Uncovering the Sensible Lie

Summary

Emma explores the common limiting beliefs we tell ourselves, how our brains create these 'sensible lies' to keep us safe, and how recognizing these can lead to a more fulfilled life. This episode offers insights into neurobiology, cognitive dissonance, and practical steps to shift our mindset.

Key  topics

The concept of 'sensible lies' and their role in self-protection
Neurobiology behind belief formation and change
Cognitive dissonance reduction and defensive pessimism
The impact of limiting beliefs on life satisfaction and regret
Practical steps to recognize and reframe self-limiting thoughts


Key takeaways

Your brain creates 'sensible lies' to keep you safe, not necessarily to serve you.
Recognizing these lies is the first step toward change and growth.
Neuroplasticity means your brain can change at any age.
Limiting beliefs often stem from decisions made long ago, not fixed traits.
Living in fear of disappointment can lead to regret and unfulfilled potential.


 

Key quotes

"Some beliefs are just lies your brain has built for you."
"Your brain rewrites hope to keep you safe."
"The cost of these lies is potential lost."


Chapters

00:00 The common belief that limits us is often a lie
80:32:14 The 'sensible lie' and how it sounds like wisdom
2027:45:42 How our brains rewrite stories to avoid dissonance
4083:19:06 The role of threat detection and safety in belief formation
7361:05:49 The cost of defensive pessimism and shutting down hope
10833:19:16 Identifying specific limiting beliefs: hope, identity, timing
16861:06:09 The debt of potential lost and life regrets
22666:39:38 Practicing awareness without trying to fix immediately
24944:26:22 The power of recognizing and observing your own mind

resources

Neuroplasticity - The Brain's Ability to Change - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/neuroplasticity
Cognitive Dissonance Theory - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/cognitive-dissonance

Get in touch with Emma

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Website https://www.emmajonesmd.com/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:18

