Most people try to change habits, behaviors, and patterns at the surface level. They work harder, learn more, and apply new strategies, yet nothing really sticks.
In this episode, Shane breaks down why behavior change fails when deeper value beliefs go unexamined. You’ll hear how the mind protects identity, how past events quietly turn into verdicts about worth, and why the system isn’t broken, it’s loyal.
If you’ve ever felt like growth takes more effort than it should, this episode will change how you understand belief change from the inside out.
What You’ll Discover
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode of the Stable Living Podcast. My name is Shane Jacob, your host, and I thank you for taking your time to be here with me today. It's a big episode here. And I'm excited about it because this is the foundation. You got something going on in your life that you want to change, that you want to improve, that you want to make progress on, that you feel stuck on. Hasn't been happening. This is how it happened.
Okay, so we're gonna, is part two of the intentional belief creation, or part two or a series on beliefs. You know, the thing about what we believe again is just a quick recap is the foundation of our behavior. Okay. And primarily what we believe about how we value ourselves. Okay. Most of the limited beliefs that people try to change are their on the surface, their symptoms of what I call performance beliefs.
For example, things that have to do with, like, I'm terrible at remembering names, or I'm always late. Those things like that are performance beliefs as opposed to value beliefs, what I call value beliefs. And those value beliefs, what we believe to be true about ourselves and our value or what we deserve, what we are worth, how we value ourselves. Those beliefs are the beliefs that actually govern the trajectory of our life.
They actually govern that that is the final, most basic foundation of our behavior, or the value judgments that we make about ourselves. these other beliefs matter, they're just not foundational. They're a symptom of the value. Beliefs. And that's why a lot of times you can set out to make a difference. You can set out to make a change and not get it done, and feel stuck, and because you're underneath that is a value belief that your brain is not allowing you to make progress on because of this value belief.
Okay, so usually when you're not getting your goals, it's not necessarily because a lot of times it's not because of a lack of discipline. It's not because you don't know how, it's not because you don't have the tools. It's because changing them goes against a deep belief about what you deserve or who you're allowed to be as a human being. Okay. So these are the first order of beliefs of what we're talking about, what we talked about in part one.
If you haven't heard that, I encourage you to check that out. They do go in order. So some of that's going to matter to this episode.
So, beliefs about personal value, they answer questions that most people never ask. Most people, most of the time, ever consciously ask the question of, Am I worth as a person, as a human being? What am I allowed to have? What am I allowed to have?
What level of success, what level of love, what level of peace, what level of respect, what level of all that fits a person like me? Okay. These are questions that we don't normally ask ourselves. the, also the beliefs that you've formed are in, are easy to uncover when you go through the three questions that we talked about in the first, last episode, the first series on beliefs, which is.
what theyWhen you ask yourself about what the things that you have done, what they mean about you, things that you've done, things that you haven't done, and things that have been done to you. Once that you have established those beliefs about who you are, and by the way, this happens for you, most of us didn't consciously do it. It just happened as a result of living. That's the way life is.
If somebody quietly inside, even though they're not very, or at all, conscious of it, if they believe that, Hey, I'm damaged goods because of something that I did or something that happened to me, the nervous system or your brain, will resist. It will not let you get the outcomes that contradict that belief. So you might be going for a different result, but if you underneath of it, believe that you're damaged goods.
It's not necessarily out of sabotage, but it's out of consistency because your brain needs to be right. Okay. It'll steer your behavior back to that foundational belief. Okay. Because it needs to be congruent. It needs to be, it needs to have congruency with the identity that you formed.
So, if you, underneath have this belief that you're damaged goods, because whatever. you're divorced, you had a bankruptcy, you whatever, all the things that you could have happened or that you've done, then when you try to do something that goes against that, subconsciously, your brain is going to steer you away from making that progress.
So that's why people can, they can really study and try to be good at time mnagement. They can still be late all the time, or you can, you know, study money, and I did this for a long time, so I know all about it. can study money, and you can work your tail off, and still have your income capped out. You can do relationship work, you can work on yourself, you can study relationships, and you can do everything you can and then still choose to be with somebody who doesn't, it's not good for you. It's a disaster.
And it's not because you're broken or the system's broken or your brain's not doing you right. It's because it's loyal to your beliefs that you formed making meaning making, OK, where all this comes from is that our our brains deciding what happened, what is happening in the world around us, what that means about us.
These beliefs come from the meaning that we make out of what we did or what we failed to do, what was things that were done to us like we talked about last time. Also, things that we were blamed for, what we were praised for, what we were ignored for, and so on.
