Don’t Wait for Proof to Shift Your Belief!
Okay, so I’ve had the same conversation with several people over the course of the last weeks, and it’s a common discussion when we start talking about intentionally shifting your mindsets. Very often we’ll pin down the thought that’s keeping you stuck and not giving you the results you want. And we brainstorm new thoughts that you could work towards, and then your brain goes “But I have no proof of that, so I can’t believe it, and I have ALL the proof of what I believe now, that’s why I believe it!” So we’re stuck forever, I can never change, all the things I believe are true facts, I give up, cue turtle on its back animation.
This is the moment your sweet brain is being a sneaky little bastard. It’s trying to protect you and keep you from spending precious energy on non-vital things, and we support it. But the idea that I have to have proof of a new thought before I can believe it is actually backwards. (Stay with me, this isn’t a toxic positivity shtick, hold out for the science!)
Literally every moment of every day, a significant amount of your unconscious brain function is filtering out information that it’s deeming unimportant to process, to streamline what you are processing. And that’s great, because without those centers, you would literally not be able to function. Think about how your brain edits out your nose from your field of vision, or how neurotypical people tune out the background noise the fan is making. In fact, differences in these shortcut systems are a big hallmark of autism, but that’s a whole different rabbit hole. Even with autism, your brain is still constantly taking shortcuts to edit your experience of the world down to something manageable.
And it’s not just sensory information that’s being filtered out, the same filtering happens with your interpretations of the circumstances in your life.
We also find that our brains have a natural negativity bias in this filtering system: the details of social interactions or environments that your brain is more likely to not filter out and value more highly are the details that might spell danger and bad things. This makes sense evolutionarily, the brains that remembered the ten berries that were safe to eat but not the poisonous ones died early, and the brains that hyperfixated on the potentially dangerous noise in the woods that might be a tiger tended to stay alive. The state of your nervous system also impacts the acuity of this negativity bias, so those of us with chronic activation or trauma (i.e. most neurodivergent folks) tend to have an even more heightened bias towards fixating on the negative, because our brain is stressed about staying alive and safe.
Here’s where the sneaky little bastard part comes in, though. If I believe a thought, especially a negative one, like “my boss is an asshole,” then that belief informs the shortcuts my brain is making, and my brain will have a confirmation bias to only value proof that supports the thing I already believe. So when I’m telling someone about my asshole boss, it’s easy for me to find proof through the terrible thing they said in our last meeting, or the fact they denied my request out of hand. But my brain either forgets or finds a way to discount that time they got gifts for our team or how kind they were to my coworker’s kid or the time they jumped in to help the team through a crunch time.
The more tightly held the belief is, the more your brain holds on to this confirmation bias to protect you from having to rethink your entire belief system. A belief about that one stranger at the grocery store being a dick is probably easier to shift and combat than a negative belief about yourself that you were taught in your childhood. So if we’re talking about a core belief like “other people’s perceptions of me determine my worthiness and loveability,” trying to brainstorm proof that “other people’s opinions of me have no impact on my worth” is going to feel like slamming your head against a brick wall repeatedly, and your brain will go “I have no proof, I can never believe this!” That’s a super normal brain reaction.
But knowing that your brain has both a negativity bias and a confirmation bias to only process proof to support your current (often negative or limiting) beliefs can actually be empowering. Being aware of the bias and noticing it happening makes it much easier to change, and to not take everything my brain tries to insist upon so seriously. And then we can treat your brain much like a stubborn animal, and build up neuroplasticity by starting to notice the evidence that we had previously discounted.
I love the analogy for this technique of sending your brain on a “fetch quest,” if you’re a gamer, or the image of throwing a ball for a golden retriever to go fetch. Often, if we ask a question, your brain automatically starts trying to fetch the answer for you, even if you can’t quite believe it yet. In the above example, if your brain offers the belief that we’re trying to get away from, “other people’s perceptions of me determine my worthiness and lovability” we can try on responses like “What proof do I have that might not be true?” or “What else could maybe be true here?” Or if we know the next thought you’re trying to work on believing, we can ask the brain to go find proof of it. So the practice thought “it’s possible other people’s opinions of me have no impact on my worth” becomes “How might it be true that someone can have a negative opinion about me without it meaning anything about me as a human?”
If you try to jump straight from your current thought to the goal thought, finding proof of the goal thought is likely going to reeeeally hard work, because it’s a huge stretch for your brain. You could get there, but it would take longer and probably feel super frustrating. So we can find the tiny steps towards that goal thought, like “it’s possible some people’s opinions of me don’t matter” or “everyone always has differing opinions, so there is no one right opinion about me” and ask your brain to go find proof of those thoughts. Over time, the practice of finding proof that different beliefs could be possible builds up to huge shifts in your brain.
The big point is this: proof of a new thought will almost never be presented to you on a silver platter, you have to go out and find it. You don’t have to have proof that a thought could be true before you can work on believing it, you can go out and find that proof for yourself. When you notice your brain is really sold on believing a thought is a true fact because of all the proof you have supporting it, remember that there’s more evidence than that part of your brain is acknowledging, and get curious about where that blind spot is.
Finding those blind spots on your own is incredibly challenging of course, especially in the beginning. That’s what coaches and therapists are for! Seek support and relationships that will (gently and compassionately) challenge you on those beliefs. But see the exercise below if you want to start poking at it in the meantime!
Journal Prompts
Note: please do not attempt to tackle any sources of significant trauma or distress with this technique without support! Starting with some emotional charge gets to beliefs your brain is holding onto, but nothing that feels deeply intrinsic to you or unsafe to approach.
Write down some emotionally charged beliefs that you have a lot of proof to believe. Who in your life is a “terrible person”? What is a negative trait about you that feels fixed and permanent? What story do you have about something that happened?
With each belief, what proof do you have that something else might also be true, or that your brain is being an unreliable narrator?
What thought might be more helpful or more positive here? How is it possible that thought could be true? (If that feels out of reach, what thought could get you a tiny step in that direction?)
Want some help tackling these patterns? Schedule a free chat with me today!