Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of The Meaningful Shit Show with me, Vincent. And today we're going to talk about beliefs. I want to start with a couple of opening quotes. First one is, the next time your core beliefs are challenged, try being curious instead of furious. It's from Randy Cage, author and motivational speaker. Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. It's another quote by Albert Einstein.

And during the last century and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an un-reconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief. Another one by Albert Einstein. All right. Last week we talked about the importance of values and how to upgrade your decision-making machine in order to generate more decisions that help us with our happiness and fulfillment in life. In this episode, I want to dive more into the origin of values and another important ingredient in upgrading the decision-making machine, which is beliefs.

Let's define beliefs first. Where is belief similar to faith? How does it relate to values? Let's first look at the Oxford Dictionary. Oxford Dictionary says, An acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. Or trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something. Then we have the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as well. Belief is defined as a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.

Second definition, something that is accepted, considered to be true or held as an opinion, something believed. The third, a conviction of the truth or of some statement, or the reality of some being or phenomenon, especially when based on examination of evidence. So already just by looking at two definitions, we see that it's not really super concise. We can go different directions with that. We've heard something about something that's considered to be true, just believed.

Juxtaposition by something that especially is considered to be believed when evidence is examined, which for a lot of beliefs is actually not that important. So let's chip at these definitions a little bit and see what definition we want to adopt within scope of this episode. So I first want to distinguish it from faith. Faith refers to trusting someone or something from the depth of our hearts, and it's not necessarily based on proof within the definition that I'm collecting.

Belief on the other hand refers to something that we consider to be true, where faith is beyond truth in a way. We see with faith that proof doesn't really necessarily come into it. Our beliefs, we tend to actually regard as truth, as something that is actually the case. So in this context, faith is more about a higher power, beyond ordinary consciousness. It's about trusting something from the depth of our hearts.

It's more passive versus active, more, you know, you lay back in faith, you surrender to faith. But like beliefs, they don't need proof or beyond proof in a way, but there's subtle differences. So beliefs also don't need proof, but they feel more that they're actually true, and there's something closer to them that looks like proof. So although the mechanics are the same, they feel at a different level.

Beliefs are assumptions we make about others or ourselves. Beliefs grow from what we experience and think about, and beliefs affect our morals. So I hope that bags it a little bit more. So a little summarizing. Beliefs, we know to be true, but they're usually actually sort of beyond proof, how we state them, depending on what they are. We generally have some way of rationalizing them, and it sounds true enough.

And if they turn out to not be actually true, it would collapse our worldview. So core beliefs are basic beliefs. It's a different thing from beliefs to core beliefs. Basic beliefs about ourselves, other people in the world we live in. They are the things we hold to be absolute truths, deep down, underneath, or all of our surface thoughts. Essentially, core beliefs determine how you perceive and interpret the world.

Now things are getting a little bit more juicy, because beliefs kind of can feel a little dry. It's like something you believe that doesn't interact with, interfere with your world on a day-to-day basis. And that's a dangerous way of thinking about it. If you regard yourself as an objective person, you can say, oh, these are my beliefs over here, but I am objective about looking at them, and they don't interpret my world in that way, although I believe they're not to be a god or to be a god.

Oh, that doesn't interfere with how I treat people. And that's not true. You cannot separate these things that well. Your beliefs drive all of that. More about that as we continue. So these beliefs sit in the basement of your mind. When something happens, your mind will open up the basement, consult the core belief, and that is most likely to keep you safe and defend you against the world.

Survive. And they're very convincing. They're full of persuasion, conviction. Core belief is something you accept as true without question. That means you can expect that every day it will seem just as true as it was the day before. Very constant. They're seated deep within you, so your mind lives your life around them and without thinking about them, questioning them, or even really being aware of them. Right.

This is from the website Core Beliefs and Self-Acceptance, which I will share in the show notes. I want to dive into some core beliefs. A couple of examples, some grist for the mill. So what are some core beliefs? Murder is wrong. Love is good. You should help people in need. Shouldn't lie. Giving is better than receiving. I'm ugly. I'm not as good as them. Men are just acts.