Events like divorce, bankruptcy, business failure, addiction, getting fired, abuse, getting convicted of a crime, public shame, just being totally embarrassed over something. These things are rarely just accepted as events that happen in our lives, most of the time, we experience them as evidence, okay?
Because we're making meaning about those things that have happened. And so we're creating evidence. And this evidence gets translated into conclusions that determine our worth automatically, just default, it's happening, okay? Whether we're in there choosing what happens, which most of the time we're not, okay? But today we are, we're just taking a look at that.
Right now, about what's happened previously and what we're going to choose to do about it, intentionally moving forward. Because these conclusions that we've made about our worth, they become internal verdicts. They become the law that we are governed by, okay, whether we know it or not.
Again, this is not because we're weak or we're irrational or we're broken or our brain, you know, because something's wrong. It's because the human mind is wired to be right, to explain outcomes. If we believe this, then this. And so that is what the outcome is.
If we believe we're damaged goods, then we do certain things that show and prove that we are damaged goods because that's what people with damage that are damaged goods do. Okay. And so that's where our brain is pushing us towards those outcomes.
When there's no, when we don't have a framework, or we don't have the understanding of how to separate behavior from value, in other words, what I did or what happened to me or how I experienced the world to separate that from my value as a human being, then how we explain what happened is we make it mean something about ourselves. And so, therefore, something must be wrong with me.
I mean, it just makes total logical sense unless we intercede and make a change in an intentional decision. So there's just about everybody, probably everybody's had at least one experience where a moment of failure, a loss, some sort of exposure that we've had in the world, it becomes an indictment, character judgment, okay? I'm irresponsible, I can't be trusted, I ruin things. I'm not made for success, I'm damaged now, okay?
And once that meaning is accepted, and remember, we're not consciously accepting this, I have to keep saying this, it takes actual awareness and thought, and some reflection to be able to even go and understand what's going on inside of ourselves, okay?
But once this meaning, once we accept these ideas that our brain is just feeding to us, okay, then it becomes more than an idea. It's not just an idea. It begins influencing our behavior, our ambition, and our expectations. And this belief doesn't need to be spoken out loud. It doesn't need to be active. It only needs to be believed, okay?
For example, here's a quick, simple example, okay? Every day living. Let's just say that last week I had an appointment in my calendar for a coaching call at a certain time on a certain day and I totally forgot about it, spaced it off, blew it off. Probably whoever was supposed to be there was on the other end just waiting, and I never for who knows how long still I haven't got a hold of them, and I don't know what happened.
Okay, now, what am I going to do with that experience that I did? Okay. So, and this just happened. Okay. This is a real deal thing, and so what does that mean? What do I make that mean about me? Cause there's lots of options that can happen. Okay.
So if I'm not intentional, here's what's going to happen. Here's the meaning that I'm going to make for myself. If I don't, if I'm not intentional, if I'm not, if I don't have the awareness, and if I don't do it on purpose, number one, what's going to happen is I'm going to be thinking thoughts like, can't believe I did that. Man, I suck. Those poor people. What are they going to think about me? I'm not dependable. don't keep up with my, I can't be trusted. I don't get this done. I blah, blah.
I can go on and on and on with all kinds of language. those that, what I'm doing is I'm talking to myself. That self-talk is what I'm reinforcing. could be reinforcing a thought. can't that I'm not dependable or I'm not trustworthy. I don't trust myself. So, therefore I don't deserve whatever it can, that's kind of the way it rolls. Okay.
If I'm not intentional now, because I've spent a substantial amount of time on this thing. I see things like those as, first of all, let's just be aware. Somebody on the other end didn't get a good deal, according to me. So this doesn't excuse any of that. It doesn't make it okay.
But what it does for me is I separate what I did with my value as a person. Okay. My value as a person over here, what I did is over here. And, but that doesn't mean that it's okay that I want to keep doing it, that I accept that kind of behavior and I'm excited and thrilled about it because I'm not excited and thrilled about it because somebody to some degree probably suffered a little bit or felt bad or who knows what, I don't really know, but I'd prefer even not to be able to have that, to do stuff like that.
So what I make it mean is. It doesn't take me very long to go through this. Just say, you know what? I wish I wouldn't have done that. So what am I going to do about the change this next time? So I think about that, about how I'm going to put a reminder that's going to, how am I not going to do this in the future? And then I go make amends the best I can. I try to get ahold of the person, apologize, reschedule, give them a free whatever, try to make it well, the best I can.
