Overcoming Limiting Beliefs: Adaptive Thinking for Personal Growth

Overcoming Limiting Beliefs: Adaptive Thinking for Personal Growth

Jeffrey Besecker:
This is The Light Inside, I'm Jeffrey Besecker. Our Beliefs. Besides shaping our self-concepts, they also profoundly influence our perception of our relationships and the world we inhabit. Beliefs play a crucial role in shaping our self-concept, influencing our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. They shape our perception of ourselves by creating a framework through which we selectively interpret our experiences and interactions. Belief structures also influence how we perceive our relationships and the world around us as they filter our reality and determine what we pay attention to or how we interpret events. In today's episode, we consider the profound influence of subconscious and unconscious patterns have on our belief systems and logical reasoning. We'll explore the concept of semantic analysis. As a dialectic thinking model, semantic analysis involves examining and interpreting the meaning of thoughts, associations, words, and phrases within their context, allowing for a deeper understanding and the synthesis of ideas. By considering multiple perspectives in the relationships between concepts, semantic analysis encourages critical thinking and the integration of diverse viewpoints, fostering a dynamic and evolving understanding of the subject matter. Dialectic thinking puts a higher emphasis on resolving contradictions through dialogue and exploring opposing ideas to reach a higher level of awareness and adaptive consideration. And as a deeply connective relationship tool, it allows us to see things from the perspective of other people, empowering our ability to deeply integrate feedback and input from each other. We'll also discover how semantic analysis serves as a therapeutic tool to transcend limiting beliefs, highlighting the critical roles of emotional regulation and dysregulation throughout these processes. Tune in as we uncover the cognitive mechanisms behind belief perseverance and its impact on our ability to process new information and emotional interactions, when we return to the Light Inside. When it comes to mobile service providers, with their high-rate plans, extra fees, and hidden cost or expenses, many of the big-name networks leave a bad taste in your mouth. Mint Mobile is a new flavor of mobile network service, sharing all the same reliable features of the big-name brands, yet at a fraction of the cost. I recently made the change to Mint Mobile and I can't believe the monthly savings, allowing me to put more money in my pocket for the things which truly light me up inside. Making the switch to Mint Mobile is easy. Hosted on the T-Mobile 5G network, Mint gives you premium wireless service on the nation's largest 5G network. With bulk savings on flexible plan options, Mint offers 3-, 6-, and 12-month plans, and the more months you buy, the more you save. Plus, you can also keep your current phone or upgrade to a new one, keep your current number or change to a new one as well, and all of your contacts' apps and photos will seamlessly and effortlessly follow you to your new low-cost Mint provider. Did I mention the best part? You keep more money in your pocket. And with Mint's referral plan, you can rescue more friends from big wireless bills while earning up to $90 for each referral. visit our Mint Mobile affiliate link at thelightinside.site forward slash sponsors for additional mobile savings or activate your plan in minutes with the Mint Mobile app. Today we're joined by Mark Forney. Mark has dedicated his career to raising human consciousness and facilitating transformative life changes through his insights in his program. As a psychotherapist, life mastery coach, and founder of Limitless University, Mark focuses on helping us create conscious, adaptive belief systems to realize our optimum potential. His work as a filmmaker, inventor, and author further underscores his commitment to leading a limitless life and supporting others in their journey towards personal and societal betterment. Wow, Mark! What a mission. It truly is inspiring. Thank you for joining us today. On behalf of our community of change-leaning professionals, we're grateful to share this interaction. How are you today, my friend?

Mark Fournier: I am just rocking it. I love Mondays. All these folks are just so worried about their Mondays. I go, it's a whole new week. It's a whole new start.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm typically very energized. I will transparently admit that this weekend was quite a whirlwind with Father's Day and events and whatnot, but I still have that I'm ready to do it day. So let's do it.

Mark Fournier: Oh, I love it. I was so looking forward to this call. I just had Such a wonderful and even profound experience with our last call and walked away just thinking, there's a guy I need to keep in my life. You're just remarkable, your persona, your character, the whole bit of it. And of course, our shared interests.

Jeffrey Besecker: Thank you. I'm sitting back and humbly soaking that in and thank you for sharing that. Likewise, truly was an inspiration speaking with you last time and making that connection and really opening up that door to peel things back. I love when we can get those situations where where we kind of get past some of our own blocks and just go down that path of consciousness together. So thank you for truly sharing and setting that stage. And I'm really excited to dive in. And I feel like we had an entire two or three podcasts out of our pre-call. It's going to be interesting to see how things evolve from there because literally I think we could probably chunk that down into bite-sized bits and just have like a week worth of Markism. So I'm going to call Markisms, how you view life and your perspective. was just so refreshing to balance those ideas back and forth. I think inherently, when we find that kind of grows and expands on its own accord. I'm fumbling words here, and I'm going to acknowledge that, but we'll just accept it and flow with it.

Mark Fournier: Oh, that's, yeah. Well, it's still early enough in the week to, uh, we'll get all of our, uh, all of our verbal faux pas out of the way. Would you prefer that I have this format or… It works as is.

