If you want a better life… READ THIS.

Whatever you believe, whether it is a lie or it is true, can manifest itself as truth in your lived experience.

And that is completely terrifying.

Let me explain why.

We limit ourselves by what we believe.

And sometimes we are defeated by our own beliefs before we have even experienced the life we have already decided we cannot live.

We decide what we are capable of. We decide what kind of person we are. We decide what people think about us. And then we go through life experiencing everything through those beliefs.

And I would go further. Personally, I believe that ALL our behaviours begin with what we believe about ourselves.

That is why it is of the UTMOST IMPORTANCE that we check our beliefs.

One of my favourite examples of this is a study about facial scars.

Researchers put a realistic fake scar on female participants’ faces. They showed each participant the scar in a mirror before she went into a conversation with another person.

Just before the conversation, the researcher said the scar needed moisturising. But while supposedly moisturising it, he secretly removed it.

So the participants went into the conversation believing there was a scar on their face.

Afterwards, participants who believed they had a scar interpreted aspects of the other person’s behaviour, particularly the way they looked at them, as reactions to it.

But the crazy thing was that there was NO SCAR.

The belief was still shaping their experience after the thing they believed in had been removed.

And this is what I find terrifying about belief.

Belief does not automatically distinguish between truth and a lie. If we genuinely believe a lie is true, we can begin experiencing life AS THOUGH THE LIE IS TRUE.

Because we interpret what happens through what we believe.

The lie influences how we behave, what we notice and what meaning we give to the things that happen to us.

And then, because we are experiencing it, we become even more convinced.

We no longer think, “This is something I believe.”

We think, “This is something I KNOW. I have experienced it.”

HOW MANY LIES ARE WE EXPERIENCING AS TRUE EVERY DAY?

How many of us completely, wholeheartedly believe lies about ourselves?

Lies about our identity. Lies about our appearance. Lies about how other people perceive us.

Things that feel so obviously true to us that we have never even thought to question them.

Think about an incredibly attractive person. The kind of person you look at and think, “They are objectively, undoubtedly attractive. Anyone with eyes can see that.” Everyone around them agrees.

But they genuinely believe they are ugly.

When they look in the mirror, what do they see?

An ugly person.

Everyone around them can see an attractive person. But when they look at themselves, they see somebody completely different.

They do not see the attractive person everyone else sees. They see an ugly person.

WHY?

Because the lie they believe about themselves has become a reality TO THEM.

You can tell them a hundred times that they are attractive. But if they are convinced they are ugly, they can dismiss every compliment.

“They are just being nice.”

“They do not really mean it.”

Even something that could challenge the belief gets interpreted in a way that protects it.

Do you see what I am saying?

You can be attractive and still experience yourself as ugly because that is what you BELIEVE about yourself.

Now think about social situations.

How many people believe they are boring? That they are unlikeable? That they are awkward, that nobody gets on with them and that they struggle to make friends?

Let me give you two people.

They go into the same conversation with the same person.

The first person goes in thinking, “I am boring. I am not funny. I am not charismatic. I have nothing interesting to say. Nobody likes me.”

The second person goes in thinking, “I am a likeable person. I am interesting. I have something valuable to contribute to this conversation.”

Who is more likely to have a good social interaction?

Now watch how both beliefs can begin to feel true through the experience that follows.

The first person holds back. They have a story they could share, but decide nobody would be interested. They have an opinion, but keep it to themselves. They think of something funny, but decide it probably is not funny enough to say.

The very things that might have interested the other person never get shared because they already believe they have nothing worth saying.

And while they are holding back, they are interpreting everything as proof that they are unlikeable.

The other person looks away for a second because they heard a noise.

But in their mind, it becomes, “They are bored. They do not want to be speaking to me.”

There is a brief silence.

“This proves I am boring. I need to fill the space. I have nothing good to say.”

The other person might not even have noticed the pause. But they have already turned it into evidence against themselves.

Even a smile can get dismissed as somebody just being polite.

So they leave the conversation feeling awkward, disconnected and convinced they have been disliked.

“See? I told you. I am terrible at conversations.”

Now think about the second person.

They believe they have something to contribute, so they contribute. They share the story. They ask the question. They allow the other person to actually get to know them.

They are listening to what the other person is saying instead of constantly asking themselves, “Am I boring them? Do they like me? What do I need to say?”

If somebody looks away for a second, they do not immediately interpret it as rejection. If there is a pause, it can just be a pause.

They are present in the conversation instead of constantly looking for evidence that something is wrong with them.

That openness gives connection a chance to happen. And when it does, they leave thinking, “I enjoyed that. People like talking to me.”