Women are just why. I'll never amount to anything. People don't like me. I can't do anything right. I'll never get better at this. I'm just not a confident person. There's no way I could do that. I'm stuck. I'm unlovable. This group, ethnic group, whatever, is lazy, dumb, vicious. There's something wrong with me. I never get things right. They'll leave me in the end. Everyone just uses me.

The world is evil. People suck. People only like interesting people. I'm just an anxious person. I'm negative. I'm different from everyone else. I'm stupid. Life is good. I'm confident. People always like me. I can do anything I want to do. I am good at a lot of things. Good things happen when you make them happen. Others will help me. I can do this. I believe in myself.

I can make tomorrow better. Opportunities are all around me. I can make something bad into a good thing. I am not special or different. My mind is capable of great things. My hard work will pay off. I can change if I want to. I'm not limited to anything. Learning is key. Failure does not exist. Everything is temporary. So you go through this list, you can already see, you can't really prove one of these beliefs conclusively.

How do you prove that failure does not exist? It's a perspective. It's how you define failure, how you define existence. And I feel like a lot of these beliefs they're more or less beyond proof. It's not even important to prove them. It's just they feel true. They more or less lead to the same place, though, these core beliefs, and at the same time, they don't. And I like this quote.

I forget who it's from. A fool who persists in his folly becomes wise, saying that you can take an arbitrary belief that currently just feels true to you, take it to its logical extreme, and you'll end up with similar realizations. So if I take a negative one as failure does not exist, and I really zoom into that, and I pick it apart and stuff like that, I might get to a similar conclusion or conclusion of what's going on for me as something like people always like me, which seems counterintuitive.

One starts from a negative place, and one starts from a positive place. But if you follow them to their extreme, there's ultimately a truth laying behind it. And that's where our core beliefs come in. That's become like our metaphysics come in. How do we see the world ultimately? What's really going on here? And that actually seems unimportant in daily life, but turns out it actually very much is.

So core beliefs are related to our rules and assumptions that we follow in life, our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. They all influence each other in a circular fashion. I like the term as well as web of beliefs. Web of beliefs to add to the definition of the things that we've already been talking to. Because beliefs don't come by themselves without being influenced by anything else. They are, and I visualize it as like sort of this thick soup, almost, with balls and connection between the different balls, a ball being a belief.

And just imagine that just being very sticky. So the moment that you try to pull anything out or to try to rearrange something, A, it's hard to do, and B, as you do that, you change the structure of the entire thing. Another way, oh, Web of Beliefs, by the way, was termed by Quine, Q-U-I-N-E, a philosopher. Notes on that in the show notes. I also like, as more of my own analogy, similar to that though, is to visualize it somewhat as a galaxy, right?

And everything that has mass and attracts other mass, you can kind of see as a belief, right? So generally, when we think about a galaxy, there's a supermassive black hole in the middle, and everything revolves around that as an influence by that. I like looking at that in that way because there are generally very core beliefs that influence the rest, right? An interesting thing about beliefs is that we're trying to capture it in words, what we really believe, which is beyond words.

So it's not a one-to-one mapping that you can say, oh, but this belief is this supermassive black hole. But it's a useful analogy anyway. You're thinking about something that influences you. You can think about, like, where in your galaxy is it? Is it a minor star? Is it closer to the center of it? Of course, metaphors always break down. The map is not the territory. Although some beliefs are more influential than the other, there's not one core, master, supermassive belief.

They're more similarly sized peers. But take this analogy to where it goes for you. Maybe these related beliefs, they actually get sucked into the same black hole, and actually what's in the black hole is like sort of like your five core beliefs. Whatever works for you. It's an analogy. It's a model. It's supposed to be useful. We'll run with it for now. Why are we talking about this?

Why is it important for upgrading the decision quality? Let's take a look again, or remember the iceberg that we talked about in the last episode. So when we're making decisions, there's a lot of stuff that happens under the water line, and there's some stuff that we can see, that's over the water line. The values that we talked about, a lot of them are a little bit more clearly visible to us.

Beliefs are definitely under the water line, right? So by learning about this, by becoming aware of that, by in a way raising that iceberg or develop an x-ray vision or however you want to see it, we tend to become more aware of our decision process and how these things influence each other. All right. Let's talk about a little bit more how to model that entire process. So there are a couple of things that are related to each other.

