What Do You Believe?
I recently had a conversation with a gentleman that I give my time to because he is hungry to change and asks great questions. Our last conversation went down the path of identifying what he believed.
It sounds simple, but the answer is rarely straightforward. If you trace your own life, you’ll notice a valley, a space between the beliefs you say you hold and the actions you actually take. You feel certain in your convictions, yet your choices often portray a different loyalty. Why is that?
The Divide Within
The root of this phenomenon lies in the contrast between your head and your heart.
Head beliefs are rooted in the cortex...reason, logic, memory. They are intellectual agreements, the things you underline in a book or declare to a friend. They sound clean, rational, admirable.
Heart beliefs live deeper. They are anchored in emotion, identity, and lived experience. When push comes to shove, they overrun the head almost every time. You might swear up and down “money doesn’t matter,” yet if scarcity is buried in your heart, your actions will chase security long before freedom.
If childhood meant going to bed hungry, standing beside your mother when her card was declined, or being mocked at school for not having a lunch, no mantra can erase it. What you think you believe may echo in your head, but the heart always speaks louder.
Why the Heart Wins
Core emotions anchored deep within us often override mental discipline because they are written with the ink of experience, not words. These beliefs live in the limbic system, where emotion and memory intertwine.
You can wake up early, repeat mantras, build routines, and stack self-help strategies like bricks, yet when fear or shame surges, the heart bulldozes it all. This isn’t just poetic language, it’s neuroscience.
Emotional experiences activate the amygdala, which signals the hippocampus to prioritize encoding. In other words: when something carries emotional weight, your brain carves it into memory more deeply. A sentence you read may feel inspiring, but a sentence that moves you is branded on your soul.
Why Emotion Multiplies Stickiness
Research backs this up: emotions multiply “stickability.”
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Studies show, emotionally charged moments are remembered with greater vividness and conviction, even decades later.
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Neuroscientists at UCLA discovered pair learning with a moderate emotional spike (like music) enhances recall of details.
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Other research demonstrates reactivating an emotion tied to a memory can restore up to 70–80% of its strength within hours.
In short: Felt significance is the difference between a fact you nod at and a truth you live by.
The Programming Problem
This is why change feels like fighting shadows and it kind of is. What you believe right now is largely what has been programmed into you.
Your brain doesn’t run truth-tests on every idea....it runs repetition-tests. If you’ve been told something long enough and with enough emotion, it installs like software. “You’re not enough.” “People can’t be trusted.” “Success is for other people.”
What's worse is your brain has a propensity towards confirmation bias. The brain hunts for evidence that supports the story it already believes...even if the evidence is flimsy. It ignores what doesn’t fit and reinforces what does.
You can read a book, agree with every word, even vow to live differently, and yet nothing changes. The head nods, but the heart drags you back to its script.
Doing the Heart Work
So how do you bridge the gap?
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Cement the why behind the what. Make the why deep enough, rich enough, that it stirs you beyond logic.
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Engage the five senses. Don’t just talk about it...taste it, touch it, live it. Experience writes deeper than intention.
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Reinforce with consistency. The same way unconscious repetition carved your current grooves, intentional repetition can form new ones.
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Rewrite the script. Much of your heart is still fortified with words spoken long ago. New words...lived and felt are the only way to cut through the old story.
So ask yourself: what belief lives in your head but not in your heart? What would it take to write it in the ink of experience?
In the end, you don’t live what you think. You live what you believe. And belief isn’t a line on a page....it’s a scar, a song, a story your heart remembers when your head forgets.
Today’s Forced Challenge: I want you to FORCE yourself to attack at least one of these challenges:
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Reframe one old scar: Pick a painful memory that still drives fear or shame. Journal it with a different ending, emphasizing strength, survival, or growth.
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Interrupt the script: When an old thought surfaces..“I’m not enough,” “I’ll never change”...say, that’s programming, not truth. Catch the loop before it runs.
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Pair emotion with repetition: Don’t just recite affirmations, tie them to moments of heightened emotion: after a workout, during gratitude, or in the middle of tears. Emotion makes the words stick.
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Audit your inputs: Track what you’re consuming for a week: news, music, conversations. Ask: is this reinforcing old grooves or carving new ones?
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Choose one canyon to shrink: Identify the single biggest gap between your head and your heart. Commit 30 days to narrowing it with small, intentional practice.
The valley between head and heart doesn’t have to remain a canyon. It can narrow. When it does, something powerful happens: your actions start to echo your words.
The head still matters....it gives clarity, language, and framework... but the heart supplies the fuel. Truth spoken in the head must be felt in the heart before it can be lived in the body.
You must know, you have the power to change these deep rooted ideologies, but it takes being honest with yourself and doing the work.
“The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.” — Blaise Pascal
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