Episode 37: How to Believe New Things

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to Episode 37 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I’m April Price and I'm so happy to be here and so grateful that you are out there listening. Every day I talk to people who tell me they're listening to the podcast or that they told like all their loved ones about the podcast. And seriously it's so dang awesome!

[00:58]
Did you sign up for coaching this week? Some of you did and I hope that it made a difference in your life. Whatever you're suffering with or struggling with or trying to accomplish, coaching can show you some answers and solutions that are already available to you in your own mind. So, sign up for a free session at my website, aprilpricecoaching.com and I will show you exactly what I mean

Okay, today on the podcast I want to talk to you about believing new things. So, I've had several clients over the last couple of weeks tell me, "Yeah like April. I know my current belief isn't serving me. I know it's not giving me what I want, but I don't know how to change it. How do you believe new things.?" Right? Like when the old belief looks so much like the truth, like reality, how do we suspend reality and believe something else?

And right now, I know that many of you may be trying to believe new things about yourself. Some of you, because it's the new year, have set new goals and you want to become a person who manages their money or who exercises or has healthy daily habits. Some of you want to stretch yourselves and your careers and in your earning potential; you want to put your art or your writing or your work out there into the world. And in order to accomplish any goals any of those things and really be able to stick with them, we have to be able to believe new things about ourselves first.

So, I was recently reading Bev Aron's new book. She is like such a coaching ninja. Gosh, I love her. Anyway, in her book she wrote, "If you don't feel good when you think about your goal, you're unlikely to achieve it. Even if you do, you won't sustain the results long term. This is because if you feel pessimistic about your goals, it means you don't believe you can do it. And our brain always sets out to seek or create evidence for what we believe."

[03:09]
Okay, so just want to underline that last line again, right? Did you hear it? She said our brain is always seeking or creating evidence for what we believe in. I would even take this a step further and say, not only is the brain always seeking or creating evidence for what we believe, but the brain is only seeking and creating evidence for what we believe. So, if you want a differing result you have to think something different. You have to believe something different in order for your brain to find different evidence. Without a different belief, you can never see or create evidence of what you want in your life. So, whether it's a goal, or a relationship, or more confidence in yourself, you're never going to see and create something that you don't believe.

So why is this? I was listening to a podcast last fall and the interviewer was interviewing a man named Erik Vance, who is a science writer and reporter. And so like, over the years as a science reporter, he's been exposed to all of these different kinds of scientific research and studies on the brain. And he's kind of like compiled a distillation of all these things that he's seen and heard, and he wrote about it in a book called Suggestible You. And I really like the way he explained why the brain only creates what it already believes.

And this is what he said. He said the brain is a prediction machine. He said it's like if you boil everything down to a single idea, all the things the brain does, it's a prediction machine. Everything it does; it takes the past it applies it to the present to predict the future. And it does this like in little ways and in big ways. And it's basically creating a map of how the world works based on the experiences it has.

So like when you're a baby and you experience gravity, your brain is like assimilating that experience to tell you about your present and to create your future, that you know like, "Oh if I step off this step, I'm going to fall," right? And everywhere along the line, your brain is taking observations and turning them into predictions that it uses to map the world.

[05:25]
So, in his work he uses the example of placebo drugs. And he says that drug manufacturers have a really, really hard time creating new drugs because in order for new drugs to enter the market they have to go through drug trials. And one of the reasons of this of course is so that they can find out if there are any side effects to the drug. But the biggest reason that they go through trials is to see if the drug is more effective than the placebo—to see, in fact, if the drug is more effective than the prediction machine of our own brains. So, let me see if I can explain this.

When they started having evidence-based standards for drugs, a drug had to be able to prove that it was more effective than not taking the drug. So, they would run these studies. They would give a sample of the drug to half of the people in the drug study and the other half of the people got a sugar pill, or a placebo, so that they could prove that the drug performed better at eliminating symptoms than the sugar pill.

Okay, so when they first started this in 1962 and they did these studies, they had to throw out over a thousand drugs because they were not performing better than the placebo. They were not performing better than the brain who just thought it got the drug. And so, a thousand drugs were not better than just thinking you had the drug. It's amazing, right? And so, what Eric says is that it's really hard for pharmaceutical companies to find drugs that can beat what happens in your brain when you believe you've had the drug.