And I leave it alone, and I move on. Okay. I don’t make it mean a thing and I intentionally say sometimes I do things I wish I wouldn’t have and thats just part of being a human being. It doesn’t affect mygreatness, my goodness, my this that or the other. It’s just part of living a human life. And that going to be the way it’s going to be. Im not going to make tha tmean that I suck as a human being because I did something that could have been hurtful to another person. Okay.
It wasn't intentional, and even if it was, sometimes I do things that are intentional that hurt other people, and I'm still not going to make that mean that I'm anything less. And I'll talk more about this in a minute, but I'm telling you it's a choice. Okay.
Because let's just say, and here's the thing, thinking this way keeps me more trustworthy to myself and other people. Guess what? If I leave it alone, and I start more and more thinking that I suck and I'm not responsible and you can't trust me and you can't count on me when the chips are down, or you know, half the time I don't make my appointments or whatever.
If I start thinking that, guess what my brain starts doing? I start accepting that belief, and then that becomes my foundation for my behavior. And guess what? The one person isn't the one who missed an appointment. Everything starts unraveling all around me, and people are getting hurt all the time. So this isn't just about me. Okay.
And so this is why, this process, this is basically, this is why we don't fix habits easily, okay, without addressing the meanings because we're not addressing the meanings that created the habits to start with. We're just going to fix the habit or the behavior belief instead of fixing the foundational belief, which is the value belief. Okay.
So our work as, as evolving, progressing people, okay, is not to erase the event or not or to deny responsibility. It has nothing to do with it. Our work, we are tasked with is just to interrupt that automatic conclusion that said, in my example, the automatic conclusion that I would have made was, hey, can't count on you, Shane, to interrupt the automatic conclusion that the event defines our worth.
That event does not define my worth, okay? I'm just telling you flat out right now, I don't believe it. It does not because I don't believe it does.
When you become aware of the meaning making that you're doing, you get some people that most people will never be able to experience. They'll never realize that they didn't have. And that is the ability to choose what an experience means before it chooses for you. Before it decides for you.
Because what it's gonna decide is not gonna be something that's gonna serve your ends to get you to where you wanna be in this lifetime. Take my word for it.
You need to start with value. We've talked a little bit about that. When a person believes that my value isn't variable, that my worth doesn't waiver.When my worth doesn't change based on my mistakes, my outcomes, or other people's behavior, regardless of what you said about me. Okay. Regardless of what you did and whatever.
When I can separate what I've done and what has been done to me with who I am. Okay. Then. When I can do that, okay, and I have a solid value foundational belief, then changing these secondary beliefs becomes much, much, much easie
Now, if I want to do a behavioral belief, these secondary beliefs I'm talking about, then earning more money, it doesn't feel like something's wrong or that I'm overdoing it. It just, It comes easier for me. It comes naturally because my brain's not blocking me in the background.
Being loved doesn't feel like, oh my gosh, something's wrong. Somebody gives you a compliment. You can take it and feel it and accept it and connect with them and thank them rather than, oh, you know, didn't feel right. You know why it doesn't feel right? Because you have a foundational belief that says that's not you. Okay.
When you make growth, and you're progressing towards your goals, it doesn't feel like you're betraying yourself, and it doesn't feel uncomfortable, and something's wrong, and that's why. Okay, so in other words, there's no longer the system doesn't have to expand your brain system doesn't have to defend against you progressing. It doesn't have to hold you back. Hence, limiting beliefs, okay?
Starting with the value beliefs creates the leverage you need to be able to conquer your, really to reach your goals. Okay, then you can go after everything you want to, and it's gonna come so much easier.
Trying to change performance beliefs without addressing these value beliefs. like, it reminds me of in horsemanship, a lot of times we'll see a, lot of times you'll see students or I've done it myself. I used to do it myself, which is I asked the horse to go faster. Let's just say I ask him, I'm trotting, and I ask him to lope. Okay. And then he lopes, and I take a hold of his face. I'm like, whoa, slow down, you know?
And so it's kind of the same thing that happens when you're trying to address or get a goal or do a performance belief before a value belief. It's like you're trying to move forward, but you're pulling on the reins at the same time. Okay, that's basically what that is happening. You can't force it. You can force it a little bit, but it just it doesn't last, it doesn't go well. Okay.
I want to reinforce the idea that intentional value beliefs are not irresponsible, and they're not denial. Okay, that's important. Making beliefs intentional is not pretending that the past didn't happen. What it is, is it's refusing to let that past choose for me what the verdict of the outcome is going to be, and have an automatic conclusion of what that means about me.
Bankruptcy can be a financial event, not a character diagnosis. Divorce is a relationship outcome, not a measure of your worth as a human being. Addiction can become a coping strategy. Okay, you're just trying to survive man with what's going on. Not a sentence, not an identity verdict on you. Okay, just a coping strategy that you did once or you're doing now, whatever.