Jeffrey Besecker: …vertical or horizontal? It works as is. Um, actually we do, most of our posts are in that vertical format now. See, that is, that's vertical. Yeah. I have to think about that sometimes still after years of,

Mark Fournier: graphic design still gave verticals the long rectangle horizontals the kind of oh that's funny well and you've just reminded me as you talked about your your art background i that was one of my favorite things about you is you are an omni

Jeffrey Besecker: You call that a polymath in some regards? Yeah, I love that phrase.

Mark Fournier: Yes, it's a wonderful term. I elicit that any chance I get because, hey, who wants to be cornered in one little single spot? Life is so full of exciting and interesting

Jeffrey Besecker: That falls right in line with our conversation today. And I think we probably got a lot of set up and where we're going to go ultimately with our questioning and whatnot. And I'm glad we're recording as we roll heads.

Mark Fournier: Wonderful. Wow. Well, I've definitely been looking forward to this call. And as we set up my Limitless University, which is a total nonprofit designed to get this kind of information out to the world for those who don't have the funds or the means to, whether it's conventional learning models or hiring coaches and so on, it's to make sure that everyone has access to the insights they need to create these limitless lives. And I immediately told my team after you and I chatted, I said, when we start including our own hosted podcast where I'm the host and looking for the interviewees, I said, you've got I said, put him at the top of the list. I can't wait to interview Jeffrey. and share his wisdom and insights with my audience, because you're I think you are at least as fascinating as an interview guest as you are as a host.

Jeffrey Besecker: So hopefully you'll be open to that because I am definitely from a certain perspective. It's been an interesting journey to approach because I do dive in feet first so much from, you know, that 40000 foot depth and finding that ability to connect and communicate. Some of that's very expansive for most regards and subjectively judged and evaluated awareness. I have a very systemic approach to life. I have a very fourth person perspective approach to life. Um, and that ability, a lot of times to adapt and step out of some of our self frameworks and just say, just look at the concept, you know, we're overly imbibing ourselves and habituating ourselves to personalize in a lot of regards. healthy depersonalization and letting go of all of that, being able to just step back and look at it, to me, has become our greatest asset.

Mark Fournier: Obviously, that's a topic I would love to expand upon whenever. And by the way, I'm assuming that we're still just setting up and getting rolling.

Jeffrey Besecker: man, this is set up. This is not even the show. One of the best lessons I learned about podcasting, and I definitely adhere to this subjective conditioned experience. I'm going to name it for what it is. Advice from Lewis Howells that always said, the pre-conversation is the conversation. What you establish in that initial interaction sets the tone of the entire conversation that evolves from it. How deeply do you go? How deeply do you connect? So why start that? Because what we do then from an emotional standpoint is start to judge and evaluate before we hit that green light. We start to prepare. We start to engage a lot of those subconscious and unconscious process. If we come in green, you know, most of us are already relaxed. We're not hopefully looking for that projection. With that in mind, if we'd like to do a little bit of structured setup, I'd be grateful to do that. And I have that laid out here and we can launch in from that kind of typical standpoint.

Mark Fournier: Oh yeah, you know what? I'm a pretty wing it kind of guy, so I'm happy to follow any format that you're comfortable with.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm sure I'll adapt. I try to be adaptable, you know, and there again, that becomes my comfort marker there, you know, it's just adaptability is the model. When you develop kind of a familiarity and a relationship and build associations on that concept of adaptability, you just learn to flow and move with the pattern. Sick. This is very, very subjectively generalized, you know, and there again, from my 40,000 foot perspective, where we create a lot of those gaps is losing some of that data or distorting some of that data or limiting some of that data. Again, trying to bring it down to a little bit relatable level, maybe a little bit more procedurally actionable, a little bit more chunked down version of it. I'm trying to get some descriptors here for somebody to latch on.

Mark Fournier: Well, and you know what? That's where the two of us could go so deeply that we could lose our audience in about five minutes. And, and then there's no takeaways because they're just like going, what, what? I never even heard that word.