He says the brain just doesn't like to deviate from what it believes. And so, it actually creates the effect of what it believes inside the body. In other words, when you think the pill will work, even if it's sugar, the brain doesn't like to deviate from its prediction that medicine makes you better. And so, it creates the effect in your body! Like when you really think about that, it's a serious prediction machine, right? That is amazing!

[07:37]
So, he even tells this story about this guy named Mike Politich. And Mike had Parkinson's disease and they were doing a trial for this drug called, I think it is called Neurontin, and it was actually the second trial. The first trial had failed. They were doing a second one and for this drug they actually had to perform a surgery. And they would have to drill two holes in the skull and put the drug in. And so, for the half that didn't get the drug they didn't drill all the way through the skull. They just put these divots in the skull, so it felt like they had had surgery, but they did not know whether or not they had received the drug. Both groups felt like they had surgery but neither one of them knew which had gotten actual drug.

So, when Mike Politich comes in, his Parkinson's has progressed so much that he has trouble walking and talking. And this drug changed his life. Afterwards, he's like heli-skiing. He ran half marathons. He climbed Half Dome! And his doctor is like, "Oh my gosh, we've cured Parkinson's," right? Like this drug is amazing.

And so, two years later they unblind the trial and they find out that Mike never got the drug—that his surgery was the one where it was just the divots. He never got the drug, but his brain had predicted: "That medicine will help me. This medicine is going to work." And it created that result. It created the predicted result in his body even though he didn't get the medicine. Like think about that, right?

That's how powerful belief is! That is how powerful it is to have a prediction machine in your brain! So now I don't want you to get lost here, right. This podcast is not about how to heal yourself with your mind. And I'm not telling you that you don't need drugs or that you should not seek medical help, right. This is not about that.

[09:26]
What I'm simply pointing out is that the brain always and only seeks and creates evidence for what it believes. It compiles thoughts from past experiences to describe your present and then predict your future. Whatever you believe, it defines your present and it is creating and predicting your future. And this is why it's so critical that we examine what we believe about ourselves that we look at what we believe about our ability to reach our goals and accomplish what we want in the world.

So, I talked to a couple of clients this week who are working on their money beliefs, right? And they told me like, "I've always just been an under- earner." Their brains have assimilated their past and decided that this thought "I've always been an under-earner" is true—is reality. And then they use this thought they're under-earners to define their present and predict their future. When they believe that they've always been under-earners. They have no hope that they can be anything else because their brains are amazing prediction machines.

Now having a prediction machine in your brain would be awesome if it looked for positive things. But the thing is, our brains never see the positive. Our brains are programmed to see the negative. Because it turns out that it's more useful to notice the negative if you're trying to stay alive. If you're trying to keep somebody alive you want to notice all the dangerous things and that's why our brain does that.

So instead of thinking there's something wrong with you that you only believe terrible things about yourself, just know that this is because it's your natural default programming. And if you continue to believe that natural default programming in your brain you will define your present with that lens and then you'll predict your future with those same unhelpful thoughts.

[11:22]
So, it's just so good to know that this is what's happening. The crummy thoughts we have about ourselves aren't because they're actually true, right? right? Not because you're actually an under-earner. The crummy thoughts are just observations of the brain, the way it has simulated the information. And you can choose to believe them and seek to create more evidence that you are an under-earner now and you will be in the future, or you can choose to stop thinking the crappy thoughts and choose your thoughts, not on default, but on purpose, and put your brain to work predicting your life from those purposeful positive thoughts.

Okay, so I can hear you like, "Yeah, April, I get it," right? like, "Yeah, April, I get it," right? "How do I believe something else? I have no evidence to the contrary. How do I just believe something? How do I believe something new? So today I want to give you three ideas to help you as you go to believe new things about yourself.

The first one is that you need to give yourself permission to believe something else, to believe something new. So, so many times, I see this with my clients, and I see it in my own life, we think we can't believe things that we don't have evidence for. We think that if you believe something that you don't have evidence for that maybe it's foolish or dumb or delusional. We're just going to end up disappointed.