Both people can walk away feeling that their belief has been confirmed.

The first person believes they are unlikeable, holds back and interprets innocent things as rejection. Then they experience the conversation as proof that they are unlikeable.

The second person believes they are likeable, gives themselves permission to contribute and experiences the conversation as proof that people enjoy talking to them.

Their beliefs have influenced what they contributed, what they noticed and what meaning they gave to the interaction.

And now both have an experience they can point to as proof.

That is the part I want you to understand.

A belief can help shape the very experience that makes it feel true.

And this goes beyond what we believe about ourselves.

Imagine somebody tells you that a person you are about to meet is egotistical, narcissistic, arrogant and nasty.

You eventually meet them already believing it.

During the conversation, you mention something difficult you have been through. They respond, “I went through something similar last year.”

Immediately, you think, “There it is. They are making everything about themselves.”

But they might have been trying to say, “I understand. I have been there. You are not on your own.”

An attempt to relate becomes evidence of selfishness because you are interpreting what they said through what you already believe about them.

Then you leave thinking, “They are exactly what I was warned about. I have experienced it for myself.”

But have you experienced who they are, or have you interpreted who they are through what you were told?

Now think about a message that simply says, “Okay.”

If you already believe that person is annoyed with you, you can read annoyance into those four letters. You hear a cold tone they have never actually spoken.

If you believe everything is fine between you, the exact same message can seem completely ordinary.

They might simply be busy. But you feel rejected, and then the feeling becomes more evidence.

“I knew they were annoyed. I could feel it.”

The feeling is real. But that does not make your explanation true.

You believed something. You interpreted what happened through that belief. Then you used your interpretation as proof that the belief was right.

That is how a lie can keep reinforcing itself without you ever realising that you are the one giving it evidence.

This can even reach into the way we experience physical pain.

In a 2011 experiment, healthy volunteers received a strong painkiller while researchers applied controlled heat pain. The drug concentration stayed fixed while the researchers changed what the volunteers expected.

Positive expectations doubled the pain relief compared with receiving the drug without expecting relief. When volunteers were led to expect worse pain, the pain relief was lost under those experimental conditions.

The researchers also recorded changes in brain activity related to pain.

Think about that.

What those people expected affected the pain they genuinely felt while receiving the same medication.

HOW POWERFUL is the brain? HOW POWERFUL and INFLUENTIAL are our beliefs?

So imagine how much influence a belief you have carried for YEARS might have on the way you experience yourself and your life.

Let me give you another example.

One person believes they are lazy. They believe they are stupid, that they will never amount to anything and that they have absolutely no value to offer the world.

The second person believes they are hardworking. They believe they are intelligent and that they have something valuable to offer the world.

Which person do you think is more likely to succeed?

Think about what happens when you believe you are lazy.

You start putting things off. You do not bother trying. You leave things unfinished because, in your mind, that is just the kind of person you are.

Then you look at the way you are living and say, “See? I told you. I am lazy.”

And now your belief has reinforced itself.

You believe you are lazy, so you start living like a lazy person. Then living like a lazy person becomes evidence that you are lazy.

But how much of that evidence came from accepting the belief in the first place?

This is the circle we can get caught in.

What we BELIEVE influences what we EXPERIENCE. What we EXPERIENCE becomes more EVIDENCE for what we BELIEVE.

And the terrible thing is that a lie can begin reinforcing itself through the experiences it helps create.

At first, you believe something about yourself. Then you behave in ways that agree with it, or interpret what happens as confirmation of it, because you BELIEVE it.

Eventually, you are no longer saying, “I believe this about myself.”

You are saying, “I KNOW this about myself. I have experienced it.”

You believed the lie. You experienced life through the lie. Then you used that experience to believe the lie even more.

Before you know it, you have built a CORE IDENTITY around it.

“This is just who I am.”

But experiencing the consequences of believing a lie does not make the lie true.

An awkward conversation does not prove that you are an unlikeable person. Leaving something unfinished does not prove that you are incapable of ever following through.

Yet if you already believe those things, every experience becomes another piece of evidence. And every piece of evidence makes the belief harder to question.

You can end up using the CONSEQUENCES of believing a lie as EVIDENCE that the lie was true all along.

This is why I personally don’t like seeing “I HAVE depression” or “I HAVE anxiety” become “This is who I am.” Sure, you may feel depressed or anxious more frequently in this season of your life, or you may be living with a condition that needs ongoing care. But, my friend, don’t make it your ENTIRE IDENTITY.

Because once “This is something I experience” becomes “This is all I am,” every anxious moment or difficult day can start to feel like proof that you will always be this way.