Beliefs, your values, your attitudes, and your behavior. Your beliefs are the root. So if you look at it as a tree, like that's the trunk and the roots, like where everything, where all the nutrition comes from, where that makes the rest grow. Right? So some of the things that influence your beliefs are culture, faith, education, experience, mentors. And remember as well as a lot of these beliefs get formed when you're not really critically thinking yourself yet.

So that culminates into values. Right? So your beliefs, your ideas, you hold to be true, culminate into or leads to as the tree grows, to your values, what is important to you. Not only your beliefs influence that, there are other influences, happiness, wealth, family, career success and stuff like that. It all massages it and influences it. But the position that I'm taking here is that beliefs are one of the most important ones.

So in a way, if you're trying to upgrade your values, depending on where you are in this journey, it might not just be playing with your beliefs or upgrading your beliefs. It might be related to some of the other influences that interact with your values as well. Values at their part influence your attitudes, so how you treat others and approach situations. So that's more in the moment, the knee-jerk reactions.

There's again other things that influence that, such as being professional, convenience, peer pressure, like respect. Although respect, of course, could be a value. They influence your attitudes as well. But you can also imagine that maybe if respect is not a value, it might still work itself into your attitudes, like sort of from the outside a little. You don't think it's necessarily important to treat people with respect.

You see that it limits you in society. If you don't adhere to that, so you do it anyway, although you don't really agree with it. And that all leads to your behavior, how you act. So you can see the behavior maybe as the leaves of the tree, and the attitudes as like sort of like the smaller branches everywhere, the values like the bigger branches, and then your beliefs to be like really the trunk and the root system, divided in a different way.

But they build on each other, all right? If you do not have any significant problems in your life and your world views, this could not be important to you at all. Like I'm talking about why this is important to know. But then again, would you be listening to this content? I think not. So it is important if you want to gain a deep and meaningful understanding in what makes you, you, and what part is actual real self and what part is the role self, right?

And it's not even that the real self is like the core tree, like where I was talking about the beliefs that lead to the values, and that the role self are the influences that come in from the side. It's not a clean division, right? Cool. I want to take an existential detour, and I think it is an important one. And that is the existential detour of not knowing.

So when we talk about beliefs, it is important to realize that the mechanics of any belief is essentially the same. So let's take something like object permanence. So object permanence is, I don't know, the belief that if you roll a ball behind a wall, that the ball doesn't stop existing. But this is something that we develop as a child, right? Babies at some stage of development don't know that.

Don't know that something that is out of their field of vision continues to exist. And when it reappears, it's actually magical. And it's interesting to think back of that, that that was true for you at one point. For practical purposes, something like object permanence, we can say it's a true belief, right? Like who am I to question here if you roll a ball behind a wall that it stops existing?

Like based on every practical thing that we do, it has no purpose to question that. But think about it, that it is ultimately something that we believe in. We have very little counter evidence for object permanence. So we just hold it to be true. We don't think about it. But run through some thought experiments. Like what would need to happen for you to question this belief? Another example that I like to think about is levitation.

Supposedly some Indian gurus get magical powers and they can walk through walls and levitate and stuff like that. And of course, that's not necessarily something that I believe. But think about what would need to happen for you to believe that? What if someone finds out how to do that? What would you need to see in order to actually work that into your web of beliefs? And if I at least think about that, what I realize is the main reason that I have resistance against that is because it's a fuckton of work to rework this web of beliefs.

It's got gravitation, or sorry, levitation is suddenly a possibility. There needs to be a theory behind that, like a story of how it works. But then again, imagine a world where everything is the same as it is right now, and people can levitate if they meditate or something like that. And you have, it's a part of the Olympics or something like that. It's who can levitate the most, who can, you can imagine a world where that's the case.

And that, if you're in that world, it's actually not really hard to believe because it's around you. You don't think about it that much. And it's not a big deal. All right. What I find interesting about that is thinking about that process and what kind of resistances you encounter. It shows you how beliefs work, that you go for beliefs that are, if they're ubiquitous, everyone believes it has something to do with how you can effectively get the things that you want.

Content of the belief is not actually really that, that important, right? So, although questioning different beliefs can evoke very different emotional reactions, the mechanism is sort of the same, whether it's a small belief or a big belief, right? So think about certainty and think about decision. What gives us certainty? When do we feel that we have enough information to make a decision, when there's really an infinite amount of information in the universe?