But I want you to know that you can give yourself permission because you can remember, "Oh brains only notice the negative." We think we're just telling ourselves what it is—that we're seeing evidence—but don't forget that evidence is skewed. That evidence isn't even real. It's just our brains interpretation of the past and it's always going to interpret it negatively.

[13:14]
So, let me give you a little example of this. I was recently working with my coach on my goals for this year and one of my goals is to write a book. And we were looking like honestly at my thoughts about my ability to do this and she was asking me like, "What do you really believe??"And I said, "I'm not a real writer." And she said like what's preventing you from believing you're a real writer. And I said, "Well, look. I don't have any evidence," right? "I've never done it before." That is how my brain has interpreted my life: "I've never done it. I've never been a writer. I'm not a real writer." But the truth is, what she pointed out me, is that I have done a lot of writing. I write a lot. Last year in fact I earned $30,000 writing for other people.

Right? So, I don't point that out to you so that you can say, "Well, okay, now you have evidence so you can believe you're a writer." I say it to show you that my brain sought and created evidence for the belief that "I wasn't a real writer." So, it just ignored everything else, right? The belief was "I'm not a real writer" so the brain ignored all the other evidence on the table and from this place of "Well there's no evidence that I'm a writer," I was telling the story of who I am today and I was predicting my future. And none of it was true!

So, do you see? see? Your brain is creating and sorting and finding evidence from your past, only according to your beliefs. Not actually real facts. So, in order to believe "I'm a writer," I need to stop looking for evidence to back up my belief and just decide to believe it. To remember, I get to believe whatever I want, regardless of the evidence. Your brain can't find evidence of what you want to believe because it is trying to prove what you do believe! And it doesn't gather contrary evidence. Its job is to prove what you believe correct. And so, it just can't generate evidence for the other thought.

So, you have to give yourself permission to believe whatever you want, especially without evidence. Stop waiting for the evidence. You need to believe and then the evidence will reveal itself. Then your brain will find it. Then your brain will let it show up in your life.

[15:33]
There are no thought police. Right? But you're acting like there are actually are and like you're the chief of the thought police. You're like, "Okay, there's gonna be no unsubstantiated thoughts on my watch. I have to have evidence for all the thoughts I'm going to believe." Here's what you need to know: your brain isn't going to substantiate anything you don't believe first.

Like it's crazy, right? You're like, "Wait a minute. I need evidence to believe it, but my brain won't produce evidence until I believe it." Like this is a problem without an answer. We just go round and round and round.

So that's why the first thing I want you to know is that you can believe something—you can give yourself permission to believe something—that you have no evidence for. And this really and truly is how I began believing everything I believe in my life right now. I just gave myself permission to believe without evidence. And guess what? Like nothing bad could happen from believing it.

So many of my clients are resistant to this and even now I find myself resistant to it. And so here is a little tool that can help. Sometimes when I can't seem to give myself permission to believe something new, I set up a "thought fast." Right? Now fasting (and like you all know what fasting is, right?) is when fast." Right? Now fasting (and like you all know what fasting is, right?) is when we go without eating or drinking for like a certain period of time. And so sometimes when we have a thought like "I'm not a real writer" or "I can't lose weight" or "I'm bad with money" or "I can't make relationships work," we can go on a thought fast.

[17:08]
It's just like just an experiment, right? Like you can tell yourself like, "We're not going to give up this old belief forever, if you don't want to. We could just go on and thought fast." Could you not think the old thought and give yourself permission to think a new one for like 30 days? And when the old thought comes up you remind yourself, “Oh yeah. I'm not thinking that. I'm fasting for 30 days. I'm giving myself permission to think something else."

So, for example, lately I've noticed how much I've been thinking some version of "I can't" in my business: "I can't get it all done. I can't keep commitments like I need to. I can't do a webinar. I can't build my business and write my book." There's like all these "can'ts," right? Like lots of book." There's like all these "can'ts," right? Like lots of "can'ts coming up all the time. And I know these thoughts are not serving me, right? When I think "I can't," it's going to define my present and predict my future. So, I need to think "I can" even without evidence.

