#9: Basix 3 – Thoughts and Beliefs

All stress is essentially caused by a WISH that something was different about ourselves, our past, or our situation. Accepting ‘What Is’ helps to reduce stress. There are 4 ‘shitty beliefs’ that cause us stress and these need to be changed with 4 ‘shit-hot upgrades’. The process to do this is ‘Journalling’. Eventually, with practice, you will be able to apply these upgrades ‘on-the-fly’.

Transcript:

Good morning guys, it’s another magic morning out here.

Today I want to talk about Basix number 3, which is Thoughts and Beliefs.

I’m Ian Schell and I’m glad to be alive.

Our brains are basically a biological supercomputer, the brain itself is the hardware, the beliefs are our operating system and our thoughts, words and deeds are our outputs.

So every thought, word and action that we have is underpinned by our beliefs. Now, if we want to change any of our thoughts, words and deeds, We need to address the beliefs that power those. Not such a simple process, but it is possible and it takes a little bit of practice but we’ll get there and we’ll go through that process.

Now, all of our stressful thoughts are basically generated by a set of 4 shitty beliefs.

The 4 shitty beliefs:

The first of these is that ‘Shit is not going to plan’.
The second is that ‘I or they should have done shit differently’.
The third one is that ‘I’m missing out on shit’.
And the fourth one is that ‘I’m a piece of shit’

Now basically anything that is causing you stress will generally fit into one of those 4 categories. Underpinning each of these 4 beliefs is a wish. A wish that something was different. A wish that you’d done something differently, that someone else had done something differently, that you could go back in time and change things. And this wish is the difference between reality and what you would have like to have happened and this is what causes a lot of the stress.

So the ‘4 shitty beliefs’ have a corresponding ‘shit-hot’ upgrade, and this is what we need to apply so we can get from wishing mode to acceptance mode.

The 4 shit-hot upgrades:

So shitty belief number 1: ‘Shit is not going to plan’ can be upgraded by the belief that ‘shit happens’ – Life is a rollercoaster, it’s full of ups and downs. Take the good with the bad. It’s quite often that these bad moments in life, is what generates a lot of opportunities and a lot of learning for us. So, there is actually good things in the bad times.

So shitty belief number 2 that ‘I or they could have done shit differently’ can be upgraded with the belief that ‘I or they did the best with the shit they had at the time’. Now what this means is that no matter what happens in our life, pretty much every person tries to do the best they can with tools and the thoughts and the beliefs they had at the time. So accepting this fact, helps to reduce our stress.

So shitty belief number 3 that ‘I’m missing out on shit’ can be upgraded by the belief that ‘When I lose shit, I gain shit’. And this means that in every situation there is value. Every time that you miss out on something, you also gain some experience and some knowledge and some wisdom that maybe next time you might do things differently.

And finally shitty belief number 4: ‘I’m a piece of shit’ which essentially means that you are de-valuing yourself, that you are calling yourself bad names, all these sort of things, can be upgraded by the belief that ‘I’m always shit-hot’ and what this means is that our value as a human being is always the same. Now self-esteem is a gauged value that’s all in your head. But the reality is that our value as a human being, is exactly the same as anyone elses. We were born on this planet, we all go out the same way, and the analogy that comes to mind is the $100 bill, you can fold it, you can scrunch it, you can dip it in a piece of shit, you can grind it, but at the end of the day it’s still worth $100. That’s the same for a human life. Our value as a human being can never be under-written or degraded. And this acceptance that we are always worthy is what helps us to reduce our stress.

So there we have the 4 shitty beliefs that cause us stress, and their equivalent shit-hot upgrades. Now what we need to do is apply these upgrades to our beliefs, and the process to do this called ‘Journalling’.

Journalling to upgrade our shitty beliefs:

So essentially we sit down, with pen and paper, write out a situation that’s causing us stress, that causes us emotion, and write it all out in full, all the colourful language, all the emotion, all the thoughts, all the hatred, anything that you want to put down on paper, just rip it out, the more the better.

Now once you’ve finished writing this out, then you go through and you analyse all your wording. When you analyse your wording, what you need to do is check the 4 shitty beliefs, and identify those in any of your language. So circle any words or any sentences that correspond to one of the 4 shitty beliefs that cause us stress.

Once you’ve written it out and you’ve identified all the shitty beliefs, then what you need to do is re-write this and re-write it in such a way that we can apply the shit-hot upgrades.

So, with this ‘Journalling’ process, you may need to do it several times. And if you go through your stories and you find that you still feel stress or still feel emotion, chances are you need to keep going through this process until that emotion or stress subsides.

So with re-writing a story and ‘Journalling’, the idea here is to get to an acceptance of reality, and that is what helps us to reduce stress. And eventually you’ll get good at this process. If you do it enough, it’ll become habit and you’ll be able to do this on the fly while bad things are happening to you. You’ll be able to apply the equivalent upgrades to your thoughts as you are running.

So to recap:

Our brains are a biological supercomputer, our beliefs is the operating system working on that computer, and our outputs are our thoughts, words and deeds.

Now, if we want to change our outputs or our emotions, we need to go through the 4 shitty beliefs that cause us stress and apply shit-hot upgrades and that helps us to reduce stress.

So that’s it for me today guys, thank you for joining me. If you found value in this video, please like and share it.

Leave any comments, suggestions or questions in the boxes below and I’ll get back to you.

Have a great day and I’ll talk to you soon. Seeya.