We're never done. It's because we are in an existential bind, so we see things through a specific perspective. We have supposedly millions of years of evolution and the will to survive, and that is forcing our hand. Everything that we parse about reality is because it has something to do with our survival. And surviving is not just like bare necessities and stuff like that. It's all the way to like the top of the self-actualization pyramid.

Even self-actualizing is a form of surviving, right? So we can never be absolutely certain about our beliefs. Like to highlight of a specific definition of solipsism, you might have heard of that. I usually define it as the belief that I can only know that I exist, and the rest I'm uncertain if it even exists in the first place. How it's defined here by... I'll mention the source in the show notes.

I think it's called the ageofenlightenment.com or something like that. So, solipsism. The ideology that one's own mind is sure to exist, or only one's own mind is sure to exist. Solipsists content that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. Hence, there is no such thing as objective truth, and nothing about the external world and its workings can actually be known. So that is an interesting point of view that has, to me at least, a lot of truth to it.

If you were really get down to it and we're honest about that, there is a point to that. That is the mind, the situation that we're in. And we might have a belief that there's an objective world going on, and we have a lot of evidence that that's the case, because if it wouldn't be the case, why can't I just think of a giraffe right now? Or why can't I get everything I want with the snap of a finger?

These are practical limitations that seem to be placed on how we experience everything. So, I think it boils down to some of these things, how we see the world. This is a little bit back to the supermassive black holes. There are like, sort of like, core believes that everything gravitates around, I think. And those are paradigmatic metaphysical positions, as apparently the technical term is.

So either physicalism or more known materialism, idealism, and dualism. So proponents of physicalism maintain that the nature of reality is fundamentally physical, and all mental properties is derived from that basic property, where the position of idealism states that all physical properties derive from a fundamental reality, which is mental. The brain is inside the mind instead of the mind is inside the brain. So an irreducible, fundamental, and pervasive consciousness.

Dualism states that the nature of reality consists of two separate properties, the physical and the mental. So I think those essences, or whichever of these beliefs you influence, they might be like some of the core beliefs. So the reason that we took this detour, to sort of prepare the thought process for realizing what the mechanics behind beliefs is, and that even the beliefs that you hold the surest, they are not immediately in your direct awareness, such as the earth is round, object permanence, people cannot levitate just by the power of their mind or something like that, right?

That they're all formed in the same way, and that we are actually unsure if any of those things exist or are true, unless it is unfolding in front of us right then and there, right? Even if it's unfolding, we might not believe in and stuff like that. But unless it's happening right in front of us, it's a memory, it's something that lives in our head versus something that is actually the case out there.

So I do want to return to practicality. So let's come back to earth. Let's accept the societal norms again. The earth is round, you were born. There's an objective universe out there, and however you normally feel about the existence of a god. Let's go back to knowing and mastering your beliefs. So how do you do that? So focusing on the core beliefs, you can follow the downward arrow technique.

It involves following each thought down to the basement, to the underlying fundamental belief that it came from. And I personally recommend integrating it into your meditation head. So if you don't want to have one, cultivate one, make a morning routine. Don't call it meditation if that's something you don't like called contemplation, call it journaling, whatever. But I find it important to have a morning routine with different mindfulness exercises.

And it's better if they're not the same every day, right? Because it loses interest, or you lose interest. So maybe do this one or two days a week penciled in, and do a loving-kindness meditation the other day, do journaling the other day. But to go and begin by bringing a mind, bringing to mind a thought about yourself that you have often. Right? So this is the downward error technique that I'm talking about.

Such as, I am not passionate about anything. In such a situation, you could ask yourself, okay, what does that mean about me? The answer should say something about you as a person, like I'm boring or I'm wishy-washy. Again, what does that mean about me? You might end up with something like, I'm weak or there's something wrong with me. Like I'm different. We might have hit a core belief, but you can often keep asking again, okay, what does that mean about me?

And maybe we end up by, with something like I'm not good enough, or my core is tainted or something, something like that. Let's do another example. People are cheating me all the time. So what does it mean about people? Core beliefs can be about me, but they can be about other things in the world as well. What does it mean about people if they cheat me all the time?