So yesterday I was just so sick of hearing myself say "I can't," I decided, okay, like I'm going on thought fast and for 30 days, right? right? Until Valentine's Day I am just going to think "I can," even without evidence. I'm just going to redirect my brain every time I says, "I can't," I'm just going to stop and remember I'm fasting from that thought. "I can figure this out. I can figure this out." I'm giving myself permission to believe I can figure this out.

So, what do you need to give yourself permission to believe? believe? What do you want to believe about yourself? Even if your brain can find no evidence for it at all? Do you want to believe you can earn as much as you want? Do you want to believe you're a writer or a painter or a person who sticks to their eating protocol? Do you want to believe you can change your habits? Do you want to believe that you can have great relationships? Do you want to believe that you're worthy or lovable or that God is mindful of you? Every time your brain returns to the old belief, remind it, "No, I'm fasting." Give yourself permission to believe something new about yourself and your life.

[19:23]
Okay, number two. (And like, as I'm thinking about this, this might seem kind of obvious right?) But once you've given yourself permission to suspend your disbelief and try thinking something new, you actually have to think something new in place of it. Right?

(I know it's like rocket science, right? To think something new you have to think something new! Brilliant! And if you sign up for coaching you can expect lots of incredible insights just like that!)

Okay, what I really mean by this is that you have to actually do it, right? You can't just wait for the new belief to feel good and just sort of like descend upon you like, "Now I believe I'm this," right? You actually have to practice new thoughts. When you first start practicing, it's not going to feel really natural and it's not to feel really super comfortable. You have to practice thoughts just like you practice anything else in your life— like the piano or Italian or pull ups or driving a car tying shoes or making pie, right? right? Like whatever skill you want, you've got to practice it.

And like the first time you do the skill, right, it's rough. Like it takes all your brainpower. It takes all of your concentration, and you do it really badly. Thinking new thoughts is no different. The first time you do it, it's gonna take all your brainpower. It's going to take all your concentration. You're going to have to work at it. And you might even do it kind of badly.

[20:55]
And when that happens to us, like when we try new thought and it's like hard to think it and it takes a lot of concentration and effort, we think, "Well this thought just isn't true. Forget that. I just can't believe what's not true." It's only not true because you don't believe it yet, and you just have to practice over and over and over again. Like anything else you want to learn. You want to learn a new way to think about your life? You got to practice. You want to think a new way about your earning potential or your relationships your abilities your body? You're gonna have to practice. You are learning a new way to think about yourself and it's going to take practice.

Okay, so what does this look like? like? When we think in new thought, we are actually creating a new circuit in our brain. And our brain is very good at thinking the old circuit, thinking the old thought. It's had lots of practice. Years of practice sometimes. It has the thought that it's thought a lot. And it's really good at it. Like watch how fast it can think that old thought! It can think it sometimes, I think, without me thinking about it.

So, but the new thought the circuit for the new thought is slow. You have to be deliberate and you have to concentrate on it and think about it. New thoughts take work. So, I want you to kind of imagine what this looks like right? Imagine in one hand you have the old thought and in the other hand you have the new thought.

Now the old thought is like "the easy button." You're holding the easy button in your hand, right? It's easy to push. There's no resistance. You just push your fingers together and snap! The easy button goes off! Just tap it and it goes.

[22:36]
In the other hand, the new thought is like one of those hand grip exercisers, right, that you see in physical therapy. We have to push the ends together and really squeeze the handles together. And it's really, really hard, right? There's so much resistance there and you have to build up your muscles to be able to squeeze it faster or hold it longer. The old thought is just bam! It's just the easy button. The new thought is like the hand grip exerciser.

So, imagine these two thoughts in your hands. It's so easy to think the old thought. The new thought requires effort and choice and deliberateness. You have to make yourself push those little handles together. And it wears us out. It feels harder because at the beginning, it actually is harder, right? It takes a lot of effort; it wears us out.

I remember when my son went on his mission to Italy and we'd get these letters from him when he first got out there. He was just learning Italian. He would write these letters just like, "I am so tired." He was just exhausted. And it's because he's like out there like learning a new language and his brain has to think deliberately about every single word out of his mouth. It just takes so much work and takes so much effort.

