you start using that as evidence that you’re bad anything that goes wrong oh it shows that I’m bad um and the other way is to look back on actions that you’ve had and you think oh if I was good I wouldn’t have whatever cheated on my husband or I wouldn’t have like eaten the food like I know like my brain tells me I shouldn’t but I’m still doing it that’s because there’s something wrong with me I’m broke and I’m bad um instead of seeing it as ignorance instead of seeing it as not ignorance in a bad way but ignorance like not knowing the right tools for the job so we get told it and then we find evidence yeah yeah the ignorant piece is interesting so you you might see the belief you might know that it’s a limiting belief at the time like yeah I know that if I work out I’ll feel healthier and I’ll feel it better and I still am not doing that right now yeah so even proving it with present actions that are ignorant correct it seems like a thing yes exactly yeah well but but what’s so what’s the ignorant piece if you if you see the belief and you don’t take the action it’s like ignorance in the body in some deeper level yeah you know like you’re not ignorant of the idea so as an example is you’re not ignorant that being healthy is is a good choice you’re ignorant of how to dislodge the thought that you’re bad in your head which causes you to take actions to prove you’re bad or you are ignorant of how to motivate yourself to be healthy or you’re ignorant of the fact that being healthy can actually be really fun and it doesn’t have to be a chore that oppresses you so it it doesn’t mean that you’re because clearly if you fully understood it you would do it yeah right but in but in their mind is I I understand it but I’m not doing it so I’m bad instead of I don’t fully understand it how do I find out yeah or maybe I was ignorant of the belief underneath it so I might I might believe that it’s great to be healthy but I might not be I might not be seeing the belief underneath it that the belief that I’m broken and bad you’re right or the belief that it’s hard to be healthy or the belief that um if I get healthy I’ll be unsafe like I know a lot of overweight people um who stay overweight because they got molested at some point in their life and as soon as they see through the molestation and they realize that they can be attractive and safe they start losing weight so there’s a ton of things that could be in there it’s and and and but instead we say oh we know it we’re not doing it therefore we’re bad yeah okay so how how do you know that you’re not bad so what’s interesting is like if you’ve been trying to do something let’s let’s use like the be healthy example and you’ve been thinking about being healthy and trying to be healthy for 20 years that shows me that you’re strong that shows me that you have persistence that shows me that you care about yourself that shows me that you’re not giving up it shows me some self-awareness it shows me an urge for um leaving ignorance and all those things are really good things that you would call oh that’s that’s good that’s that makes that those are the some of the components that make of what we would call a good person and so we’re not looking at any of that stuff and so every single place where you think that you’re bad I’m sure that there’s 20 or 30 pieces of evidence in that same thing just like I just said that would actually show that you’re good the other thing is that when people think I’m bad and I’m broken or something and you start digging down with them and you say okay what exactly is it that makes you bad okay well I’m I’m overweight okay well there’s a lot of overweight people are they all bad no no no they’re not all bad okay then what exactly is it that makes you bad and if you keep on doing that they can never get to An Answer there’s no answer for that there’s no Essence thing like and you know I I haven’t worked with murderers so maybe the murderer can actually say that but I would suspect even a murderer would be able to see other murders as not bad people um I mean we’ve spoken with a meal as an exact a perfect example yeah when we had that conversation with a meal his journey was to stop calling himself bad stop having that judgment because it was it was holding him in a pattern and so he was I had to be able to see through that belief system to actually get the freedom and be the kind of person that he and Society wanted him to be it’s a great example of it and for you guys who there’s a podcast on a meal that you can go listen to It’s a just he’s an amazing human if you haven’t heard it um Emile De Weaver in our catalog yeah um so that’s another way that you can see that it’s like you’re not bad and and then the other thing is if you really want to prove it to yourself for the next say three months consistently say that you’re inherently good instead of saying I’m bad or thinking to yourself you’re bad think oh I’m inherently good and see what happens because a lot of the times we are the things that we tell ourselves that we are so if you can’t tell a kid he’s naughty all the time they’re going to act naughty that’s how it works if you tell yourself you’re good all the time then there’s a good chance gonna test it don’t don’t take my word for it then all of a sudden you start acting in a way that’s good or at least seeing your actions as good because sometimes our idea of good is is just some more morality or something like that that’s not actually the feeling of goodness and so I would say test the belief see if you’re bad or if it’s just that you’ve been telling yourself you’re bad so long that you are acting like it so those will be the three things that I would suggest that people really truly think that they’re bad that they can do it and discover otherwise and so the next one you mentioned was that it’s people believe that it’s hard what do we mean by that that it’s hard to see through and find Freedom yeah I mean it generally means that like there has to be a lot of effort it’s gonna it’s gonna suck they’re gonna have to endure it you know that it’s like there’s gonna need to