Your Beliefs Won’t Change Until Your Purpose Gets Big Enough

You will change your beliefs only when you have a big enough

purpose Well, hey there, my friend.

Jonathan Doyle with you.

Welcome to the Daily Podcast.

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We're gonna talk about something that I passionately believe in.

I've seen this happen.

I've observed this so many times in coaching people and speaking.

Changing beliefs is just about one of the hardest things

that people think you can do.

I want you to think about maybe sometime in your life you've had

a belief about yourself, about the world, that has proved intractable.

That's such a great word, meaning that it's so hard to change.

And the more that I coach people, the more that I work in this space and read

and think, it is just fascinating to observe how beliefs become so powerful

in our lives for good or for ill.

You can observe some people have beliefs about themselves.

"I can do anything.

I'm a good person.

I can make things different.

I'm here to change the world." And you can have so many people with

beliefs that they are worthless, they are ugly, that they're stupid.

Now, we could do a whole series of podcasts about where these come from.

We are subtle creatures.

We have difficult experiences li- in life.

You look at the psychology, psychological movement of the 19th and tw- early 20th

century, you see this first exploration of childhood psychology and what

happens to us, and the purpose of this episode is not to explore that deeply.

Uh, suffice to say that we've all been through difficult things.

Even with the most perfect parents and the most wonderful environment,

all of us are gonna have some wounds, some better, some worse.

Some of us have lived through terrible things.

But these beliefs come to us from complex experiences.

But what I'm interested in today is not so much delineating where they come

from, but how powerful they can be, and is there any way that they can shift?

So I wanna give you a very simple idea.

What I am trying to deeply inculcate, deeply groove into my own life and into

the people that I get to serve, is the belief that you only want beliefs that

will serve you, that will move you forward to a place that you would like to get to.

Sounds very simple, doesn't it?

Sounds very commonsensical.

But can you observe with me that the vast majority of people do not do that?

It seems more common that our negative beliefs about ourselves can write

the script of our lives, because people don't know how to ask that

question, "Is this belief serving me?

Is it moving me towards where I want to go?" Now, I really wanna draw your

attention to something super important.

People believe that this thing has to be incredibly complex, that it needs to take

years and years of therapy or reading or journaling or self-exploration, and

my increasing belief, I'm using that word so often, belief is that these

things can change much, much faster.

And the way that I've observed them change is when people deeply encounter

the relationship between beliefs and purpose, by which I mean if you have a

strong, strong sense of what it is that you are here to do and what it is that

you are here to accomplish, then you will begin to notice that beliefs that do not

serve that become quite painful to you.

And all of a sudden you get a kind of leverage over yourself

So stay with me on this.

If you believe that you're here to do something important in the world, and

there's something that you want to attain, whether it's professionally,

pastorally, financially, relationally, whatever it is that really matters to you.

If you can get to a point where you ask yourself, "These things I believe about

myself, are they moving me towards that deeply passionate goal for my own life,

or do they take me away from it?" And if you get, if you get to that point

and you notice a kind of friction, you suddenly go, "Well, I want this thing.

There's this thing in my life that I want, but I have to be honest enough to

notice that I believe things about myself that are not advancing me towards that,"

and it sets up this interior tension.

And gosh, one thing I've learned in all these years of coaching is

that humans really seek congruence.

We, we constantly-- To find peace, to find optimized energy and flow in life,

we need to be as congruent as possible.

It means that we're acting in ways that are congruent with what we

truly believe is important to us.

So I feel a fair bit of peace in my life these days because the

work that I get to do and the life that I live are all pointing in

pretty much the same direction.

If you follow me on Instagram, you see that I live what I talk.

Like, you can see me at 4:00 AM, 5:00 AM, out there in minus

five, training, doing things.

So there's not this constant tension in my life going, "Gosh, I hope no one finds

out that I don't actually live any of this stuff." So my belief about myself,

who I am, what I do, how I operate, what my processes are, are congruent

with what I'm trying to do in the world, and there's a certain peace there.

But if you're trying to get to a place in life where you're happy,

successful, you're using your gifts and talents, but you hold a deep belief

that you're a terrible person, you, you automatically are playing a game

that has immense tension in it, right?