So, I just want you to know that it's harder to think that thought and it requires more effort not because it isn't true, but just because we're not practiced at it. Like the circuitry isn't fast, and we just haven't practiced it very much. Thinking a thought a lot makes it feel easier. And so it sort of feels truer. New thoughts feel harder and so we think like, "Well this just is not true. We're just making it up and we're arguing with reality." And it just feels like so much resistance. But it's just the practice that creates ease in the neural connections. It's just like repetitiveness that creates ease and neural connections. Not actually truth.

[24:32]
For a while when you're choosing to think a new thought, you're going to hold both thoughts in your hand, right? You have the practiced one and you have the new one. And for a while, you're just going to hit the easy button almost automatically. Right? Like sometimes you're going to push it without even really thinking about it. But the more you can notice, "Oh I'm just pushing it. That was easy," and then like pause for a minute and instead pull a hand grip exerciser instead, the stronger that new thought is going to get.

So, I really like to watch my brain as it does this. Right? And you can watch your brain think those thoughts. Don't get upset when it thinks old thoughts. Right? It's like so good at that. It's like an expert at that thought. That's why I like to just gently notice it, "Look at my brain thinking that old thought. That was easy! But now we're thinking this new thought." And then go ahead and deliberately think the new one. Squeeze the grip strengthener, right? Think the thought. Like you don't have to push the old thought away or add resistance to it or get really upset that you're still thinking that. Just notice: "That was easy. I'm so good at that thought. But now I'm thinking this." And then think the new thought.

I'll admit sometimes you won't even want to think the new thought. It's going to feel really hard. It's going to feel like a lot of work. But the more you think it and the more you use the new thought instead, the faster and stronger and more automatic that thought is going to become. It's going to take a while. That's okay. Every time you notice you're thinking the practiced easy thought redirect it and think the other thought instead.

It's going to feel a little uncomfortable. It's going to feel a little unnatural, but that's just because you have had practice thinking it. Take as many opportunities as you can to think that new thought. Like in the shower, in your prayers, in the car, put it on your phone, put it on your mirror. You could write it down every morning. Like the more you can think the thought, the stronger the thought will become.

[26:29]
Like just to go back to the example of my son, like when missionaries go out, like they have to work so hard. Every word that's coming out of their mouth they have to think about. Every verb and how to conjugate it. They have to think about like, "Okay, this is the verb, This is who I'm talking to. Okay, that means I put this ending on it." Like it's all so deliberate. Right? And it takes so much work. But the more they do that the more often they push that hand grip strengthener, the faster that connection becomes. And then pretty soon, like they get off their missions, and they're standing in the pulpit and they're like, "How do I saw that in English?" Their brain is just like automatically thinking in different language and they can't even remember the old thought—they can't even remember the old the way they used to say it.

And sometimes, honestly, like I feel that way about my old thoughts. Like so sometimes I can't even remember how to think of myself as "bad with money." Like when I talk to my clients and I'm talking to them about their money thoughts, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I thought things could never change. And like, I thought I had made a mess of everything Heavenly Father had ever given me. Like that is so weird! Like I never think that anymore." But there was a time when I couldn't think anything else. There was a time when my brain couldn't come to any other conclusion and I just practiced a different thought.

Okay, so the last tool I want to give you to help you believe new things is to experience the results of your belief ahead of time. So, one of the most amazing things about the brain is that it cannot tell the difference between real and imagined experiences. When we have a thought it always produces a feeling. So, if we're having a thought about a real experience, we're going to have a feeling. If we have a thought about an imaginary experience, we're gonna have a feeling. The brain doesn't differentiate between those two experiences. It creates the feelings no matter what—regardless if it's real or imagined.

So, you can even like experiment with this if you don't believe me, right? Like, so imagine for a minute, reaching your goal. In that moment, if you like imagine that moment where you've reached the goal, your brain creates the feeling that you would feel, even though nothing has actually happened. Right?

[28:47]
So, like our brain can create feelings just from thoughts. Like I've told you the story about my daughter who was just like thinking about having a root canal and she's like bawling her eyes out. She was not having the root canal in the moment. She was just thinking about it and her brain could produce all the emotions that she would be having in that moment. Like our brains are amazing!

So, one of the things that could help us believe new thoughts is to tap into those feelings that we're going to have when we get the results we want and experience those feelings of those results. The more we feel those feelings, the more reinforce our belief. Like if I imagine what it will be like to open the box holding my first published book, the joy and the pride and the sheer excitement that I will feel, if I just keep visiting that place again and again in my mind, the more real the belief of the possibility that I can actually do this will become.