be a lot of trying that it can’t be simple or that they can’t enjoy the process that’s usually so people are like oh changing my limiting beliefs is hard assumes like a chore like a level of Oppression like a instead of oh I can like work for 10 minutes change eliminating belief and I immediately have some Freedom which feels better and then I can do it again this is great right or therapy is going to be really hard to go to therapy or it’s gonna be really hard to start a business and there’s some people again you can just go to the comps there are some people who really really have enjoyed starting their business so there’s a way to do it to enjoy it but the idea is it’s going to be hard and then that immediately clogs the makes it harder to see if you’re limiting beliefs yeah and then on the other side how how hard is it actually to just continue to oppress ourselves yeah totally right to endure is hard to tell yourself you have to endure stuff is hard yeah exactly yeah so so why why does that persist why does it what is the belief that something’s hard persist when in reality it’s actually harder to continue yeah one is we don’t know how to sometimes we don’t know how to do it so we we just say it’s hard because we haven’t done it before uh there’s this lattice work of ideas on giving up limiting beliefs and if we don’t know that it seems hard rather than oh here’s the path to get there and we can talk about lattice work a little later if you want and then um the other reason is because emotions hold them in place and so since people don’t know that they think oh letting go of a limiting belief is hard or letting go of a behavior is hard until they realize that it’s really about an emotion that they’re not fully feeling loving and accepting and when they do that then the behavior Can immediately change so there’s all sorts of reasons people think it’s hard but it’s just like drywall you know if I’m gonna put up drywall I’m gonna think it’s hard and if someone who’s done drywall you know for the last 10 years puts up drywall they don’t think it’s going to be hard and and so as soon if I’m if I go to the person who knows how to hang drywall and he’s like here it is it’s easy do it like this then it’s immediately going to be easier for me so like anything a lot of the hardness is about ignorance and we’ve been trying the same thing in the same way over and over and over again I’m going to be healthy by losing weight I’m going to lose weight by reducing calories 20 years later it’s hard because it’s not working but there might be 10 other ways to lose weight that we haven’t tried yeah so the the seeing seeing through a limiting belief intellectually and then not having that fully grok in our system could continues to prove that see this belief must be true because I keep falling back into it just like if you’re trying to hang drywall with like a putty like a screw that doesn’t work it’s just going to keep falling like the drywall’s hard until you figure out yeah exactly until you see what’s holding the limiting beliefs into place exactly but it’s it but it’s not hard as it turns out like you have changed you personally everybody has changed thousands of limiting beliefs in their lives and they’ve done it without even noticing it our neurology is set up not to notice all the limiting beliefs that we’ve seen through because we like to think that we have like a coherent sense of self and that coherent sense of self needs a set of beliefs that you’ve pretty much been believing for a long time so we don’t look back and go oh my gosh my beliefs have completely changed um but you’re and so let me give you some examples your belief of God between the time you were born and now has there’s been multiple versions of God in your mind most likely and and they have shifted and they’ve become less and less limiting your belief of God has become less and less limiting same with money same with um drugs same with um education same with work same with effort same with every single thing that you can think of you thought about it differently when you were eight than when you were 23 then you do now which literally means thousands your idea of Faith your idea of love your idea of sex your idea of all of them have changed so thousands of your limiting beliefs have changed without any effort at all you don’t even know who the hell did it you didn’t even notice it was done it’s super easy and and when you fully let that in then it then you can see that it’s not that hard well you’re also implying there that the progression of limiting believes is that we just tend to become more Freer from them and is to what extent is that true to like how much can you adopt a new limiting belief and then become more and more stuck in it and not not realize that we’re like wow I didn’t realize over the last 10 years my relationship with money has become even more and more fraught and limiting how’d that happen yeah I think it was I think I was projecting there you’re right absolutely I’ve definitely seen people particularly like men who haven’t been doing a lot of work um when they hit their 50s they can get become more and more constricted more and more anger more and more you know uh more and more limiting beliefs it can definitely happen that way as well um and and again they didn’t try to do it like they’re just switching one limiting belief or another without any without any effort so it’s it’s it doesn’t take a lot of effort to change your beliefs and and if you can bring Consciousness to it it gets even easier and you can make sure that they’re positive yeah yeah and I guess that’s that’s the kind of thing that can lead to the difference between becoming old and cranky and limited and living in a very small world and then the people who in their age age very gracefully and are laughing and open and laughing and still excited to learn new things yeah yeah it’s funny um I had a I had a uh my first therapist you know I said she was older and her husband her were just adorable and lovely and I loved being around them and I asked them like how did this happen because I was