There's gonna be this tension between what you're trying to do

and what you think about yourself.

And so how do you resolve that tension?

Well, I think it's this simple knowledge that if you don't find a

way to get aligned, that tension's gonna exist indefinitely, and

you'll never get where you wanna be.

And can I please draw your attention to this idea that it

doesn't have to take 40 years?

Let me give you a great example.

So over the last 20, 30, 40 year- 20, 30 years of traveling,

speaking, and coaching, I've flown so much I've lost track, right?

So all over the world from, you know, the Middle East to Europe to Iceland

to all over the US to, uh, Asia.

And believe it or not, there was a time in my life where I, I was

flying probably four days a week.

And the problem with that was that I had a incredible fear of flying.

Total crazy fear of flying, right?

Some of you can relate, and if you can relate to that,

it can be really, really bad.

Like extremely bad.

So this fear of flying continued for many, many years, and I would read

things, and I would study things, and I would practice this and do

this, and, and it went on forever.

And then eventually, after about, um, oh, this is hard to talk about because

it's so embarrassing , but like after about 20 years, it kinda stopped.

I did so many US trips, you know, and that's basically flying Sydney-Dallas

or Sydney-LA, which is like 14 to 16 hours, that basically you can't stay

that terrified for that long, that often.

Now, you can do it for a while, but it's really interesting, the

mechanism, 'cause I kinda studied it.

I did some research.

I'm like, "Why did it stop?" Like, I don't even remember suddenly

having some huge breakthrough.

And here's the interesting thing.

The way it actually stopped was that the, the process that I was

running was a deeply held belief that something terrible could happen And

I had to somehow be in control of it.

That's the anxiety piece, right?

Like something could happen, and when it happens, there was this terrible fear

of not being able to do anything, the fear of being out of control, right?

That was the mechanism.

Complex reasons from my childhood, blah, blah, blah, could, could make

a whole bunch of psychotherapists really rich trying to figure that

out, but that was my problem.

So I'm in this hypervigilance, right?

This constant state of what can I do?

What can I do if, if it suddenly plummets?

What do I do?

And suddenly, well, my brain figured this one simple thing out.

The answer to my question was this: nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

So it took me 20 years to move from this belief that something's going to happen

and I must be able to do something, to a new belief, which was something's gonna

happen and there's nothing we can do.

And when I read the research, it's like my brain just literally one day just

went, "Well, nothing we can do about this. Let's stop paying attention to it," and

just, just like literally packed up its tools and took its toys and went home.

It's literally that straightforward.

So you might be listening to me going, "Yeah, well it took

you 20 years to get there."

I'm going, "Sure." So I'm here to save you time, at least trying

to help you understand that beliefs can change really quickly.

Now, I did it the slow way.

I did this thing where I'm like, "Yes, I would like 20 years of suffering so

that I can do a podcast about belief change." So I did the work for you,

but it's amazing and I, I'm trying to stress the point that we can move much

faster than we think on key beliefs.

And the mechanism that I'm trying to share with you today is that my

current experience is that the most powerful way to do it is by linking a

negative belief to the non-attainment of something that you truly value.

Let me say that again.

That's good, I'm gonna put that on Instagram.

That it's, the way to change a belief quickly is to link it to

the non-attainment of something that's really important to you.

So I was coaching, um, a female executive a while ago, and she was really clear

about what it was that she wanted, and there was something really important that

she wanted to achieve professionally.

And then we were talking about, we were working deeply on the belief systems that

were holding her back, and we were able to get to a place where she could see that

if she did not change the belief about herself, she could not attain the goal.

And that creates this pain point, this internal friction, and our

brain is often trying to resolve these, you know, internal problems.

So her options are what?

Number one, drop the goal.

Accept that you're never going to get the thing you want, and that's painful,

and our brains want to avoid that.

So our brain's like, "Well, I do, I want that goal.

That goal's really important to me.

I don't want to quit on it." So what's your other option?

Well, if I still want the goal, and it's super important to me,

but this belief is, is guaranteeing I won't get it, what do I do?

