Why the Belief Exists Before You Can Change It

Show Notes

Before the work of changing a limiting belief can begin, there is a prior step that most approaches skip: understanding why the belief formed at all. Brian draws on the awareness, reflection, analysis, action framework from his book A Mason's Work to argue that behaviors which justify inaction are not malfunctions. They were designed to do exactly that. The young brain encountered real risk or vulnerability at some point, found a response that was both socially acceptable and inaction-reinforcing, and then solidified that response into a default.

This is the episode in the week's sequence where Brian makes the case for honest reflection before any attempt at substitution or replacement. The signal that gets transmuted from honest desire into false gratitude is not random. It is following a groove worn into place by repeated use. Knowing that does not fix it, but it changes the nature of the work from trying to overwrite something to understanding what it was built to protect.

The episode closes with a preview of what comes next: now that the origin is clearer, what does it actually mean to do something about it, and where does the gavel fit into that process.

• Why limiting beliefs are adaptive responses, not random malfunctions
• How the brain selects for responses that combine social acceptability with inaction
• The way a single transmutation costs little but a thousand build a cell
• Common rationalizations that function as a preservative layer against growth
• The reflection and analysis cycle as a prerequisite to meaningful action

Understanding the design intent of a belief is not the same as excusing it, but it is the only honest starting point for taking it apart.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Brian Mattocks

Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D

What is A Mason's Work?

In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.

[00:00] And yesterday I said something at the end of the episode that I want to come back to.
[00:03] When we lose the signal, that honest signal about what we feel and what happened,
[00:10] and we kind of subvert that or turn it into the approval of friends over this sort of should of gratitude,
[00:20] we tend to lose that forever. That's not hyperbole.
[00:23] It's just how the mechanism works at scale and over time.
[00:26] One kind of transmutation doesn't cost you much, the transmutation.
[00:34] A thousand of them run kind of automatically over years, and the signal stops arriving.
[00:39] Not because there's nothing there, but because you trained yourself not to feel it.
[00:43] And that suppression becomes the default.
[00:46] That kind of stuck becomes the entire walls of the cell you've created for yourself.
[00:53] So before we talk about what to do, we need to talk about where all this comes from.
[00:57] Not that we're going to just kind of Freudian our way through this problem,
[01:02] but rather if we don't know why we do the things we do,
[01:06] we certainly can't in many ways spot them when they come up and then come up with a better solution as we go.
[01:13] So this is a kind of double application of the middle of the process,
[01:19] the awareness, reflection, analysis, action process that I mentioned in my book.
[01:25] And so we're going to go back and forth between that reflection and analysis cycle here
[01:30] as we talk about how we turned this strong response into a subverted response of gratitude
[01:38] and then an approval seeking behavior through, you know, talking to your body over pint.
[01:45] And so when we start to look at this, it's best to look at the objective, right?
[01:52] The things we tend to believe about the world are designed to do something for us.
[02:00] They're a genesis that is creative in its application.
[02:05] We are thinking up solutions to preserve and conserve and manage risk.
[02:15] As people grow and age, they change the way they interact with the world.
[02:23] Here's a kind of place to start looking for this stuff.
[02:26] When you find that you have a behavior that justifies you being comfortable and sitting still,
[02:38] that was the design intent of the behavior.
[02:43] So when you were growing, when you took a risk one time, you had this response where it's like,
[02:50] hey, rather than go through all of the pain and suffering of real risk and real vulnerability or whatever,
[02:57] I just kind of swapped out for the easier solution.
[03:03] This is biologically normal, right?
[03:05] So I don't mean to suggest that you're in any way broken because this is the way your brain works.
[03:12] This is the way a lot of brains work.
[03:14] And so moving to a place, finding an emotional response in a given situation that is both socially acceptable and justifies inaction,
[03:24] or even better, justifies inaction and at the same time gets you attention,
[03:31] this is like choice behavior for the young brain.
[03:35] The young brain matches onto this behavior and then solidifies it into a default response.
[03:41] So you go from being able to meaningfully take in the world the way it is,
[03:47] and essentially using these stimuluses when you're confronted with them,
[03:51] to then find a way to justify staying stuck.
[03:57] And oftentimes we do it in a way that seems super productive.
[04:02] Of course I should be grateful.
[04:05] Of course wanting more than what I have is greedy.
[04:08] Of course men like me don't pursue that kind of thing.
[04:14] But these kinds of rationalizations are all designed to act, again,
[04:21] as this almost preservative layer to keep the flower from seeing the real world,
[04:28] to keep it pressed and in a safe space so that you don't have to go out and do the things.
[04:34] As we work to this, as we talk through this over the, you know, tomorrow's episode as well,
[04:40] we're going to figure out kind of what to do about it.
[04:44] And how do we take those really, really strong responses that we get
[04:48] and not turn them into all of the normal kind of negative things that we would have expression wise,
[04:56] all of the kind of hard responses.
[04:58] We're going to learn to subvert that and turn it into something useful over the next two episodes.