Acknowledge what you are facing. Get the help you need. But don’t let “I HAVE this” become “I AM this.”

And some of these beliefs were handed to us before we were old enough to question them.

Tell a child repeatedly that they are incapable or a disappointment, and those words can become part of how they understand themselves.

They may avoid things they could have learned, achieved or created because somebody they trusted convinced them they could not.

Eventually, an opinion somebody had about them becomes an identity they live by.

I want to tell you about my joint greatest inspiration (joint with my mum): my dad.

My dad grew up in poverty with two terrible parents who taught him terrible lies about himself.

He had a decision to make.

Would he choose to believe those things about himself? Would he let the life he grew up in determine the future he would build?

Or would he believe something different?

Growing up, we did not have much. In fact, we had very little.

But I remember my dad saying to me, “Son, we’re successful.”

And I remember almost laughing.

I was young. I was foolish. I did not understand what he understood about belief.

I would look around at our reality, at everything we had, which at the time was practically nothing, and think, “Nah, we ain’t successful.”

Everything I could see seemed to contradict what he was saying.

But my dad BELIEVED it.

He believed he was successful in his DNA. It was his CORE IDENTITY.

He had this unshakeable, relentless, positive belief in himself. He chose to believe he was successful before our circumstances gave me a reason to believe it.

He chose not to let what he had been handed as a child define who he was going to become.

And I have watched him become the most successful man I know.

I owe everything I have and everything I am to what he has given me, including his wisdom and the life lessons he has taught me.

And one of the greatest lessons he ever taught me was something I did not even understand at the time.

He did not wait until our life looked successful to believe he was successful.

He believed it while everything around us seemed to say otherwise.

I looked at what we had and thought that told us who we were. My dad believed who he was before I could see it in what we had.

And I have watched the life he built follow the belief he refused to let go of.

It was rooted in belief.

How many people let their childhood, their circumstances and the hand they were dealt define their entire identity?

“I was born into poverty, so I will always live in poverty.”

“I was not dealt an easy hand, so I will never make it.”

“My parents were addicts, so I will always be an addict.”

Somebody taught them what to believe about themselves. Then they spent their life living within it, never discovering who they could have become if they had believed something different.

My dad showed me that you do not have to accept the identity your childhood handed you.

And this is what I believe: the only thing that determines where you will go is what you believe about yourself.

Your childhood does not get to decide who you are. Neither does what people have said about you or the hand you were dealt.

You get to decide what you believe about yourself.

Now imagine that circle working in the other direction.

You begin believing, “I am a hardworking person. I am somebody who follows through. I am somebody who has something valuable to contribute.”

Maybe at first you do not fully believe it. But you start giving yourself a chance to live like somebody who does.

You finish something. You make an effort. You keep a commitment you made to yourself.

And then, slowly, the belief has something real behind it.

You start seeing yourself as a hardworking person, and you begin behaving like one. That behaviour gives you evidence. The evidence makes the belief stronger.

The same process that was limiting you can start helping you become the person you want to be.

But how many of us decide that we are unlikeable before somebody has even had a chance to get to know us?

How many of us decide that we will fail before we have even tried?

How many of us decide that we have nothing to offer before we have ever offered anything?

And then we spend years treating those decisions as facts.

So if you want to become hardworking, start believing that you are a hardworking person.

If you want to become confident, start believing you are a confident person.

If you want to contribute something to the world, stop believing that you have absolutely nothing to give.

BUT you have to believe. It takes a lot of faith to overcome the lies you have told yourself, and if you believe enough, eventually you will start to live like it.

Then LIVE in a way that gives those beliefs something real to stand on.

Make the effort. Share the thought. Finish the thing you keep telling yourself you cannot finish.

And allow yourself to notice the evidence that challenges what you used to believe.

Because if you dismiss every good experience and collect every bad one, even a changing life can keep looking like proof of an old lie.

As your beliefs change, you begin behaving differently. As you behave differently, you give yourself the chance to experience something different.

Then your belief grows stronger because you have begun experiencing it for yourself.

The beliefs you have about yourself can become the boundaries you live within, even when those beliefs are false.

Whatever you believe about ANYTHING will manifest itself as true through your lived experience, so believe carefully.

Imagine what your life would look like if you started to believe you were confident, likeable, charismatic, hardworking and intelligent.

How much of your identity is something you have discovered, and how much is something you have repeatedly believed?

Those women believed they had a scar. They interpreted parts of the conversation as reactions to it. Their experience seemed to support a belief about a scar that was not even there.

How many of us are building a life around something we believe is wrong with us, without ever questioning whether it is true?

Before you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome a scar, make sure that it is actually there.

- Adam