Well, I have to change the belief.

And it's hard, but it is not impossible.

Again, it is hard, but it is not impossible So can I help you with this?

I want you to think about something you might think about yourself.

Can I be-- I'll give you a really honest example.

So with my background, so without going into graphic detail, I had a,

uh, I had a very challenging childhood, and I developed beliefs, probably

like some of you listening do, that deep down I'm not a good person and

I don't deserve this and I'm a bad person, and just stuff that develops

when you've had some pretty bad knocks early in life and very understandable,

people who've been through abuse or trauma and all these sorts of things.

So some of it maybe you, maybe you can relate personally, but at least

you can relate in the abstract.

So I carry these beliefs, and here I am out in the world having a successful

career, but these beliefs are still there.

And what really changed for me was the realization that what I genuinely

wanted to do was to serve and help as many people as possible around the

world and to build a life that would be beautiful and not perfect, but so

full of travel and joy and, and impact and success, and that I wanted to…

Uh, and also that I wanted to make full use of my abilities, that I wanted to

discover how good I could get at certain things and how, how, how I could refine

my talents and gifts for their own sake, for the purpose of giving glory to God

and pursuing excellence for its own sake.

So there's all these things that I want, right?

But I've got this belief, and it was as simple as losing the belief

that I had about fear of flying.

It was literally like, if I keep believing this, I can't have what I

want because they're not congruent.

A person that hates themselves or thinks they're a bad person cannot

achieve long-term serious success.

Now, you'll see it sometimes, but then it implodes.

Like, the greatest sort of test case for this is Hollywood, right?

You see these people who are beautiful and successful and talented, and

they have fame and fortune and, and cash, and just everything looks

great, and then they're in rehab.

Why?

Because the underlying belief system and architecture is completely fractured.

So you layer on top of it all this success, but the belief is

like, "We're not congruent here.

We hate ourselves.

We can't have this stuff.

We need to go and take a whole load of drugs and pass out in an

alleyway to stay congruent," right?

So for me, it was like the purpose became more important than allowing

negative beliefs to continue.

And it's, it's like there's this sort of, uh, subroutine in my brain that

if I ever sort of drift that way, it, it cuts off almost instantly.

It's like software.

It just goes, "Nope. If you believe that, you cannot serve people. If you think

this about yourself, if you collapse into this sort of feeling state, you

cannot do this other thing that you've said to yourself is so important."

So I don't know.

I hope I'm not laboring this too much, but this is the essential dynamic I

want you to try and think about, that the way you change negative beliefs

about yourself… You know, some people will tell you, "Well, you've gotta

get more evidence. You've gotta go out and have better experiences," and

then they'll stack up the evidence, and maybe there's something to that.

But I think the fastest way is to get leverage on yourself, and the way you get

leverage on yourself is to be super clear about why you're here and what you really

want, and then simply ask yourself, "Is this belief serving me?" See, I wanna

serve as many people as possible, so I have to have a belief that I'm not a

perfect person, but I'm a good person.

I wanna help.

Like, I genuinely do.

I just, just, I just default to it all the time.

I wanna help as many people as possible.

No, I'm not perfect.

No, I'm not, I'm not, uh, an enlightened soul floating on a cloud.

I'm not that.

But I don't allow these negative beliefs to exist anymore because they are

against the primary purpose and goal.

Okay, so I hope that's useful.

Look deep into your own life.

Be honest with yourself.

Do you hold negative beliefs about yourself still?

What is it that you want in life?

'Cause if those things, the beliefs about yourself and your desires for

your future, are not congruent, you are setting yourself up for friction,

and this is going to be problematic.

All right.

Please subscribe to the podcast.

You can follow me on Instagram, JDoyleSpeaks, YouTube, Jonathan

Doyle Speaks, and you can find me on the website jonathandoyle.co.

If you wanna book me for speaking, our executive coaching stuff is there.

But God bless you, my friend.

It's-- I hope it's useful.

So let's finish this with me stitching together a quote on the fly.

If you want to attain what you truly say you desire, then your beliefs about

yourself must be congruent with that deep sense of mission and purpose.