watching my parents do something very different and she said you know I’ve looked at all of our friends and the the people who really decided to to have a life of of self-discovery all all have become more open and more loving than the ones who who chose not to have all all gone the opposite direction that you really have to make that choice and and I I I haven’t really looked at it like completely like I would like to find some counter examples but I can’t think of any counter examples of that now that I’m in my you know 50s I I see the same thing it’s the people who’ve really spent some time on it they their world gets bigger more expansive more free more joy more laughter and the ones who haven’t they you know who chased after something else to make them happy yeah it shut down on them yeah Okay so we’ve we’ve gone through these the underlying belief that we’re bad or that it’s hard to see through beliefs are hard to change um and then there’s the third one that you mentioned that we will we feel like we’ll be unsafe if we stop believing this and if you stop being limited by by a particular belief and what do you mean by by that yeah so unsafe means that I’m going to be abandoned I’m not going to be loved something bad will happen the other foot is going to fall um anything like that anything that is like you’re you’re not going to be okay and it’s a more nervous system kind of way of looking at it but yeah that’s that’s a belief that’ll get in the way of people and I think even one of the things I’ll say about this is that there’s actually a marker when you start doing some of the deeper self-discovery work there’s these moments that you have that are like oh gosh I’m not going to be able to relate to anybody anymore or oh my gosh like I’m gonna lose some friends or oh my gosh like am I going to be able to operate in society or oh my gosh like will I be able to keep my job and I used to those used to scare me now they excite me anytime I have that thought now I’m like oh cool I’m on the precipice of a very cool change and um that fear is kind of like a road sign of that um so it’s it’s it’s awesome but for many people it until it’s seen through it becomes a reason to stop looking through the limiting beliefs yeah what’s an example of how how did that shift occur for you moving from moving from that ah into oh I’m on the press it looks like my entire life is about to fall apart right now great that clearly doesn’t mean that it’s gonna be worse objectively in the future than now that’s crazy oh my goodness I yeah it’s just it just happened so many times there’s just so many times that that happened that and I’m not speaking about um like oh my gosh like my business is about to be destroyed though now that I think about it the the times that I have thought that that haven’t led to like huge growth too um but I am speaking particularly to that belief system of of like oh I’m not going to be able to relate to people anymore that that happened so many times and then at the end of it I was so much happier and so much more at peace that I realized that this is a good sign to it I can say that the times that I’ve been not scared from my physical life but scared for business or scared for marriage also you know um I’m just checking to see yeah they I can’t find one at this moment that hasn’t led to some sort of personal breakthrough or some sort of deeper way of looking at the world and our deeper understanding that allowed me to live the life that I wanted to live with more ease so yeah even that apparently yeah yeah so what makes us what makes us adopt these beliefs that will that will be unsafe yeah well I’m getting punished as a kid being unloved or abandoned as a kid you know you learned that if and the other thing is there’s this kind of there’s this weird like human brain logic thing that happens which is bad stuff occurs like pain occurs things you know you know people hurt you sometimes you know bad things happen economies collapse things that you don’t have any control over and and and so there’s these kind of this weird learned like oh I was happy and then this bad thing happened so I can’t be happy because then the next puts next foot is going to always fall I can’t trust that it’ll be good because the nature of things that are good and smooth and peaceful is that they do not last forever um the only way they last forever is of an internal mindset but the actuality of the Earth around us is that it is in constant flux and in that constant flux bad things happen what we call bad things happen and so we learn the lesson that they’re always going to happen we never like nobody has ever well some people have but very rarely do you ever hear somebody go oh things are horrible right now so something good must happen right now and it always happens that way like there’s always something good that happens after the bad and but we never think that way we because our brains are neurology neurologically set up to look for cause and effect to avoid negative effect and so that’s also part of the reason that we we think that we’re going to be unsafe yeah um it’s like oh it’s only only uphill from here yeah the weird thing is I don’t know exactly right it’s very rare rare for someone to think that and what’s interesting is that neurologically speaking it’s like and they did this study in war that and it’s a true in climate change it’s like when somebody is experienced Devastation very close to them that didn’t affect them like a bomb going off in the apartment next door or their City getting um ruined by a big flood that they are less likely to believe it will affect them in the future huh which is amazing to me yeah um because they they’re like oh well I survived it so I’ll probably survive the next one which is interesting or some people think um some people think that what’s happening is like a cognitive what’s the word for a cognitive I can’t remember the word but um it basically they have to believe it can’t happen to them or they would have to leave the situation and since they stay they have to believe that it’s not so it could be like a