Separating what happened from what that means about me is one of the most powerful mental or cognitive skills that a person can learn. Okay. This is a big deal. This is a big deal.
If somebody, if you want massive progress, okay, not little incremental improvements, okay. The starting point has to be at this foundational value.
Okay, so like we talked about last time, it's uncovering it, it's questioning, it's having the awareness of what's going on in there. This is a huge first step, okay?
The next is to have it become intentional. So we're going to talk about that. But once you get your value stabilized, where do you want it to be? Your identity, I don't know. It becomes flexible. Behavior chang is, sustainable.
You know, and one other thing about it, just let me tell you this, the way that you see the world changes. Because the way that you see the self is the way that you see the world.
So what you also are going to notice, this is miraculous really, I don't know, to me, maybe you'll think it is too, but the more that you separate your behavior with your value, the more that you do that, really internalize it and feel it and believe it in yourself, the more that you strengthen that belief inside of yourself that nothing is going to change your value that you've done or that you haven't done or that's been done to you, the more that you strengthen that belief, the more that when you look out into the world, you become less judgmental and more loving.
Your capacity grows because you don't look at somebody and you're not projecting all this stuff onto them. You're not saying, you know, I can't believe they did that. Or you're not angry at people.
You just look at them the same way you look at yourself. They may be doing some behavior. It doesn't make it right. You don't have to accept it that you can still love them because you can separate that behavior from their value as a human being.
This is about the whole world. This is about you to start with, and the people that you love, and then the entire world. Smaller beliefs, the smaller beliefs of the behavior beliefs, they fall. Okay. They fall faster because there's no longer a deep wound that they're protecting.
So the next step, okay, the next step in this intentional belief creating process is to decide to choose what you want to believe. Okay? So I like to say what if you could believe anything that you want to do about you?
Just think about it, okay? Because you can.
Think about it and write it down.
Here's a couple of beliefs that I have that you might want to consider adopting. I believe that you and I and every other human, this is going to be, you might not like this. Some people argue about this all the time, but they argue the point with me.
But I believe that you and I and every other person that has been on this earth, that's come to this earth and lived or that will live in this earth is 100%. I don't think there's any bad people.
That's right. No bad people. Just bad things. People do bad things. I've done my share of bad things. You may have done a bad thing or two. I don't know. But a lot of times people do things, you know, and they do behavior. That's what people do.
But I don't believe, and you say, what about the people that did blah, blah, blah? And I mean, it's, it is so sad and so horrendous that what people do, and I'm not excusing that and saying by any means that it's okay.
What people do to each other is hard to see. Sometimes it can just be so sad. I just don't believe in. I heard this from Brooke Castillo. She said that she likes to picture even every little person just like they were when they were little, teeny tiny baby when they first came into this world. And just to believe that no bad people were ever born. We learned how to do some bad stuff and some people have done some horrendous stuff. But when I look at the world that way, it changes, and it's easier for me to accept me and it's easier for me to accept the rest of the world.
So I believe, I honestly believe that God didn't send a single soul to this earth that wasn't 100%.
My personal belief is, and my religious belief is, that we're all sons and daughters of God and there's no way he's going to send anybody. I mean that we are all created in his likeness and that we're all created with a hundred percent value and it is regardless of what we do or what we've done.
So you can think about that. If it makes sense for you to adopt something like that, you can.
But whatever this is, it's up to you. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying you may want to consider the way that I view the world. Because it works. The change that it's made for me has been very good.
So you can believe anything that you want to, but in order to make this process of intentional belief creation smoother and easier, and quicker, the best and the fastest to have the best result, there's going to need to be requirements for this process. Okay, and they're pretty simple.
One is, is the belief needs to be, you need to accept that it could be possible. So you need to, the first requirement is that you need to answer this question, could this be possible? And the answer must be yes.
Now, what if the answer is no? What do you mean, Shane? Here's an example. What if you want to believe that?
What if you want to believe that what if you look in the mirror and you think you're disgusting and ugly and you want to think that you're beautiful Okay. But you can say that and think it, but when you don't. Okay. And you can't accept that that can even be possible. You just don't believe it. Okay.
Or what if you want to, or another one would be that you want to believe that you are, that you deserve all the abundance, and you deserve all the love that's available in this world. All of it. You deserve a perfectly unconditional loving relationship. Okay. And many of them, matter of fact, you deserve all the abundance and love of love that's available in this world.
