How Your Beliefs Hold You Back (and what you can do)

A Frightening Reality Of The Modern World

In order to understand the power of your beliefs, let me explain a term that I hoped had already existed, but didn’t find on the internet until recently.

If you’ve spent any amount of time on social media over the past couple years, you’ll know that the dating market has become a complete mess.

We have both highly polarizing men and women—the men and women that are getting the most promoted due to how highly engaging their polarization is—talking about how “men are immature trash”, “women are too promiscuous and will hit the wall at 30”, and so on and so forth.

So imagine that much of the time you spend in our objective reality, actually resides in the hyperreality of the simulated, online world.

And this is true for a lot of people—much of us now do spend upwards of 6-8 hours a day scrolling through social media.

How do you think that starts to shape the world outside of social media?

If enough people start to convince themselves that all men and women are like this—due to being biased towards their subjective negative experience, and the polarizing content they consume—they will start to become untrustworthy of those whom they are attracted to, and act exactly the way in which the shitty men/women in the highly engaged content act.

No longer do these extremely polarizing takes only exist online. The very people that consume this type of content regularly start to act out the content’s teachings so that they exist more in the real world.

The extremism of social media has created this self-fulfilling prophecy feedback loop, where the polarizing takes are the things most engaged with online, which then leads people to focus on/become more paranoid of that in real life, which then leads to them exacerbating that polarizing take by acting it out more in real life.

And the term for this phenomenon, is hyperstition.

Unlike superstitions, which are merely false beliefs, hyperstitions are beliefs or stories that, through their very existence, bring about their own reality or truth.

I’ll give you another quick example of hyperstition I’ve been pondering:

Was AI always destined to become as prominent as it is in our world today, even if we did not create that belief? Or is it the result of our culture making enough tv shows and movies about it, and predicting that “robots will replace most human jobs in 50 years”?

If you’d ask me, I’d say a little bit of both, but hyperstition is exemplified in the latter.

Typically, hyperstition, and the frightening reality of how it can be created through our simulated online world, is portrayed in a negative light.

But I think learning about this can teach us an immensely valuable lesson about our own beliefs.

What Hyperstition Teaches Us

At it’s very core, the term hyperstition means beliefs that being about their own reality.

The human mind is an incredibly malleable and complex organ. Through enough repeated exposure and experience, it can completely restructure which neurons fire off, and grow the amount of neuron activity in a certain area.

If there’s anything social media has taught us, it’s that we can use simulations of reality to make our own realities better, not worse.

Just like you can start to become the very polarizing person that only existed online through the hyperstition feedback-loop, you can curate the content you consume in the online world to bring about an objective reality for yourself that makes life feel incredibly fulfilling and meaningful.

It’s harder to find (because most humans are drawn towards/engage with negativity), but I encourage you to really pay attention to every piece of content you consume, and ask yourself, “Is this only making me more paranoid/negative when I put my phone down and go into the real world? Or do my beliefs about myself and the world feel more positive after consuming this content?”

What you consume, will eventually consume you.

And that consumption can be a force for good, if the beliefs you are getting from our simulated reality online make life more enjoyable for yourself, and those around you.

If you do this for long enough, you examine your beliefs daily, ask why they’re there, how the online world might be shaping those beliefs, and you take action to prove your negative beliefs wrong, you can create hyperstition that brings about a truth of abundance in your reality, instead of scarcity.

Everybody, by virtue of being a human being, has that capability.

Now, I am not telling you to turn a blind eye to the atrocities of humanity.

There will always be suffering, always be difficult times, and challenges that every human must go through.

But how much of that suffering you think you can handle (and how bad it really is), has been shaped immensely by what you’ve decided to engage with over the years in your life—especially, the past few years.

And if much of that engagement has come from negative, polarizing content, then of course you’re gonna think all is doomed.

Use the power you have to bring the visions and beliefs that only exist in your mind, or in the positive spaces of the online world, to create proof and evidence of those beliefs and visions in real life.

This is outrageously difficult—especially when the beliefs that have been solidified in you through repeated exposure to nasty peers, parents, and mentors have been “I’m not good enough”, “I’ll never be fixed”, and “Life will never be worth it”.

But the belief that you can’t change this is, itself, just a belief.

How To Transform Your Beliefs

There’s no greater feeling than discovering that a deeply rooted belief was merely a creation from someone else’s opinions of you—and then proving that negative belief wrong by becoming someone greater.

But this process is not easy to do without guidance—especially when you don’t even know what you’re looking for.

If I knew from a young age how to figure out my triggers, beliefs, and habits, and transform them to unlock my greatest potential, I can’t even imagine how far I’d be now.

And that is why I created my Ultimate Self Mastery School.

The Ultimate Self Mastery School is a place for those who want to actualize their greatest potential, strengthen their self awareness, build better habits, and develop a fulfilling life.

The school features 14 videos with 15+ worksheets, a guided meditation, and an exclusive community where we all hold each other accountable and give further advice.

This course is a culmination of years of research on behavioral science, psychology, and of course, trial and error from my own life.

And it’s specifically designed for those who want to go deeper than superficial YouTube videos/articles, and gain a better understanding of themself.

Being able to actually apply the advice you receive, and get consistent feedback from like-minded people are probably the two most important factors in seeing permanent change.

And I’m guessing you currently feel like you can’t talk to anyone in real life about your struggles with self-development, right?

That’s why our community meets in a group coaching call every other week to make sure we are all staying on the path towards self mastery.

It’s also been an incredible way for everyone to open up about things that they have been going through, have accountability surrounding the habits we are trying to build/remove, and get feedback and advice without judgement.

And because of that, the friendships in there feel genuine.

It’s easily the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever created.

Here's some recent wins from our community:

Watch the intro video on that page to see if the course is right for you.

Hope to see you in the community.

Quote of The Week

Thanks for reading, everyone. Hope you enjoy your weekend.

-Cole