Jeffrey Besecker: I don't know what they just said. Let's talk about that in a moment. Where are we from those expectations on the takeaway and how we might manage that in adaptive manners first and foremost. Yeah. Yeah. We allow those expectations. to limit us simply because it's new, you know, new phobia. I'm experiencing something new that's triggered a response in me or it's triggered a reaction in me, differentiating to response, maybe being more regulated and adaptive in reaction, maybe being a little bit more chaotic, a little bit more static and a little more, quote unquote, disorganized. Yeah. I'm building upon a future message here that I don't know that we'll address because I know it may throw a curveball. Right now, at this point, I'm at a 40,000 foot level with it that kind of needs my own filtering and function to parse it out, build a little bit of foundation under it. But looking at a principle, neurotic psychological entropy. And once you learn the gist of it, it's like such a groundbreaking practice if you don't get scared of it. And we do get scared of things. And that's all right. That's scaring us. Just bring your awareness to it. Hidden eroticism itself is such a fun aspect in our traits, our character and traits or categories of character and traits that we hear that word. We have so much cultural programming around it, historical programming that just the word itself flips us up. Okay, here it is, neurotic psychological entropy. So entropy is that chaos theory of confusion, you know, things being a little bit disoriented. So ways we engage confusion and uncertainty in our life becomes the core principle in how we effectively and characteristically apply our traits, habits, and behaviors to address that uncertainty. Hopefully that breaks it down in more actionable and chunked down relatable ways. I'm going to test this on you because you're very open and vulnerable to that risk. So that's something to play with. I don't, we won't go into depth on it today, but I think, you know, somewhere down the line, I'd love to just share that concept with you and bounce ideas around, because I think we can both benefit and grow from that. I love it. Everything from how, when we're approached from new information, here's a new word that I've never heard before. How do I shape my response to that? How do I adapt to that? You know, new phobia again, being just that fear. of the situation, that fear of the data, you know, the fear of the unknown. It's basically that fear of a new experience, and then the complexity grows.

Mark Fournier: Which is, I think, that's a kind of a foreign concept to those of us who thrive on expanding our comfort zone. That almost defines us. The new experience is a construct of our whole purpose. It's like, this is what I live for, are these new experiences. This is how, and of course a growth mindset, I think, greatly encourages that desire to put yourself out there and experience things that you never have before. Of course, you've got to be vulnerable and open to the possibility that it may be very uncomfortable at first, but I think that we thrive on it.

Jeffrey Besecker: I could not agree more at this moment. And I think, Mark, inherently, without doing the normal setup, we've probably handled most of my introduction, your assessment of your perspective of why you're doing this work, and probably half of the first two questions that I was going to frame. So if you want to step back now, and drive that approach by actually posing those things and then carrying on from here. I think that might be productive for us. Let's go through that if you're open.

Mark Fournier: I am ready and sorry if I just glanced around for a moment. We have our fireplace is gas is leaking and the gas guy was coming. I've been sending notes all morning saying, yeah, come at noon because I will be in a podcast and he's out there banging on the door because he showed up. But luckily my Mary appears to be here home now.

Jeffrey Besecker: So I think I just threw it right out the door. so we're good surfaces for us today and really are social imperatives being those expectations and assumptions we make where we try to control what's happening in our environments

Mark Fournier: Yeah, well, and that's something I can talk about all day long.

Jeffrey Besecker: I can relate to that because I literally just spent the last month with waking up about every day. And as this tornado went through that we had back, you know, the first of May, there was large scale tree damage across our entire small rural community here. at probably about a mile and a half wide path. Luckily, the destruction pretty much stayed consistent with just wiping out trees, fences, vegetation, like at a very minimal structural damage. And thank all powers that be, no one was injured or hurt. With that in mind, you know, I've spent the last month waking up. I still kind of have this form of PTSD with it, where I'm going to label it a form of PTSD because it's imprinted that sound. And it's like I'm waking up and some days just questioning is that. a chainsaw I hear or am I just projecting it and hearing it, you know, because I've heard it so prevalently in our environment for the last month. And when it's not there, I'm not hearing it. And I have to question my reality. Is it there and I've tuned it out or is it finally done? And we start to assess this. So it's an interesting exploration of watching how our environmental influences play out.

Mark Fournier: Oh, well, yes. It's everything you just said.

Jeffrey Besecker: And we're off at the races and running. And are you sure, Mark, that at a future date you want to have an interview with me? Because if you do, we might both bring our running shoes.

Mark Fournier: Well, I will know better than to bring more than a tiny handful of questions, because every question you can turn the answer into a into a quite a tome, I'm sure of it.

Jeffrey Besecker: So my wife tells me She just some days looks at me and she'll give me a side. And she's like, not today. Not today, honey. Can you just give my energy level is not there to meet the tasks of not today. And I very humbly acknowledge that. Yes, dear. I realize because I'm a very verbal processor in my everyday life. So it becomes part and parcel for engaging those areas of our somatic experience, even beyond the brain, where I, when I feel now the block comes down. because it's that breath of fresh air that's like we build all this shit that keeps it out. I'm going to call it that because it becomes somewhat of a shitty situation where we're just swimming in it and hindering that ability to just consciously connect. So I'm back off on the tangent and then inevitably. illustrates one way that structure for me, and I can acknowledge this, somehow forms an interaction for me to consider throughout all of my actions. I'm already kind of inherently dodging the structure of a normal podcast and normal conditioning. So let's step back and start with that introduction, if we might. Fair enough. Mark, building on the strength and depth of our past conversations, we're all intrinsically aligned and interconnected on the conscious level. To begin, please share with us what inspired you to pursue this mission of transforming consciousness and how you believe it will ultimately improve our shared human experiences.