So, I wanted to give you one other example of this about how our brain can create what we think about and why it can be so powerful to just imagine the result we want in order to start to create the belief.

So, there's this guy in the fitness industry named Bret Contreras and he's really famous for teaching people how to build their glutes. And he has this whole huge following on Instagram. He's written books, he publishes papers in scientific journals all the time. Anyway, like a while back, it's been a while now, he actually tore his gluteus maximus. He tore the muscle in his butt, and he couldn't lift anymore. He had to rest his muscle for like so many weeks, until the tear could repair. And so, he started doing what he called "mental imagery training" while he was injured.

[30:32]
And so, he would work it. He tore the right gluteus maximus, so he would work the left glute in all the normal ways that he usually did. And then he would do the same work on his right side, but only in his mind, right? And I just want to read you what he says. He said, "With the mental workouts, I closed my eyes and I go through an actual workout, going into as much detail as possible and performing the exercises from supine/standing positions to make them more realistic. I go through as much range of motion as permitted and I breathe just as I do during my normal lifting." He says, "I'm amazed at how intense my concentration can be. At the end of 10 minutes, I'm sweating, I'm tired, my heart rate is up.”

(This is so amazing! I just can't even get over it.) “My last ‘workout,’” (he puts that in quotes) involved him thrusting for 495 lbs. for ten reps, 585 lbs. for six reps, and then he goes on and he lists how many pounds he was repping. But here's the thing. He's just repping them in his mind. Like he's adding 495 lbs. in his mind, and then doing the reps, and then he adds some more weight in his mind and he does the reps. And it’s all just like in his brain, and he’s listed out the reps you should do. But it's all mental, right?

He said, “You can pack in a lot of volume in a short time because you don't have to recover metabolically and the nervous system treats it as a legit workout.” Like, seriously. This is amazing, right! And so, he goes on, and he like actually published a paper about it because it ended up when he finally healed, that that muscle was just as strong as the muscle on the left side that had actually done the lifts. Like his brain had imagined exactly what he wanted to create. And it created it for him! And he even had a video of it on Instagram where he's like standing there and he's breathing and he's got his eyes closed and he's doing the exercise, like breathing so hard. It's happening in his head! Like, oh my gosh you guys, there is just so much power in our thoughts that we just haven't even tapped into.

[33:00]
So, I want you to imagine yourself in that new place in that future, in a new story. Can you imagine a new reality? Right? This is how we build the belief. We see ourselves again and again in that new place where we want to be—how you see yourself—right now.

The truth that you think you're telling about your life is just a story. It's all made up. You kind of think that you're under some obligation to believe the story that you've always told, like you're going to be a fraud or a liar or something if you tell a different story. There is no lie here. There's just like one way of seeing your life through a negative lens that your brain has offered you or there's another one that you get to choose and write for yourself. So, what if instead of being obligated to keep living the same story you just got to write whatever you wanted?

So, here are a couple of questions that I want you to ask yourself:

What are you missing out on because you think you can't do it?
What are you missing out on because you're believing a story about yourself that your brain has like provided evidence for?

The truth is if we don't tell a different story, if we don't believe a different story, then we're just going to keep living and telling the same one we've always told. We're just carrying out the observations of the past into our present and predicting them into our future.

[34:26]
We've got to interrupt that story that our brain has offered us and thinks something else deliberately, on purpose, to create a new future to create a new present and to even create a new past, the way we see our past.

Okay, so that is what I have for you today. In order to get anything different in your life, you have to believe something different. You have to decide and choose to believe something new. So, give yourself permission. Choose a new thought over and over again, even if you're still holding on to the old one. Just practice that new thought. And then experience the result of your beliefs ahead of time. Imagine a new story ahead of time and then use your mind to tell and retell that new story over and over again.

The truth is you get to believe whatever you want about yourself, your abilities, and your life. And when you do, your brain—the amazing prediction machine inside your own head—will see and create evidence for those new beliefs until you can't see your life any other way…and that, my friends, is 100% awesome! I love you for listening! And I'll see you next week!