If you want to believe that, but you're like, man, some of the things I've done, I don't know. You know, you can't quite make it yet. What you will need to do in order to make this process work. You can get there. Okay. Don't remember you. I'm not saying you can't believe anything. You can believe anything.
But you might have to take it a piece at a time for what they call the ladder method. We're going to start, we're going to, here's where I want to be, but I can't accept that. My brain is just, here's what happens if your brain just said that is not possible. And it's like affirmations that you just flat can't believe.
Same thing. If you say and, brain just goes, no, it's not. No, you can't. And it just goes on about its business. Now, if you accept that it could be, that doesn't mean that it's true. You don't have to automatically accept and internalize the belief, you say, what if that could be true? If it could be true, that's enough. That's what you're going for.
You want to stretch it, but not make it too far. So if it's too far, back it down a couple of rungs on the ladder to where you can accept it, really fully believe that one, get it. And what you're going to have to do is hold that in your mind and continue to prove it to be true. And once you fully believe that one, then you can take the next step up the ladder.
Until you get to the belief, and it'll happen to where you want to be. For example, this one that I said, I want to believe that I'm beautiful, but I think I'm just absolutely not. I think I'm ugly. I can't stand looking at myself in the mirror. Well, you may want to back that down in the very beginning to I'm acceptable or I'm average or I'm, I don't know what it would be, but you could come up with something that makes sense for you that isn't quite beautiful or I'm trying to think of what else that would be, but something along those lines that is less than beautiful, but more than what you think right now. Okay. And then do that one because you believe that that one could be possible. Okay.
Do that one for a while. And then we're going to step toward the next one. The other one I said was that, what's the other one I said? I want to be loved. So you can't believe that you deserve all the love in the world because of those couple of those things that you've done. Well, maybe you believe you can have some love or you can be loved by one person, or you deserve love part of the time, or something like that.
It doesn't have to be the whole enchilada all at once, but take a step and go for it, because remember, I'm going to come back to this first thing out of two requirements.
The new belief that you choose. Okay. So I'm going to ask you to spend some time on this, this week, this month, not a lot, just a few minutes each day, and think about what I would really want to believe if I could. And the first requirement is it needs to, you need to answer yes to, this new belief could be possible. Okay. That's one.
Two, it needs to be an improvement in your life. Okay. And how you can know that is it needs to feel better. So when you say it and think it, notice how you feel. If you feel better, if you say, I deserve to be loved some of the time, if that feels better than what you felt like before, that's the answer. Yes, that'll work.
But you need to have those two things. It needs to be an improvement. Your brain and yourself and your subconscious is not going to drive you off the cliff on purpose. If this doesn't look like it's something that's going to enhance your life and it doesn't make you look like it's going to feel better, your brain is going to fight you every step of the way.
So notice how you feel, and it just needs to feel better. Those are the only two requirements.
If you take the time to do this, to go through these exercises that we're talking about, if you need help with this, check us out @stablelivingcoaching.com. These are things that we do.
This is setting you up for a major life change if you want something to change in your lifetime. This is, and if you're not, okay, by the way, just let me make this point. This isn't for those people who have a problem with this. Okay. This is for about every walking soul in the world, because regardless of where you're at, okay, regardless of where you're at, just remember this, as we go throughout our days, our brain is constantly making meaning about everything that's going on about that one, that means about us.
And that is the foundation of our behavior that gives us our results. Hey, we only get a breath for so long. The other day, somebody said we only get so many heartbeats and then the last one beats, and it's over.
So with the number of heartbeats that you have, you'll be able to get so much more out of those days and those minutes that you've been given. If the foundation for your behavior allows you all the goodness and abundance and the ability and the capacity to give to other people and make your contribution to the world, this is a big deal. This is where it all begins.
You are setting yourself up. If you start and go through this process to have the things that you want in this lifetime. If you have a hard time believing that you're 100 % lovable, or if you are 100 % deserving or worthy or any of that, I'm just gonna ask you to take my word for it.
I'm gonna ask you just to begin, I'm giving you some evidence, take my evidence, do the best you can to apply it to yourself, because I'm here to tell you, you are 100%, and there is nothing.
You hearin me, nothing that you have done. I mean, there is nothing that you have done or that you haven't done or that has been done to you that will ever change that. It's just not even up for debate. It never has been. You may have thought that there was a meaning that changed that, but I'm here to tell you that it has not.
And the more fully and the more deeply that you internalize that belief, the fuller and more enriched life and more joy that you'll have and be able to spread to the world I promise you that.
Remember, my friends, stay with me next week. We're the next series on belief creation. This is a process. We're taking it one at a time.
Remember my friends, You cannot fail as long as you Don't Ever Stop Chasing