Somewhere in your life right now, there's a belief that you believe is your version of being realistic. It's just being sensible. It's just how things are. And I want to gently suggest that at least one of those beliefs isn't realism at all. It's a lie that your brain has built for you. And it did its job. That's why it's still there. But sometimes the hardest limiting beliefs to recognize are the ones that are really good at keeping us safe. Today I want to talk about the quiet lie that we tell ourselves and the one that I think is the most dangerous, which is the sensible lie. A sensible lie usually sounds like wisdom. It shows up kind of wearing the clothes of maturity, or of having learned a life lesson, or finally being realistic after all those years of naivete. It rarely sounds like denial. It just sounds like growing up. And so we believe it. Some of the common ones I hear almost every day are things like, this is just who I am now, or it's too late to change that. Maybe you've said some of these yourself, something like, I've made peace with it. I'm just being practical. And the one that always breaks my heart, hope is dangerous. So I stopped hoping. None of these overtly sound like lies when we say them. They sound like logical conclusions or sound reasoning. But that's exactly why they persist, because that sensibility wrapped around it is what kind of allows us to not recognize that it's actually a lie. Now, to be clear, I have believed all of these things myself. Before I started coaching and practicing yoga, I told myself most of these lies too. So I am definitely not immune. But what I can do now differently because of those practices is that I can recognize them. So let's talk about why the brain builds these on purpose. The reason why your brain reaches for these is a design feature in our neurobiology. Psychologists call one version of this cognitive dissonance reduction. That is what happens when something that you did or something that happened to you doesn't match the story that you have about your life. So you have a dissonance that things don't agree. Your brain doesn't usually update the story. It's often faster and metabolically cheaper for your brain to bend the facts kind of around the existing story instead. So instead of kind of sitting in the gap between what you hope for and what you got, your brain just kind of rewrites that hope itself is naive. That aligns the story, right? Problem solved, at least as far as the brain's concerned. Now everything matches. But you can see that every time you do that, there's a cost. We're going to talk about more about the cost in just a minute. There's another psychological principle that researchers call defensive pessimism. And that's when we lower our own expectations on purpose so that a bad outcome can't blindside us. So this is like, you know, saying we probably won't win the game anyway, or I'm just hoping for a C. And it's a real strategy. And in some situations, it can work very well. But the trouble is that this is really built for short-term specific threats, like a single exam or a single presentation, not for decades of our lives. And when this shortcut is left running permanently, we actually start producing the disappointment because we never really try for anything. And we never really allow ourselves to kind of feel the joy and the excitement or the hope. And allowing the unknown to be unknown is actually part of the aliveness that makes life feel worth it. So if we're constantly shutting that down, we're going to have that kind of empty, hollow feeling. And of course, underneath both of those is something your brain is exceptionally good at, which is good old-fashioned threat detection. Our brain's oldest job is keeping us safe, not keeping us fulfilled or living our life's purpose. So if we're given a choice between a smaller, certain disappointment now and a larger, uncertain one later, most brains are going to take the certain one every time because it's safer. So as we start to notice that our minds do this, I want you to be very clear with yourself that this is not a sign that you are doing something wrong. This is just the system operating exactly as it was built to. That's a really important self-compassion element that we need to bring in as we start to study our own minds. Every time we notice, even the words that we're using, lie, you're lying to yourself. That's not a judgment, that's an observation. You are telling a story that may not be true. Your brain is doing it, your mind is doing it and has reasons, but that they may not be serving. These beliefs may not be serving. That's kind of how we think about what a limiting belief is. Is it limiting us from something that we really want in our lives? So let's talk about a few of the specific lies. I won't unpack all of these today. That will come in future episodes, but I do want to name a few so that you can start noticing where they might be showing up in your life. First, there's the hope one. Hope is dangerous. So it's better not to have any. This one we're gonna spend some time with in future episodes, because there's a real distinction hiding inside it that most people never get shown. So just notice for today that if you are starting to see a track of it's safer not to hope, I don't want to get my hopes up, I don't want to even let myself believe. Any of those kinds of thought tracks that start to show up is somewhere nested in this sensible lot. The next one is the identity one. Things that's those thoughts that are like, this is just who I am now. And it's said as if it's a fact, right? Um, but it's usually closer to a decision that got made so long ago that you maybe don't remember deciding it. And the belief that we are, our personality, our beliefs, our brains are fixed is absolutely something that we are going to overturn if you continue to listen to this show. Our brains are constantly changing. That is what neuroplasticity is. Our brains have the capacity to continuously adapt and evolve throughout our entire lifespan. So no matter how old you are or how entrenched a belief seems, it can change. It can evolve. So this identity belief is inherently a lie. We're definitely going to talk more about that. But you can notice that that's one that's showing up for you. And the other one that's super common is a timing one. It's too late for that, right? I missed my chance. Anything to do with that. Um, this always turns out to be some kind of a feeling just wrapped itself in your calendar, right? Maybe you're feeling like you want to change your mind about your career, and you have a story running that the only time that you get to choose a career was in your early 20s. So if you're in your late 40s or early 50s, you may be telling yourself that it's too late to develop a new career. That's a really common version of this belief. I'm too old to go back to school. Or I'm too young, you know. I mean, could easily also be the other side of that coin. So anything that's sort of a timing-based belief that feels sensible, pay attention. Maybe it's a lie. I'm not going to tell you which one of these is yours. I'd rather that you just notice over the next few days which one of these your mind reaches for when something disappoints you. So if something doesn't go as you had planned, what track tends to show up first? Is it the hope is foolish? Is it the I'm not meant for that? This is just who I am, or is it the it's too late, I'm too old? Maybe it's a combination of all three. Maybe it's one of that I haven't even mentioned yet. But the part that's worth really sitting with is that these lies do exactly what they're built to do. They protect you. What they're less honest about is the bill that comes due. The bill always comes due. And in this case, the currency is potential. The currency is aliveness. You have a little less reaching for things and a little more explaining to yourself why you stopped. And it's not really a dramatic cost. So it's easy to understand how we don't notice because it doesn't really announce itself. It just sort of quietly adds up, but it leads to a large debt of dissatisfaction in life, a large debt of regret, especially as we may be coming to the end of their lives. This is what I see so much in my hospice work. Patients who are dying of disease, age-related, cancer, heart failure, whatever it is that they're dying from, they, if they were a person who believed these lies for most of their life, they have some regret about the path not taken, the relationship not repaired, the dream unrealized, right? There's all this potential, the regret of potential unfulfilled. And so I get to see that very regularly. And so through that lens, have a very clear understanding of the debt. Without that perspective, if you don't work in end-of-life care or are not around people who are in a position to kind of reflect on their regrets very poignantly, this may not be as clear for you. And I understand. And that's part of what I'm here to help you is to tell you more about that and give you ways to explore it. But I'm not asking you to drop all of this today. That would be impossible. Some of them are doing real work for you. And if we pulled them out too fast, it would just leave you exposed with nothing else in its place. So I'm only asking for today for you to notice that it's there. Once you see the kind of shape and the scope of the trade that you made, then you can decide on purpose whether that's the trade you would continue to choose. And if there is one thing that I always want for you, it is the ability to discern for yourself what is good for you. So if you take this examination and say, yes, these are the lies that I'm believing, but they're working for me, and I don't really have any better alternative right now, and that's kind of where you choose to continue to live for now, that's a great choice. There's really no bad choices, but I invite you to at least take a little bit more examination. Just wonder how your mind can be changed. So this week, I just want you to notice that don't try to fix anything, don't try to change anything, just pay attention that when something disappoints you, what's the first sentence that comes up? What's that first track? And write it down. And we're going to come back to a few of these specifically later in the show. But once we've spent more time together, once we kind of get the foundations laid for how all this mind change stuff happens, we can start to dig into these. And I'll teach you some techniques for shifting the beliefs, for broadening your perspective, reframing your views, and bravely and courageously, but with immense compassion for yourself, recognize the tracks that you've been running and then intentionally choose a new track. So that's what I'm talking about. When I talk about the sensible eye, now you'll know when we talk about sensible eyes in the future, kind of what that idea is. You'll know that it's a protective mechanism that's built on millions of years of human brain evolution. Very, very common thing for human minds to do. And the very foundational skill for how we change our minds is by first recognizing what they're doing, being able to sort of step outside and see what the mind is doing, to be able to observe the mind instead of being in the mind. This is going to be the mechanism that we continue to build on so that when I talk about she changed her mind, I'm the first she, I did all of this, and continue to do it because the draft is never finished. Um being able to recognize the places where we are lying to ourselves benignly, not with any malice, but lies nonetheless, is going to be a fantastic foundational skill for building your system of ongoing neuroplasticity so that you build that unshakable foundation beneath yourself so that you become the center, and the center can hold no matter life circumstance. And we get to find hope again and joy and fun and delight and awe and wonder and all these wonderful things that that closing ourselves off from disappointment also close us off from. Life is so much more fun when we live in the full spectrum.