Mark Fournier: Wow, well, okay, I love it. I'm very fortunate, and it's a perfect example of the impact we can have as parents on our children. Although, as we all know, once we've had children, our greatest influence is generally in the earliest, the formative years, because once they start to hang out with their friends, the peers begin to have a much greater impact. And then, of course, society and so on. But I was raised on this. My mother was a highly enlightened and evolved individual who, because we had a compromising childhood, an alcoholic father, and then divorce, and then a very abusive alcoholic stepfather, she was always looking for ways to help us cope. And of course, her goal was really to help us thrive. It wasn't just survival skills. And she, whether intrinsically or not, I don't know what the catalyst was for her, but she understood the power of the mind. At the age of 12, she handed me two books. Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz and Think and Grow Rich by Hill and said, you get started on those and if you find an interest, I'll help you in any way I can. Of course, I became immediately just passionate about the idea that we could actually take far greater control of our lives from the inside out than by trying to control the world around us. which is what 99.9% of the world is trying to do. We are operating under the belief that it's this world around us that determines the quality of life, our life experience and the quality of life that we either enjoy or resent. And of course, that's the one thing we can't control. I don't want to blow the soundbite, so I'll stop there for a moment because there's a part of me that just wants to expand on that and say, for example, I want to give you a chance to interact.

Jeffrey Besecker: First and foremost, thank you for vulnerably creating that space where we can acknowledge and consider that past. You know, that had to be such a raw, emotionally vulnerable space. It also had to present a great deal of challenge for you to overcome personally, Mark. So thank you for sharing that with us.

Mark Fournier: Well, it's my pleasure. In fact, I found that the last thing an audience, whether it's an audience of one or of a million, the last thing they want is to think that the person they're listening to was born with a silver spoon up their nose. we could say that they can't relate. And our vulnerability, I think, helps them recognize that we get it. And I mean, I was living in a car when I was 17 years old. My stepdad hadn't paid taxes. I came home one day and everything was gone. They were hauling the cars away. The house was up for auction and my whole life was turned upside down, even though it was already a pretty challenging childhood. At that moment, I realized that these tools that my mother had been exposing me to, and of course by then I was on my own, getting my first audio was The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale, and it was based on As a Man Thinketh and some other things. It was actually a record player. I mean, it was a record, and I played that over and over, giving me these insights on how to create a better life. But When you're 17 years old trying to finish your last year of high school and you're living in a car, you suddenly realize these tools aren't just to help you become successful. They can give you tools. They can give you the ability to handle virtually any situation. And so I believe that it serves us all to be open and transparent and vulnerable. with those around us, because it does create a space for them to be able to hear that, okay, maybe they do understand my predicament or my situation, whatever it might be.

Jeffrey Besecker: Mark, from that perspective, our belief structures filter and influence our perceptions and inform our experience in diverse ways, experiences. We often cling to beliefs that are rooted in our psyche and when we're presented with contradictory, even I gotta laugh. I'm fumbling today. I'm trying to search here and maybe it's because I'm trying to reach too far out and be too succinct about it. Let's acknowledge that. All right. And it also has been about I'm going to make excuses here now. OK, I can't focus in because I'm not going to build that perception of creating a diversion from it. So I'm just fumbling today.

Mark Fournier: Fair enough. And hey, you know what? There you just got to share your vulnerability with the audience and everyone listening as days when they fumble. And they're like, oh, it's not just me. I can have a podcast of my own because it's OK to fumble.

Jeffrey Besecker: So looking at that aspect of forming those beliefs and comparisons and automatically starting to project and assume how we believe and feel other people are experiencing things, their emotions that arise, how their perception of framing those interactions occur, even to the point where we start to build that inferred or projected understanding of they have such and such attitude. Let's look at the idea of Silver Spoon, if you're open to that. All right. This person was born with a silver spoon simply because I feel and believe they aren't able to relate to my experience because they aren't mirroring back having that same experience. Let's start with that perspective. Oh, my God. We all have the same experiences in those perspectives.

Mark Fournier: Yeah, so right off the bat is the interesting assumption that if somebody was born under ideal circumstances, we might say the silver spoon, they have no issues with questioning whether or not there'll be a roof over their head or food on the table. They may have been flying around in private jets from the time they were born. It's in our culture, now this is not worldwide, but certainly in the Western culture, is the belief that those people have a better life, that they have an easier life, that they don't have as many issues and challenges and so on. And that belief alone creates a bias. However, once you have either experienced it yourself or you've seen firsthand these folks who have a lot of resources, we could say. Mostly, of course, we measure that by how much money they've got in the bank or how big their house is and so on. We find out that, oh no, they have just as many challenges as we have. It's just a different kind of challenge. I've had a chance to see life from both sides now, as the song goes. I've looked at life from both sides now. I can promise you, especially knowing that my one-on-one coaching clients are ultra high net worth entrepreneurs, mostly millennial And so that means that a lot of them are fairly young to have the kind of resources they have. And they may start calling me at first thinking, oh, I'm going to help them expand their empire, which I'm happy to do, but that's not where we end up spending our time. It's showing them how to have a balanced life because they quickly discover that they have just as many problems as anyone. It's just, again, not necessarily, they may not worry about putting food on their table, but there's succession plans that have to be worked out as we get older. And there's children that are being raised in these environments and who are incredibly perhaps materialistic entitlement. And they're like, how do I navigate this? How do I keep from raising these monstrous spoiled brats who will go on with their trust funds and eventually become so bored that they die of drug overdoses because they can't find joy and happiness, that it won't keep up with the pace that they've set. And so, right off the bat, it's understanding that our reality, and this is my definition, but I've found it to be pretty true over time, is really little more than the stories and beliefs that we accept and even more so focus on. That's it. It's our reality. It's not the reality. We don't know the reality. We can get into that later. But our personal reality, it's just basically stories that you believe. So when you use the word belief, to me, it's like, boom, we could talk for hours and hours about the power of belief. Because if I believe that my life is a disaster, well, I guarantee you, I'm going to have $10 billion in the bank. My life's a disaster if I actually believe that. But if I believe that I have the most incredible life I could have ever dreamed of, and I've only got $5,000 to my name, I've got an incredible life. And let me counter that.