Well, that they can be trusted to do the right thing, right? Which implies that I do know what the right thing is. And, okay, so what does that mean about people again? So it means that people can be trusted, but it could morph into actually an I statement. I should protect myself against others, right? Others are not to be trusted, so I need to be protected. So what does that mean?

And that could go down. It can go keep on like sort of the I statements of like, I'm better off, I'm safer alone. I shouldn't expose myself. I can only count on one or more going the direction on. It's about the people as people suck, like something like that. If that's how you operate every day in the world, expecting to be lied to and cheated to and stuff like that, these are the things, these are the core beliefs that can operate your reality.

Realize that again, these core beliefs, like I can only count on me. Technically, you can debate someone about that. You can bring like examples where that's not the case, and then a person can say, yeah, that's true, but like it's true at least 51% of the time. So that's the reason that, you know, so, but you can't calculate it on paper or something like that.

It's kind of fuzzy. All right, let's go for a positive example. So let's say maybe I have an addiction. I'm addicted to X, but I'm focusing on making progress every day. Like that's maybe a thought that comes to your head, that you have an addiction or even compulsive thought, or, you know, something that you're trying, behavior that you're trying to change.

So, what does that mean about me? If I am addicted to something, but I'm making progress every day, so that means that I'm capable of making progress by working. And what does that mean about me? I am the kind of person who can change if I keep doing the work. Right. And there's two things in there, like change is possible, but it's related to work that's being done.

And that can lead to the belief of I can change if I want to. And the moment that you realize that this can, you know, it's not about an addiction that you might have, but it's, it's more true in the generality of, of life. In this chain of analyses, the doing-the-work part fell off. It morphed into "I can change if I want to," wanting to, truly wanting to, requiring work.

So it depends a little bit on what that core belief actually is. Maybe that work should have still been in there for you, because change is only possible if I not only want to, but do the right activities that are associated with that. Anyways, this ought to say it's more of an art than a science, but it does allow you some insights on what your core beliefs are.

So let's say that you've identified some of these. This requires, again, being aware of your values. That's what we covered in the previous episode. Knowing your values can be helpful because it tells you something about the beliefs that are underlying, right? So if you're following these thoughts down, it's helpful to already be aware of what your values are. So I would recommend doing that work. All right.

So I'm not only talking about discovering yourself, discovering something about yourself, but how to level it up as well. So this is where I think one skill is very important, and that is the skill of focusing on effectiveness. So this is a skill that I know from DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy. A little bit about that is it refers to actively doing what needs to be done, so you will have your needs met or in order to move closer to a certain goal.

So that's from Marsha Linehan. So this DBT skill is directly related to experiencing positive emotions. When you get things done and effective in life, you feel good. Maybe you've been feeling depressed for a while, you've been postponing your obligations, and this in terms makes you feel depressed. Right. That's just a little bit of text on the effectiveness skill. So this focus focuses on what works versus what is right versus wrong versus fair versus unfair.

You're just like, okay, all of these things go overboard. I want to focus on what gets the job done. That's an interesting thing to do. Can also be toxic, by the way, so be aware. So in this specific paragraph, Marsha Linehan talks about goals. I like value here just as much. It does get a little tricky, right? Because normally, we explored before, value comes from your beliefs.

It grows from your beliefs. But I'm suggesting now to go the other way around. Right? And there's always a feedback loop between things. Even though if we think of a tree, we think, of course, the root system feeds on the nutrients and stuff like that. It's there before the rest of the tree is there. But at the same time, if you have a young sapling of a tree, it has some roots, it has some trunk, it has some leaves, some twigs, right?

So it all grows together. So it arises together. So in the same way, you can look at it in a way, it's like the leaves influence the root system, like they are interconnected. The moment that you would have very different leaves, your root system also changes. So you can start that change from the root system, because arbitrarily that's why you want to start, or it makes more sense, or like whatever.

But you can approach it from the other direction, in a way, because everything is connected, it doesn't exactly matter, right? It's just where you want to start. Okay. So it can seem to create a vicious circle, and in a way, you can, because your values are basing your beliefs, et cetera, et cetera. You can go around in a circle, but it could be virtuous as well. So if you're watching this content, there's a good chance that you are feeling the gravitational pull of another galaxy, in a way.

