Understanding Beliefs

What are they, and how are they formed?

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Hey Substackers,

Welcome to the third post in the series on the mind.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been understanding thoughts — including what they are and where they are formed within the brain. We also explored the inner critic and its motives, and I shared with you all the ways my own inner critic shows up for me.

And now we’re going to delve deep into the next layer that will help us understand the mind – and that’s learning about beliefs.

Why Beliefs?

Because this is where our thoughts and inner critic originally stem from. They don’t just start appearing from nowhere — they are created from a belief. So today we’re gonna look at what a belief is, how it’s created (including the biology behind it), and I’ll be sharing some of the core beliefs my subconscious is carrying.

Next week, we’re gonna bring everything together by understanding the mind–body connection, and then I’ll summarise everything for you in one final post (which will come out in the first week of November — there are five weeks in November, and I’ll use the other four to do our work around managing and celebrating sensitivity – just in time for Christmas!).

A little recap…

Before we move on to beliefs, let’s recap the last few weeks (yes, I am repeating this again — sorry! But I just feel like it’s been quite an educational month with a lot of info, so I wanna make sure you retain it). It’s also really relevant to today’s post, so it’s good to refamiliarise ourselves.

Firstly, we learnt that a thought is a combination of electrical signals and chemical messages in the brain, shaped by experiences, emotions, biology, beliefs, and where you place your focus and attention.

We also learnt that the three key areas in the brain involved in how thoughts are generated are:

• The limbic system (emotional brain)

• The default mode network (where stories are created)

• The prefrontal cortex (the thinking and rational part of the brain)

Last week we learnt that the inner critic is a protective pattern that is rooted in the limbic system, and then travels through the DMN system and the prefrontal cortex. It’s a protective pattern that shows up in all the stages:

– it’s there in emotional discomfort
– it fuels the stories that we loop
– and it judges us for all of that

We also learnt that thoughts are heavily influenced by hormones, sleep, trauma, time of day, the Moon cycles, environment, genetics, and neurodivergence.

I really hope you’ve been able to keep up. I know it’s been a bit like a biology lesson, but I truly feel that understanding ourselves on such a deep level is a key part of building awareness — and as I keep saying, the more we understand ourselves, the more choice we have.

And that’s why we need to look at beliefs — because thoughts and the inner critic stem from our subconscious beliefs. So understanding them gives us even more awareness and choice. And at the end of the day – the more awareness and choice we have, the more disco ball we become.