Jeffrey Besecker: All right. Sure. Cutting it. Sorry. I'm jumping ahead. Oh, you cut me off any time. I'm not backing off in the cat. So I apologize for that, for stepping on toes. So no, no, no. Stop away. Let's consider that with a little more context. So from that perspective, are there not people that we encounter every day who inherently, especially as a coach, I know at least 10 people a week, I speak to or encounter, and that's a very subjective number. I haven't counted it, and I can't verify it by saying, here is the example, here is the example. On an approximation, 10 people a week who absolutely have a distorted perception of their self and their abilities, where they see, even despite high level of success, depending on how you slice it. I'm not going to get too far into ingraining my own subjective beliefs on success. They experience a high degree of what would commonly be known as success, Yet they inherently have that completely counter-adaptive, maladaptive sense of self, of personal construct where I don't feel worthy. I feel like I have to constantly be validating things by being perfect. I feel like if I make an error, I can't accept the fact that I've made an error. There's kind of your three core limiting belief systems that tend to jump up very frequently. Yet they still have success. Does that not then form where we start to form some of those biases in generalizing?

Mark Fournier: Wow. Well, as always your questions, I could give you 10 different answers on each different part of it. So we'll, we'll start, start with the, with the basics is when you said they're distorted sense of self and right off the bat, is it possible that we all have a distorted sense of self, right? That no matter who we are, what the circumstances, our sense of self, how we see ourselves, our self perception, self image, self values, and so on. Is it possible that there is an infinite number of ways that we could be seen through multiple lenses? And so starting with the idea that we all technically have a distorted sense because it's distorted in the fact that any lens distorts the image. You take a camera back in the days when they actually would change the lenses and you pointed at something, a spider, and if you have a wide angle lens, it will distort the image and make that spider look like a teeny little dot 10 feet away. You put in a zoom lens, it will distort the image and the spider will look 10 feet tall and only an inch away. Those are two very different ultimate scenarios. It's the same spider. But that lens determines almost everything we experience. And so because of that, by the concept that we can only experience life through these various lenses, technically it's all a distortion. The question is, is the distortion a healthy one or not? And so the folks who are successful right off the bat, of course, as you've already said, what is your definition of success? So beginning with that, you have people who, I break life into 10 different categories in terms of health and wellness and well-being and relationships and financial security and career and so on. Generally, I have a program that It's a life balance test. In fact, it's online. You just type in life balance test in your store and it's free. And you can take the test to see how balanced your life is. Well, my one-on-one clients, the uber successful, They'll score a 10 in career, a 10 in financial security, but they may score a 3 in relationships. Because how did they get there at the age of 30? How are they worth 50 or 100 million dollars at 28 or 30 years old? Well, they made certain choices and sacrifices. And so everybody's going, wow, he's so successful. And yet he's saying to me on the side, my wife is leaving me, my this, my that, I'm miserable. The whole world thinks I'm successful, but obviously something's missing. So let's start with that. And as always, I'm sure you'll prod me along.

Jeffrey Besecker: to get the answer you're looking for. First and foremost, what an awesome tool to simply be open and available to adaptive feedback. I'm going to frame things as much as I can from that idea of adaptability today. Growth and change is adaptability. You know, that's the broadest generalization and the broadest practical term we could probably put it in. You have to adapt it and evolve it. You have to allow it to become something other than what it's currently being. Would we not agree on that to some extent?

Mark Fournier: We do agree 100%. You can't physically be in two places at the same time, at least not according to our standard understanding of physics until we get our teleporters all worked out.

Jeffrey Besecker: We haven't quite figured that all out. We're still growing and adapting toward that concept.

Mark Fournier: Actually, for 10 seconds expanding on that, it's one of the main things I teach, which is you don't just create or eliminate things from your life. You typically take whatever's there, let's say a habit, And folks are like, does this habit serve me? No, it's causing me problems. It's bad for my health, whatever, smoking, whatever it is. And they just try to stop it. But that's not how the brain is wired. We don't just stop a habit. That's a pathway. That's like a road. You can't just make the road go away. What you do is you build another road. And you use that road so often that this one, through disuse, eventually grows old and becomes washed out and eventually fades away. Those are the neuron connections in your brain. So you replace the negative habits with the positive habits. You replace negative beliefs that don't serve us with beliefs that do, thoughts that don't serve us with ones that do. And that makes a huge difference in terms of this adaptability. I'm not looking for just random new experiences. I'm looking for experiences that are positive and constructive that I can use to replace the ones that don't serve me, the ones that are dark or negative or hold me back in some way.