self-selecting bias but it is a phenomenon study yeah that’s interesting I could see on one hand there’s like a confirmation bias um and I’m speaking like Yeah from from being a base jumper and having a lot of people die around me there’s like oh well if I’m still alive then that must mean I’m one of the people that does things in a way that has me still alive so I’m safe right right uh and then they’re yeah another one could just be the pain of this danger is like increasing and I need to dissociate from it more and more so that I can continue to feel safe and I can imagine both of those happening at the same time can lead to this this phenomenon yeah yeah but in general what we do is we go oh I’m not safe and then our nervous system is on alert all the time looking for the next thing that’s going to happen which makes seeing their limiting beliefs very challenging yeah yeah okay so let’s say we have everything going on around us the universe is stochastic and how do we prove that we are safe what is how do you how do you prove the other side of this belief yeah you’re You’re Not Safe you’re right you’re not safe this one’s a tricky one because you’re you’re definitely you’re gonna die right like we’re all gonna die and so ultimately in that way there is no safety the only safety that you can have the only security you can have is um is the security of of knowing yourself it’s the only security you can have in this life and I remember I picked up this I was like 20 years old I was in Santa Cruz I think I was probably like smoking pot and hiking and playing music or something and there’s this guy hitchhiking and he was a short skinny man in robes and but he wasn’t he was just in robes he wasn’t a monk or anything so I picked him up hitchhiking and I was like for some reason I asked him what do you think the biggest problem in America is he goes ow everyone’s insecure everyone feels insecure I think was his exact word and and I remember thinking do you mean like are they like not confident and secure or are they insecure like um like they don’t feel safe insecure and so I asked him he says the same thing there’s no difference between those two in his world and so it always like struck me that that feeling of safety and you could see he clearly felt very safe and very secure it’s a very internal thing so um so I would say but on a practical level we feel a lot more insecure unsafe than we actually are so oh I’m going to start a company that’s unsafe but a ton of uh entrepreneurs have done it successfully and be have become far far more secure so look wherever you think you’re insecure you can probably find somebody or unsafe you can probably find somebody who’s done it and has been successful in it um as far as being abandoned everybody can find a community you can be a sociopathy wants to kill people and find a community of other sociopaths who want to kill people like in Isis the other thing is you can look and you can say hey I’ve you’ve thrived like look at your life up until now you probably for most people listening you know have had you know your career has gone in a not maybe not the traditionary that you wanted but it’s gone up and to the right that you um that you you know have fed yourself the whole time that you have had friends the whole time so you’ve been waiting for this impending doom that hasn’t occurred um and so those are there’s all pieces of evidence in that and what our brain likes to do is just like the I’m bad it likes to look for yeah but this one thing went wrong instead of looking at all the things that went right so that’s another but but inherently we’re not safe I guess like what if it seems like that trend has been in the opposite direction let’s say for somebody who had had it made and then the pandemic hit and then they socially distanced for a long time and now they’re really really socially anxious and their job fell apart because their industry fell apart and they’re yeah you know they they don’t feel like they have a sense of community they don’t feel and they could look for evidence to the opposite somewhere but it feels like the trend for them has just moved in a further from that and how how for those people would they looking for somebody out there who’s successful might just make them feel more comparison more bad yeah so so what you’re describing probably is someone who’s you know depressed or suffers from a lot of anxiety and so is it the fact that they’re not safe or is it the fact that they think they’re not safe or are they is it the fact that they’re bad or the fact that they think they’re bad that is causing that reality to unfold now obviously that’s not true for everybody um but what’s the more useful thought what’s the thought that’s less limiting is it that I’m safe or is it that I am against it’s not about Truth Or Not truth either it’s about creating spaciousness and so is their thought I’m not safe and I’m bad is that helping them get out of that situation is it creating constriction in their system is it useful or is uh seen through that thought in whatever way that they have to or can and there are and so the other thing is you can move to the comparables which is there’s been plenty of people who have been in that situation job hasn’t gone away Community has gone away wife kids have gone away went to jail whatever who have created like a meal Weaver a great life for themselves and have contributed to society and have love in their life so how did that happen if they’re inherently unsafe or they’re inherently bad so there’s always a way to look at it but again it’s not about that’s that is exactly where the Trap happens is like no but it’s this is a correct thought and and correct doesn’t matter what matters is does it create constriction or not constriction in your system yeah great great call out yeah so ultimately ultimately it’s it’s seeing that we are still here despite everything we believe about ourselves and have believed about how we might not make it here we are and yes like the ultimately the evidence of the fact that we are presently here and thinking these thoughts and doing