So you know that there are beliefs out there that are not yours, and you might see some benefit or virtue from adopting some of those beliefs, even for the consequences that they have, right? You might not see the results that you want in life, or you're feeling icky by some of your own values or beliefs. So you're not liking aspects of your behavior, but it's being dictated by your existing values and beliefs.

So how do we level that up? Are we changing the supermassive black hole? Like, I don't think that that is directly possible. It requires a multi-perspectival view. So you can't average things out across all these different galaxies, I think. But you can galaxy hop in a way, right? There might be the galaxy that has, like, the materialism as a supermassive black hole in the middle, and one that has idealism.

Like, it's hard to inhabit both of them at the same time, or to average that out, because some of the things are mutually exclusive, right? So, but you can hop between the perspectives. You can put on this, you know, these goggles and then those goggles. That is something that is possible. And that can be very advantageous to building connections and relating to people. Like, why would they do that in that way?

How does their world view work? So, the intention of this episode is to explore aligning yourself with effectiveness versus true, fair, just. Which is, you know, partially because we've just said, you can't know what's true. It's not that you can say, oh, but materialism is true. So that's what I'm going to align myself with. It might feel very true. It might be your preference. It's completely fine to live your way that way.

I mean, living one way or the other, it's not better or worse or something like that. But where better or worse and stuff like that comes in, it comes into your experience of it. So it might be better for you to live your life with this set of worldviews because there is this interconnection, this vicious virtual cycle of you having those beliefs and having those values and also liking them.

Right? Because circumstances change, you change, life changes and stuff like that. So if you keep living by the same programming, at one point it might not be effective anymore, although it is a consistent worldview more or less, right? You could keep on living the exact way that you're living and survive probably, right? There's something valuable about everything that you learned and how it got you there. But it doesn't necessarily mean that there's not something beyond that.

Okay, so let's see, where are we? So it starts with choosing what the target of that effectiveness is as a high quality thing. And that can be like, you can call it a failure belief. It's a little like fuzzy right now, right? Because if your effectiveness is like, everything is focused on like lower quality things as amassing wealth or something like that, you can become like really effective at that.

But is that really, you know, the ultimate thing that you want to aspire to? So in other words, you have to not go to just like your knee-jerk reactions of this thing that your ego wants right now, where you're just like, oh, how can I get more money and more sex? Because that's, no, I mean, maybe for you, at a certain stage of development, that could be true, right?

But there's usually things beyond it, which is a continual exploration that's part of being alive, right? So you want to find what beliefs support what your goal is, right? Or value, or like the change that you would want to make, or something that you see out in the world that you like. And that is not as simple as it sounds, but it starts with your awareness of how it could be.

Example, maybe makes a little bit more easy to understand. Let's say that you want more spirituality in your life, because you've heard some of the results. You see people that have that, and there's something about their world view that you see is comforting, although you feel it's wrong, right? It's not true, because it's not what science says, or maybe it's from a different religion than your own religion is, right?

So maybe you want some more spirituality in there, but you just don't believe in higher power. That's what feels true to you right now. That can limit what you can achieve with your environment, or maybe it limits the amount of compassion you can have, because your world view is focused on money or sex. That's more important. That's where it's at, right? Because some upstream beliefs or downstream, if we are talking about it, living in the basement, tells you that the universe is cold and mechanical, you know, the, well, this is again like facts don't care about your feelings, right?

That's how it is. And you're like hard-nosed and surviving is what we're doing here. And we just got to evolve. It's evolution, and we're passing our genes on. You know, that has a limitation. So I want to dive into this parable. And I'm sure a lot of you guys have heard this before. So it's an old Cherokee chief, and he's teaching his grandson about life. He says to the boy, a fight is going on inside me.

It is a terrible fight, and it's between two wolves. One is evil, he is angry, he is envious. There's a lot of sorrow, there's regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. And there's the other wolf, which is good, full of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. Says to the boy, the same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person too.

Grandson thinks about this for a minute and asks his grandfather, which wolf will win? The old Cherokee simply replies, the one you feed. Right. So I don't want to collapse everything we talked about just to a parable, but there is a lesson here for sure. Right? So the lesson is that the beliefs we feed are the beliefs that win. So it's things that we commit to that start feeling true.