Jeffrey Besecker: Let's look at that, if we might, through an adaptive lens. Are you open to that? Oh, yeah. So if we're comparing those two paths as a road and we automatically start seeing the path, we're going to what's the Whitman, the two paths, two paths, converting the woods. And I took the lesser of the two, the one less traveled. So let's look at the two paths from that perspective. Exploring the role dehabituation plays in transforming habitual thoughts and behavior. What happens if we automatically go down one path and then start to form the opinion or the inferred belief that now we've discarded the other path? We burnt the boats. I'm going to go to Tony Robbins. We burnt the boats. Haven't we somehow cut off our perspective and view of that path and its possible potential in the future to some regard?

Mark Fournier: Yeah, it's a great question. There's a couple of parts to the answer.

Jeffrey Besecker: Obviously, I go by the Limitless Coach for a reason. See, I'm thinking systemically here. Where might we have automatically created a perceptual limit because it becomes a limit of a belief in some regards, that old limit law. We've taken the one vehicle and run down the path and discovered now that our belief system and values became a limit in that regard. Yeah, this had an inherent flaw that wasn't present. I'm going to use analysis today and metaphors. We've now purchased the vehicle and we're traveling down and it's not even the path. It's the vehicle that's getting there that has become the limit because we've cut our ability off to turn left now and even get back on the other path in our belief system. Because of the limit, because of the perceived fault and flaw, we're not able now to adapt back to the other pathway. Moving towards semantic analysis, semantic analysis referring to the way we interpret and process incoming information by drawing upon existing knowledge frameworks and conceptual associations stored in the somatic memory where all of our experienced base learning is stored. This cognitive processing shapes how new experiences and facts are contextualized and integrated, especially as we consider the impact of metacognition. Mark, in this regard, can you explain the concept of metacognition and how it influences our belief structures or conscious associations?

Mark Fournier: Well, in fact, you could use to stay with your metaphor is you traded your Lamborghini and for a four wheel off road SUV, which is great if you want to go off into the desert and go bump around. But if you want to go 200 miles an hour, OK, you're kind of screwed. Same thing, though, that Lamborghini is not going to be worth crap when you go off roading. You know, it's got like a four inch clearance and you're kind of screwed. What do you do when you're saying Lamborghini or SUV or off-road? What am I going to do? And that's the interesting thing about this whole concept of the limitless being, leading a limitless life, is I create this limitless potential so that we start out knowing we can go in any direction, 360 degrees, drive any car you want in 360 degrees. Let's start with that. And then, as we move forward in life, and this is the way the human mind, the brain, is structured, is, in fact, the neurons are structured this way. As we learn, we're learning both what serves us. Serves us means, basically, does this make my life or the lives of those around me better? Or what doesn't serve us? And so, by the way the brain is structured, the idea is that we're supposed to learn over time which choices are better than the others, which choices better serve us, knowing that at some point, if we choose this path, we will eventually eliminate or reduce access to the other path. with the idea being that this is a better path for us. Over time, over experience, we've discovered that the version of me that doesn't drink alcohol is a happier, healthier version than the one that drinks alcohol that has a couple of martinis every night. Over time, my brain has said, okay, this is better for me. But of course, this is When we get into metacognition and, of course, disobituation, I am consciously choosing paths that better serve me. Even though, and I love that you're saying it because you're kind of going, yeah, but you're playing a little devil's advocate, but doesn't that mean that you are creating limitations? I'm setting you up here.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, you keep them coming. The shoe's going to drop. I'm going to bore you. Oh, I love this.

Mark Fournier: So, Maybe you can look at it this way. So the difference is, yes, I am creating limitations by choosing this vehicle over that one, this path over that one. But the most important part is I'm choosing these limitations. I have chosen to limit the amount of time I spend with toxic human beings. I've chosen that. Now, does that mean that there may be some toxic individual out there from whom I could learn a great deal?

Jeffrey Besecker: So is it a human being that's toxic or is it a toxic pattern of behaviors? Do we subjectively automatically draw them into a corner and box them in with binary thinking by saying as a human being you're automatically toxic based on your behaviors and now I've formed a perspective that you are unable to change and now I'm moving away from you and discounting you based on that assumption. My God. Is that adaptability?