this exploration and listening to this podcast is evidence yeah and it’s just useful and it’s less constrictive so what what else makes it that breaking limiting belief seems to be seems to be hard yeah and we mentioned the lattice work piece and I would want to go into that for a second which is yeah so you have one belief you can see through it but the behavior doesn’t change but there could be like a lattice work of belief systems that are holding that in place that behavior in place so for instance let’s say something happens in your life uh that your company is going to do cutbacks probably something a lot of people are feeling right now and and then the first thought that you find is a living believer is like what’s happening is wrong okay that’s that I feel the constriction that’s the linear belief you work on it then you might find out like I don’t like what is hap I don’t like What’s Happening Here might be another belief that is part of the limiting belief lattice work and then then you might find out change is hard oh this is going to be changing change is hard and then maybe change is unsafe you might be another belief system and then it’ll be I’ll be punished because every time change happened in your house you got hit right or your mom or dad yelled or everybody was anxious oh my God we’re going to the airport oh every time the airport trip everyone’s freaking the hell out or did you get the thing where’s the passport I don’t like change right and then you so then it’s like oh it isn’t safe then I’ll be punished so then you’ll notice that the belief system is when change is happening I’ll be punished and then maybe the belief is in there that I’m bad and so there’s like there’s lattice work of beliefs that can happen and so we work on one nothing’s changed okay instead of like actually looking at the whole lattice work of beliefs that can be seen through yeah and that can sort of explain I think some of the emotional undertone of if you’re looking at the surface level belief of like I’m losing my job and this is bad this is wrong yeah then the actual emotional component of that might be all the way down at the bottom of that structure of I am bad yes or I’ll never be able to find another job or I was just faking it through this one anyway now I’m screwed right you know right yeah yeah yeah and and it could be maybe multiple ones like the at some point you’re like it you know there might be anger there yeah in one of the belief systems and fear in another belief system so yeah and that’s where the emotional components becomes a really important thing I like to really understand the emotions that hold these things in place yeah so so then what do we do when we when we see that so I mean the slattus work looks like it’s a fractal that can just it’s a vast fractal that can go on forever yes and all of it might just land in the same place of I am unlovable I’ll be alone I’m gonna die yes it could all go back to the fact that you exist in the first place so there’s some you that needs to be protected or or I’m bad or I’m unsafe there are some core ones um but each time you feel constriction There’s an opportunity for more freedom in a belief system and the first thing is just trust the awareness and we’ll go into like how to unhinge the emotional part of it and maybe we’ll have one on like ways to flush it that’s a little bit more intricate than the last limited beliefs episode but um but really to trust your awareness to just know that if you can see it clearly you can feel it clearly you can create the spaciousness that the rest can take care of itself indeed like to some degree um putting a whole bunch of effort to change it after you see it is telling yourself that you don’t see it right like if I get two plus two is four I don’t tell myself I gotta remember two plus two is four I like I I like I I will be how do I make sure that I know that two plus two equals four from this point on you know like that you don’t do that because you got it you don’t need to do that so if you are asking yourself oh what do I have to do just you know to unstick aluminum believe it means that you haven’t seen through it all the way and so trusting the awareness is an incredibly important thing and then um and then we’ll do some tools that really help with the emotional stuff and then you know inquiry as we talked about before in the last podcast is really really good is to anything that creates that spaciousness inquiry is part of it but anything that creates spaciousness from between you and the thought or that or spaciousness within you and when you’re thinking about beliefs in that pattern like how do you create spaciousness yeah yeah and in that piece of creating spaciousness while going through this process I I can just imagine a common sort of self-help trap of oh like these things in my life are happening and I don’t want to be happening I’m feeling constricted around it and I’ve got to find the limiting beliefs and I think I see them but I don’t see through them because I don’t believe it and my body’s still constricted so now I’ve got to dig harder and then that becomes another constriction how do we another limiting belief how do we stay out of that yeah so order of operations yeah like everything that you just described you your voice even constricted describing it so those are all again limiting beliefs and so I mean I so the the cute answer is and I think the way I answered this the end of the last podcast actually was um was you know you work on that limiting belief the other answer I could have is like be gentle like this is like you do this naturally a thousand times you’ve done it in your life like be gentle within the process and allow yourself to unfold it it you have to it it requires a lot of effort not to evolve not to shift not to um mature it requires a lot of effort to do that so let go the effort allow for gentleness to do its work yeah beautiful clear pleasure yeah thank you Joe thanks Brett thank you thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate us on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com