Generally, it's the beliefs we already hold, that we feed. Right? We already know that the universe is material. So we're going to keep feeding that, keep feeding that, keep feeding that, keep feeding that. And in the parable of the wolves, there is like a good and an evil wolf that doesn't really apply in these situations. Right? It's not a good versus bad thing. It's more about perspectives, and different perspectives get you different things.

One perspective might get you a lot more money, but might get you something less of something else, maybe compassion, right? If you're like really ruthless in doing certain business deals, that can affect your compassion, but it can maximize your profit and income, right? So this work is about identifying beliefs and not finding truths because they don't exist. I mean, unless we're talking about absolute truth, that's a different conversation.

But practical things in everyday life are not truths, they're perspectives. Seeing how we feed them, how do we maintain that? How do we maintain that level of beliefs? What are the things that we're like fending off, that we want to protect our level of beliefs against? Seeing how that limits us, right? How can we do certain things with this level of beliefs, but certain things are not possible?

Really noticing every time we tap into that, into one of those beliefs, because that's everything starts with awareness. And if you want to have like a little practice around that, I advised a good old elastic band around the wrist, and just whenever you notice a thought that is related to one of these beliefs that limits you in a certain way, just snap it so that you're aware of how often you're doing that in day-to-day life.

Over time, as you have identified at certain things, you would like different, you want to, even if it's try out a different perspective, because in the grand scheme of things, you can't know what the right thing is, and nothing matters, right? In the grand scheme of things, from absolute perspective. So you might as well try out different things, hop different perspectives, because you're not going to know a priori without trying some of these things out, if a new direction for you is a good or a bad thing, right?

Why do we think that compassion is good? Because society tells us, or because it gets us a certain thing. So it's actually really, really hard to make the decisions. Partially, that's what we've seen in the values exercise, to really think about what values are we going to choose because it's not about the value that's going to make us most popular. It's about the value that's most our preference.

And that's personal. And preference is not always something that just appears. Like, it's work to end a work influences the belief in a way. So it's like they're entangled. You can't uncover something like that without influencing it in the same way. And we come with a past. We come with beliefs, with things that happened to us in the past. So yes, it comes from some of the things that happened to the past, but it also comes from the things that we're trying to create.

And some of the things are related to innate stuff that we had in us as a kid. You see that in different children, right? They are just pulled towards different things. There's nothing, you know, good or bad about like being really into video games versus, I don't know, having lots of friends or something, something like that. But some of these things just come to children naturally without someone telling them this is the good thing to do or the bad thing to do, right?

So it's this cool, balanced web, whatever, how you want to call it or visualize it, of stuff that came from your past, stuff that comes from your culture, stuff that comes from your upbringing, but also stuff that comes from like your core self, just something that's like baked into you. So you want to feed these different beliefs over time. So whenever you're doing this work, when you're working on uncovering these beliefs, when you're working on feeding different beliefs, like taking, like lowering the flame a little bit of that, let's say like materialism one, or like that work is important.

Things like that, those are more values than their beliefs, but anyways. And switching to a different one, switching your perspective, you can expect, again, just like with values, backlash, backlash from yourself, because your ego, your level of beliefs doesn't like change, because it's active work. It's much easier to try to chase down more simple success, go for that extra more money, get like some cool new thing, new car, new studio equipment, something like that.

So watch for that backlash from yourself and from your environment, prepare for it, count on it. It's part of the work. All right. I think we're, where are we? Well, over an hour, oh, 50 minutes. Cool. It's, I think, about time to wrap up. So in conclusion, what we've done, we've explored the definitions of beliefs, we've explored faith versus belief, we've explored core beliefs, web of beliefs, and the analogy about beliefs as a galaxy, beliefs attracting each other, getting caught in orbit.

Right. Why beliefs are important? When we want to upgrade our decision-making machine, so we want to become more happy in life, we want to get the results that we are interested in. How we identify or take inventory of our beliefs. We went through some examples how to do that, and we discussed how to level beliefs and the machine together, how to level them up. Cool. All right.

Thank you very much. This has been Vincent, and I will see you for the next episode. Bye.