Think Thursday: Belief Echoes & Why Change Feels Hard
Hey. Welcome to Think Thursday from the Alcohol Minimalist Podcast. Think Thursday is all about your beautiful, brilliant human brain. We're talking neuroscience. We're talking behavior change.
Molly Watts:We are talking about your mindset. Are you ready to get started? Let's go. Well, hello, and welcome or welcome back to Think Thursday from The Alcohol Minimalist. Think Thursdays are all about neuroscience, behavior change, and how to use that brilliant, beautiful human brain of yours to live with more peace and purpose.
Molly Watts:Today, I wanna talk about something that I think every single human being wrestles with at some point, and I often hear about it. I hear it a lot, quite honestly, in my work with people as they work to change their drinking habits. And it's this idea that change is hard for you, or that you're someone who just can't change, that you're someone who doesn't really like change. And all of these ideas, these thoughts, I really want to talk about what happens when we get that kind of belief system in place, and how the feeling that shows up from that is fueling what is the result that you're getting with regards to behavior change, because you're not actually failing at change. You are caught in what I would call is a belief echo.
Molly Watts:And let's talk about what I mean by that. A belief echo, I'm going to say, is a thought that you have practiced so many times for so long that it doesn't feel like a thought anymore. It feels like truth. It feels like your identity. It feels like just who you are.
Molly Watts:And it's not something that you consciously say. It's internal, and it's well rehearsed, and it's kind of in the background. But you've heard yourself probably say phrases like this is just who I am, or I've always been like this. Maybe you have some negative things like I don't stick with things. I'm never I'm not consistent.
Molly Watts:I'm a great starter, but I never finish. These are things that people often, these self limiting beliefs that people hang on to, and they're so subtle that you may not even notice that you're thinking them, but they are literally driving the bus of your behavior. And the real kicker is that left to its own devices, your brain doesn't challenge these belief echos. In fact, it protects them. Why does it hold on to these, even these unhelpful, self limiting beliefs?
Molly Watts:Well, that's because your brain, which we've talked about before, is a pattern machine. It loves familiarity. It likes things it can predict. And belief echoes, they feel safe even when they're painful. And so we can layer in some neuroscience on top of this.
Molly Watts:You know, I love my neuroscience. And specifically, it's the confirmation bias. I'm sure you've heard about this before, but confirmation bias is your brain's way of filtering the world to match what you already believe. It's a cognitive shortcut that helps the brain conserve energy. So if you believe deep down, I'm just not the kind of person who sticks with things, then your brain will automatically notice every instance when you didn't follow through.
Molly Watts:It will ignore or downplay the times that you did, and it will store all that evidence to reinforce the original belief. Now it's not lying to you maliciously. It's trying to keep your identity consistent because that feels safer than the uncertainty of change. But here's the paradox. To change, you actually have to stop believing one thing before you can build evidence of the new thing.
Molly Watts:And that's what makes it feel hard. You're asking your brain to let go of the known identity, the one it's protected and reinforced for years, and believe in something that you haven't fully lived yet. That's what that's and that's really important for you to hear. Change isn't hard because you are broken. It isn't hard because you're someone who just can't change.
Molly Watts:It's hard because you're believing the stories that you're holding on to from your past more than you believe your possibility for the future. When people say change takes time, what they often miss is this change takes thinking time. It takes repeated intentional thoughts that build a new narrative before your brain will actually believe it's true and help to have you feel motivated or determined so that you can take actions that create the results to make it true. Here's an example. Let's say you're working on being someone who just follows through, who keeps their promise to themselves, who does the things that they say they're going to.
Molly Watts:Your belief echo says, I never stick with things. But you decide to try instead this thought, I'm learning how to follow through. At first, your brain's not buying it. It's going to offer all the past proof it has to counter you. And that's not a sign that you're doing it wrong.
Molly Watts:It's a sign that you're changing the script. And like any muscle, that neural pathway just needs repetitions before it gets strong. So how do you start shifting a belief echo like this? Let me give you a few science backed steps. First, we have to notice we have to name that echo.
Molly Watts:Pay attention to those thoughts. What belief do you keep rehearsing without realizing it? Do you always is the tune I always give up. This never works for me. It's too late for me.
Molly Watts:I've heard that one a lot. Call it out. Awareness turns the volume down on these self limiting beliefs. Recognize it as an echo, a belief echo of the past and tell yourself like, that's who I was, not who I'm becoming. Normalize the confirmation bias, right?
Molly Watts:Say to yourself, Oh, that's my brain showing me my past evidence again. That's not a fact. It's a pattern. This isn't toxic positivity. It is accurate neuroscience.
Molly Watts:Your thoughts are not permanent truths. Say that again. Your thoughts are not permanent truths. They are just signals that have been strengthened by repetition. You can think something else.
Molly Watts:I remember when I was first learning about this about managing my mind and becoming a better thinker, and the the lone phrase, every thought you have is optional. Not correct, not right, not true, but optional. If you don't like how you feel when you think something, then you want to start practicing thinking something else so that you can create a belief around something else. Don't aim for something that you don't believe. Right?
Molly Watts:We got to practice bridge beliefs. Reach for your next best believable thought. Something like, I'm figuring this out. I'm experimenting with being someone who follows through. I'm becoming more consistent.
Molly Watts:Change might still be hard, but I am no longer telling myself that I can't do it. Those bridge beliefs keep the confirmation bias from snapping you back into the old story, but they also don't create a lot of cognitive dissonance where your brain is going, no, no, no, no, no, you can't, you can't. And let's document new evidence. If your brain's going to look for evidence, find feed it something new. At the end of each day, ask yourself, what's one small way I proved my new belief today?
Molly Watts:Even if it's tiny, write it down. One moment of showing up, one pause, one reframe. That's how new belief systems are built. Sentence by sentence, rep by rep, thought by thought, and day by day. The belief echo that you can't change or change is hard or I'm not someone who likes change.
Molly Watts:I can't change. It's just that. It's an echo. It's the past. It's loud because it's familiar, not because it's true.
Molly Watts:You don't need to feel confident to start thinking differently. You just need to think on purpose. And you need to do it often enough that your brain starts to echo something new. That's how identity shifts happen. They don't happen all at once, but they happen one thought, one decision, one neural pathway at a time.
Molly Watts:That is all I have for you today on Think Thursday. If this message resonated, send it to a friend and remind them that they are not stuck. They're just rehearsing an old belief. As always, you can think on purpose, keep practicing new thoughts, and until next time, choose peace. I will see you on Monday.