Mark Fournier: Yes. Yes. And your point is well made. The challenge is, as you can see, we can go down this rabbit hole so fast and so far where every single thing I say, you can counterpoint by saying, but isn't that your distorted perspective? And the answer will be, yes, it is. Yes, it is. I just happened to believe that my distorted perspective better serves more folks than some other distorted. But it's always going to come back to that in the toxic individual. That's still me labeling someone as being toxic. And are they toxic? Well, no. Basically, there's no such thing as a person who is all anything. So there's your binary thinking. I don't teach dogma. All or nothing, black and white. The world is anything but. black and white. It is everything in between to an infinite degree. And so we are really getting to learn about, rather than letting haphazard habits and belief systems that have been shared with us, and just accepting them throughout our lives and letting these habits and belief systems and stories control our lives. Basically, what I'm coming along and saying, well, that's how the world lives, but that's not how it needs to live. You get to decide which stories, which beliefs, which habits best serve you, which paths, which vehicles. And is it possible that you'll choose poorly from time to time? Yeah, but at least you chose and you know why you chose and you can always go back. In our case, you can always swap that SUV in for the Lamborghini. What if you had a 10-car garage and you had one of every kind of vehicle and you just pick the one that best serves you for the moment?

Jeffrey Besecker: I love that illustration. That's the limitless thinking. I am inherently grateful, first and foremost, that we do have the ability to have opposing views or a contrasting view in our conversations. We do have the ability to meet conflict in those and challenge and question them, and then also be able to spot differences and be adaptive to just consider them. So framing in that regard, Mark, are there times where we're sometimes exercising willful blindness, where we discount those with filters? I'm going to frame it like that. And then the shoe's going to drop in a minute that I mentioned a moment ago. So I want to hear your perspective on that.

Mark Fournier: Absolutely. This concept of expanding our comfort zone, they call it a comfort zone for a reason. So there are plenty of times when we're introduced to a new belief system that is very uncomfortable. It doesn't support our current belief system. And now we've got the conflict of which of these belief systems do I want to allow into my life or accept or allow into my psyche? And more often than not, it's the one that's already there because that's comfortable. even though this one isn't serving me, even though this belief system gets me into lots of trouble or makes me very unhappy. Believing in some kinds of conspiracy theories that the world's about to end on any given day at any given moment, I don't want to live my life that way. If it's going to end, I'd rather be surprised. I'm going to be really, really happy right up until the moment it ends. So this is where the real power comes from. It's by looking at this belief system and saying, oh, wait a minute. Here's what I believe in, and I could be wrong. See, I tell that to my clients. Anytime somebody wants to argue, I say, I don't argue. You see, an argument isn't a, that's not a growth opportunity. That's just two people trying to be right.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'll discuss all day long. A framing how we perceive argument in our constructs.

Mark Fournier: Well, to me, an argument is all ego driven.

Jeffrey Besecker: It is all about winning. Well, everything we do is ego driven and we could get into that. I know there's no end to this. Everything is driven, but not always in the way that we choose to accept and believe because we discount certain portions of that. We'll get to that in a moment. I think it's strained a little bit. I want to hold with an idea here.

Mark Fournier: Let's hold with this idea of willful blindness, which is common, very common.

Jeffrey Besecker: Willful blindness is just simply filtering or ignoring a perspective, a potential, looking at limitless values. Let's reframe back from my perception of your theory and your principles and how you drive things. And this, again, is my subjective view of it. So being open to those limitless potentials and perspectives, sometimes we are willfully blind or run away or avoid those potentials. Would you not agree in some regards?

Mark Fournier: I 100% agree, and like I said, to the extent of saying that's pretty much the human condition. There are those unique individuals who have such a passionate growth mindset that they are doing the opposite. They are always asking, you're one of them. You're doing it right now and constantly saying, is it possible that there's a belief system out there that better serves me? Could I be wrong? But that's not the human condition. We want to be right about what we have. If there's time, I've got this metaphor that I use called the glass box that describes. Okay, well, great. So this is kind of helps people get a an understanding of reality as they know it, as well as the reality of others, and it creates tremendous compassion and empathy for others as well. You can use this in your life in multiple ways. So, imagine that just before you're born, your consciousness is just loading out in the ether, floating out in space. There's no right, there's no wrong. As Shakespeare said, nothing is right nor wrong, but thinking makes it so. You're just kind of like in awe, just looking at the spectacle of what is, of the universe. And then as we're born, our consciousness is placed inside of a six-sided glass box, just so that we don't just dissipate in a million different directions. So it's in this glass box and we're still observing the universe as it is. Facts are just simply facts. There's no opinions. There's no right or wrong. And so this is the closest we ever come to seeing reality for what it actually is without any filters, without any interpretations. But from the moment we're born, everything starts to turn on. The mechanism that helps us survive instantly kicks on. We discover things in our infant a stage such as being hungry is bad. I don't like to be hungry. That's bad. So imagine you don't want to forget this. This is an important lesson. So you write it down on a sticky note and you put it on the wall like you would stick something on the refrigerator so you don't forget.

Jeffrey Besecker: And most of the time we lose track of the fact that we put that note up there.

Mark Fournier: Well, but see now what's happening is we're going to reinforce this because it makes it easier for us. We don't want to have to think about every single thing we do and ask the question, should I do it this way or that way, this way or that way? The brain wants to very quickly create a construct of this is good, this is bad. It wants this binary thinking because it takes much less energy and you can make decisions very quickly when it's either left or right instead of 360 degrees of truly infinite directions, because between each of those degrees are sub-degrees. So in this case, you have cold is bad, that goes up, being warm is good, being held is good, or good, being alone is bad. And these are just simple thoughts as an infant, is being fed is good, being hungry is bad. But over time, we start putting up more and more notes. As we reach our teens, years by then, we've just about covered every wall. Because we are observing constantly, the brain is designed to do that, is to make decisions about, again, survival, what's good, what's bad. And by the time we've reached young adulthood, all six sides are covered. They're not just covered, but they're covered in some cases five notes deep because, well, as Goethe wrote, we see what we're looking for, right? We hear what we're listening for. And so we're looking for proof that this is true, this thing we've decided, whether it's a certain ethnic group is lazy, another ethnic group is industrious. We create these generalizations. Again, it makes life very simple to navigate when everything's basic and generalized. Until now, we've got it, it's reinforced, it's what we know. We have now created, this is my reality. I look around, I see all the notes, and I now know this person's toxic, this person's good, this one's bad, this is a great opportunity, bad. All the decisions we're making are based on what's these notes inside of our box. Now, two things are happening here that are really critical. One, is we can no longer see reality for what it is because all the walls are covered. And so this is what we know, this is what we believe, and this is how we live our lives now. It affects our beliefs, I mean our feelings, our behavior, our choices. The other thing that's happening is everybody else is doing the same thing. Every time you look at somebody's behavior and you go, what the hell was he thinking? What the hell? Their behavior, if it seems inappropriate, it doesn't make sense. Well, what's happening is you're basing their behavior based on what's inside of your glass box. But their box doesn't look the same. You know how I know? Because they don't behave the same. They don't feel the same. And the moment we understand everyone's behavior is totally appropriate for what's in their box. Now that box can also include genetic constructs, something that because they, you know, right now that The theories are pretty much that our personalities are between 40 and 60 percent. You see the whole range. Between 40 and 60 percent we're born with. If you have more than one child, you know that that's probably true. My daughter, when she's upset, she gets sad. That she got from me. My son gets angry. He got that from his mom. And I mean, we saw it from the time they were like a couple of months old. So when we're able to sit back and ask the most important question, which is, I wonder what's inside of their glass box, because whatever it is that would explain their behavior, the choices they made, why they feel this way, and so on, it's not they're good or bad. No, they just have a different reality than I have. The other question is, does my reality serve me? Do all the images inside of this box, all those sticky notes, do they serve me? And the answer will be, some do, some don't. Well, then I get to spend the rest of my life questioning, thank God for Einstein, question everything, question every single note inside of that box. Pull it off and say, is this true? Are there any exceptions to this? Are there any versions of this that I could replace this note with a better one? Sometimes I'll just pull all the notes off and I get to peek out at reality for what it really is without any interpretation. And you know you're doing that when you don't say good or bad. You just go… That's interesting, or wow, that feels exciting. So I'll stop there and see where you want to go from that.

Jeffrey Besecker: Belief perseverance can be observed as deeply ingrained adherence to established behavior patterns, underpinned by our core desire for two things, security and predictability. How do we break these patterns and adapt them? Disruption. Therefore, shifting the habituated patterns of our response. Ever wonder why we tend to double down on our beliefs when faced with challenging perspectives? This cognitive bias, known as the double-down effect, serves as an emotionally protective coping mechanism, especially in the face of noophobia or animatophobia, fear of new things and emotions, retrospectively. This helps us avoid the discomfort of conflicting information by reinforcing our past beliefs, even when they're proven wrong. We can witness this effect when we think about a time when there was an urge to resist changing our opinion despite overwhelming evidence. Perhaps we denied, distorted, or disassociated from the facts. This is our psyche's way of using ego processes to shield us from the uncomfortable truths. Imagine you're in a break room at work, scrolling through your phone, when a news article catches your eye. Climate change accelerating faster than predicted. We've always thought climate change was exaggerated. Then your colleague, Emma, passionate about environmental issues, shares compelling evidence and personal experiences. Despite feeling an urge to resist, her words make an impact. Later, you reflect on the conversation and realize your initial reaction was a defense mechanism. Determined to change, you start researching tools to overcome limiting beliefs. By practicing mindfulness and engaging in open-minded discussions, you begin to confront uncomfortable truths and grow personally. Mark and I discussed some creative methods for identifying limiting beliefs, challenging our conventional need to find immediate solutions. In our next installment, Mark and I explore how facing these truths can lead to more informed perspectives. Sometimes the road less traveled is the one we patiently wait on. and ponder. Stay tuned for part two of this three-part discussion, where we explore how to begin chipping away at the stubborn beliefs that hinder adaptive growth, diminishing our ability to engage in the optimum circumstances that empower a life beyond our limitations. If you found value and meaning in this episode, please share it with a friend or loved one. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community. Thank you for joining us on this journey, and we'll see you next week. This is the Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker.