Good Life Project - How 7 Core Beliefs Shape Your Health, Happiness, & Success | Shawn Achor

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

Shawn Achor spent twelve years at Harvard studying the science of belief and success, and his TED talk has been watched more than 25 million times. His new book, The Power of Beliefs, grew out of research with the NFL, NASA, and six Marine battalions at Camp Pendleton, and out of watching his own daughter fight for her life three months early.The 7 core beliefs that control much of our lives, without us knowing itWhy believing you’re alone in your effort can make hard things harder.The two small words that turn a hollow pep talk into a path to success.What a stranger's ten seconds on an escalator taught Shawn about the difference between mattering less and not mattering at all.A five-minute weekly habit Shawn's family calls the Memory DeLorean, and what it does to the story you tell about a hard season.How time-stress can make you abandon everything you believe is important.How to harness hidden beliefs to feel more alive and connected, and thrive in all parts of life.For anyone in a season where the ground feels tilted against them, this is a reminder that the tilt might be more changeable than it feels.You can find Shawn at: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | Episode TranscriptCheck out our sponsors and resources: Visit Our Sponsor Page Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So what if no matter how much you thought you were in control of your life, there was a core set of beliefs, largely invisible to you, that were secretly running the show determining success or failure in nearly every domain of life, from work to relationships to mental and physical health? So often, we're told to fix our habits or build better systems and just try harder. But what if the real driver underneath all of that is the beliefs we hold about ourselves, about other people, and, you know, about the world. And what if every attempt at change was forever limited by these underlying beliefs and the only way to truly live the life you want was to make them visible and then do what's needed to rewire the ones that need rewiring. My guest today is Sean Aker. He spent 12 years at Harvard studying the science of belief, happiness, and success. His TED talk has been watched more than 25 million times and his new book, The Power of Beliefs. It grew out of research with the NFL, NASA,

and six Marine battalions at Camp Pendleton and also watching his own daughter, fight for her life being born three months early. In this conversation, he breaks down seven core beliefs that shape how we experience life, beliefs like whether we matter, whether we're alone, and whether our actions actually make a difference.

And we talk about why the same situation can feel just completely different depending on the story we tell ourselves, how stress becomes more damaging when it feels meaningless, and why even small belief, shifts can create big changes in health happiness and performance. If you have ever felt stuck in the same patterns, this conversation offers a fresh and practical way to look at what's really going on and what it takes to move forward. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan

Fields and this is Good Life Project. And we'll jump right in after this short break. I'm fascinated by the topic that you have been really diving into. I've been following your work for quite a long time now. The world of beliefs and behavior change is something that I have been so curious about for so long. I don't know if I've met anybody that you can bump into on the street. And if you ask the question of, hey, is there anything about you or your life or your circumstance that you would love to be different, I have to imagine almost everybody's going to have an answer to that question. There will be something. And yet, most people think that. about change as, well, this is about willpower or having the right system or the plan or the

habits or enough time. And you think that those, they're not completely useless, but they're also a bit of a distraction from the bigger thing. Take me into this. Sure. Well, I think you're right. I think that oftentimes when we think we need to make a change in our life or when I'm invited to give a talk, they asked for practical takeaways, which means another habit. And every speaker at the conference is doing that. So by the end of the day, you've got 37 things you need to be doing. But my research is not that those are not important. I've been talking about the value of habits my entire career, but there's a precursor to it. The precursor, before we even decide whether or not a habit is worthwhile or whether or not change is possible, we have a belief about

change about ourselves, about whether the world is for us or against us, how much free will we have, that change not only the math about what's possible and probable, but our beliefs change the very paths we decide to take. They decide which hills we're going to climb. They decide which goals we're going to go for. It tells us when we're unhappy with parts of our life and that we believe that something should be different or that we believe that we feel alone, but that we feel like that that shouldn't be the case or we feel like we're being moral or immoral. Those stem from a belief system. And we have beliefs about so many different types of things. We have beliefs about whether or not it's safe to get into a self-driving car. We have beliefs about whether or not

we should be working or at home with our kids. We have beliefs about whether AI is great or it's going to start a market crisis or it's going to steal our kids' education. We have beliefs about a lot of different things. And the question that the drove a lot of this research is we have beliefs about everything, but not all of those beliefs really change us. What I'm interested in are, are there certain beliefs that are most predictive about what's about to happen next in the path you take? So I want to wrap my head around this, so I'm really clear on this. You're saying behaviors matter. Like if we just, we can believe anything in the world, but if we never attach behavior to it,

still nothing is going to happen. But there's something upstream from behavior. And that upstream thing is belief. And if all we do is focus on the behavior and we never focus on the belief, will anything meaningful ever change or sustain? I think it's very difficult to change our habits long term if we don't believe that this is worthwhile. So what I find fascinating is we can make all these habit changes. We can lose the five to 10 pounds. We can get our kids in the right school. we can, you know, invest our money the correct way. But our beliefs shape whether or not we believe money is good or evil or leads to security. We have beliefs about how much productivity is necessary or if there's an even off switch.

So what's amazing is that the same exact behavioral changes that we see in the world or environmental sets, like the kid is at the same school where people are at the same income level, or they live in the same town with the same weather. But our beliefs are super imposed upon that. The guide whether or not that A-minus you got in school makes you feel like you've been incredibly successful or you're a terrible failure compared to your parents. So would it be fair to say then that, so what you just described, anyone with sort of like a short enough burst of drive or willpower support is going to be able, you know, let's say like the change you want to make is you want to,

lose a couple of pounds, which is often one of the top, you know, like change pursuits that a lot of people have in the first week of a year. You can probably muscle your way into doing that. Maybe you can, maybe you can. But a lot of people can probably muscle their way into sort of like hitting the number. But from what it sounds like you're saying, it's almost like there's this underlying belief that's kind of like a set point almost. And we're going to rubber band back to that if we don't change the belief along with the process. Is that right? Yes. So let's take the same exact world. In fact, this is one of the main themes of the book is the idea that if you have the same world, but you have different beliefs, you're going to get a different outcome. But if you have

the same beliefs about yourself, if you think I'm alone or I'm worthless or I don't matter, even if you lose that five pounds, you haven't actually hit the core things that are driving your happiness and your long-term well-being. More importantly, that, or equally importantly, you may have created a behavioral change or an outcome change in your life. You might have gotten that good grade or lost that weight or been able to join the club you want to or been able to go on the vacation. But if you're still going on that vacation, feeling like you're a failure or believing that the world is against you, then you're going to find that just like the world feels like it's against you at home,

it's also going to feel like that in Italy. It's also going to feel like that in France. So if we don't change the beliefs, then what happens is the lens to which we view our children, our work, our wealth, our weight has not changed. And as a result of that, we're going to get the same world in the future. If we want a different world, we have to change one of those core beliefs about the world.

We have to change the belief that my behavior matters or that I am not alone or that I matter or I have something to give or I have something to be grateful for. I want to drop into some of those core beliefs. You list out seven. But before we get there, I've also heard you say something else, which I'm kind of curious about. It's this idea that it's not just beliefs are powerful. Okay, so, you know, like, and as you've just shared, if we want to change something and have that change sustain, we also have to address the belief underneath it, right? I get it. That's a lot of power. But if also heard you describe it, it's that beliefs are also, they're becoming more powerful, more predictive, and potentially more healing and destructive. Tees this out for me.

So this is one of the most fascinating parts about this research, because we've known beliefs are powerful for thousands of years. We've known it throughout the beginning of psychology up to the present. We know that our mindset matters. We know that our beliefs matter. But something incredible is happening over the past couple years. For example, as I was doing the research for the book, and one of the reasons I wrote this book is my daughter was born early, three months early, and I'd be happy to share that story. But for here, While I was doing that, I was reading about some conditions, and they used the same drug, and one of the study occurred in 2002, and one occurred in 2015. And as I was reading the study, I realized that while it was the same drug, the placebo effect was wildly different. The placebo effect, as most of the listeners know and watchers know, is that if we're going to test a new drug, we need to make sure that that drug works. So when we do provide a new drug to people, we also have a placebo group.

And in the placebo group, they receive a fake pill or a fake treatment. But the person is told it's the real drug. And the belief that this drug will heal you has a positive beneficial effect upon people in such a high degree that we have to test every new drug against this placebo effect because our beliefs that this action is going to heal us, has such a healing effect upon people's lives. We've known that since the 1950s when a Harvard anesthesiologist discovered this. But what's incredible is that since 2000 to the present, something extraordinary has occurred. What I saw in that study, I got fascinated. I went down into a

rabbit hole, and I started reading as many studies that I could. And what I found is from everything from cancer to heart disease to childhood epilepsy to 23 different forms. of chronic pain, it turns out from 2000 to now, the placebo effect has doubled, if not tripled, for some reason. And what that means for us listening is that, and learning this information, is that it's not just the beliefs are powerful. For some reason, beliefs are more healing today than they were two decades ago. Our beliefs are more predictive of what's about to have. happen in our lives today than it was just even 10 or 20 years ago, which is incredible because we live in a world which we have AI and MRIs and SSRIs and all these technological

advancements and medical advancements that it sounds like our beliefs are going to dwindle in power. And yet actually what we're finding in the midst of all of these new drugs, in the midst of all this technological revolution, it turns out our human beliefs, are more predicted today than they were even 20 years ago about what's about to happen in your life, not only in terms of your health, but in terms of your investments, in terms of your children's levels of happiness and their education, in terms of the loneliness we feel or anxiety or depression. And if we're able to harness that power, then we can use it in a positive way. But unfortunately, what we're finding is that if beliefs are more powerful, that means that the

negative beliefs are more powerful as well, which is what we've seen happen over the past two decades, where we've seen what I call in the book, the rise of the four horsemen of the modern world, the burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and depression that everyone talks about. But what we found is that all four of those have doubled over the past decade for every age group, including eight-year-olds. So what we're, and that's not the saddest part. The saddest part is that we've given up hope. We've given up the belief that that's going to change. Like we thought things would get better after the pandemic, but it turns out after the pandemic, things either stabilized at the lower level or got worse for some of those characteristics. And what that means is that we continually

are going down this decline, whereas as a species, we're feeling not only less happy, but we're feeling increased levels of burnout, anxiety, loneliness, and depression. And that's because of these core negative beliefs that are driving us, the beliefs that I'm I'm alone or that I don't matter or that my behavior doesn't matter in a world in which there's so much going on. I need to ask the obvious question here. And I don't know if there's an answer or if you have the answer or seeing the intern research. If our beliefs have become that much more determinative of our outcomes, both positive and negative over the last 25 years or so, what's driving that? Like where's that shift coming from? Do you have any sense?

It's a fantastic question. And I try to answer it and unpack it in the book, but we're still learning. But I will say that I, before getting into psychology, I studied at the divinity school. I was fascinated about how our beliefs about the world have shaped why we wake up in the morning and shape why we give and why we forgive and why we do altruistic actions. And these beliefs have motivated literally billions of people's lives across the globe. for almost all of humanity. And those are the same questions I'm getting to ask in psychology. But when I look at history and religion and psychology, I see the same answers starting to come out. Throughout all of human history, our core beliefs about the world came from four sources. It came from our village. It came from an occupation. And that could be in the home or outside of the home.

Right. That could be the political, like the government and the religious group that we were part of. Those were the four main sources of our core beliefs. And that was true all the way up until about the past 30 years when you're looking at sociology. And then we started to become untethered from all four. That people no longer stay in the same village. They scatter across the world for education and for work. And even when we're in the same village, American male adults, for example, they just found in a

Gallup study that they found that they have 60% lower face-to-face contact than they had two decades ago. So they're in the same village, but the village is gone. And we don't stay with the same jobs. We move around. We have a gig economy or only 14% of people claim that they want to have the same job next year that they have this year, which is a historic low, worse than at any point, even in the bottom of the pandemic. The trust in the government in the United States, as a particular example, is actually the lowest in recorded history

over the past 70 years. And so we no longer have that belief that the government is there to be able to solve that or that it represents us. And finally, in 2005% of people claim in the United States that they did not believe in a God. that's jumped up to 24% in a two-decade period of time.

That is a seismic shift in the beliefs that a collective society has. And so as we become untethered, I believe what's happened is we still have these desires for belief. We still have these desires for connection and for a village, but we can't find it. So we cling on to whatever we can. We get lonely. So we follow influencers who are maybe just as angry and, and, and, you know, and, you know, as lonely and depressed as the rest of us. Or people get lonely so they cling on to only fans subscriptions.

Or they scroll through social media hoping for hits of dopamine and connection, but really feeling like we're missing out. And as a result of that, we've grabbed onto these quasi-communities that we thought we're serving the purposes that we were getting in the past, but are actually leaving us with those scars. And those scars are those negative core value beliefs. And the beliefs are that my behavior doesn't matter. I'm alone.

I don't matter. My work is not meaningful. I have nothing to give. I'm missing out. And there's nothing greater than me. But the antidote to those changes is the flip side of those beliefs. Getting people to believe that my behavior matters, that I'm not alone, that I matter, completely shift not only the formula in the present and our experience of the present,

but it changes what happens next. For a specific example, if you take the same child with ADHD, same loving parents, same school, same condition, but you change one thing for that child. And that is the belief that my behavior doesn't matter anymore because it turns out I have ADHD. Or even though I have ADHD, I believe my behavior matters. And that one shift causes a massive change in what's about to happen in that child's educational experience. if you have the same patient with the same condition, same stage three cancer, same doctors, same medical technology, same support system. But you change the belief that I'm alone versus I am not alone, complete shift in what we see in all the research literature about what is about to happen in the course of that cancer. So what we're looking for are what are those pivot points, those beliefs,

that shape us so much that if we're able to change them based upon the people we're with or the texts that we listen to or read, the actions that we take within our lives, the part of the brain that's processing the belief, the memories that they're associated with, if you can change those, we can change what happens next. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. What are the set of core beliefs that underlie most of the way that we show up in our lives? So those are the beliefs that when you look at psychology, you can pretty much lump all of the findings that we find, basically into these seven umbrella beliefs. It's the belief that my behavior matters that basically runs into optimism.

The belief that I'm alone versus I am not alone. That belief that I'm not alone changes what happens next in people's lives. Let me give you a great example of this. There's one of my favorite studies in the book is one that was done by researchers out at the University of Virginia. And they found that if you're looking at a hill you need to climb in front of you, your brain will show you a picture of that hill. But if you look at that hill by yourself and the participant is told that they're going to climb that hill alone, the picture their brain shows them of the hill looks 15% steeper. Oh, that's wild. does if I put somebody next to you that you're told is going to climb the hill with you,

which should not be happening. The hill's not changing. But the belief that you are not alone while climbing an obstacle changes the hill that you see in front of you. And that is before you've decided to climb it. Your brain has already warped the world around you based upon the beliefs you have, which is changing whether or not you take the path up that hill or do you decide not to climb it. And it turns out it's not just the physical ones like we were doing with the Marines out at Camp Pendleton. It's the emotional ones. Trying to overcome depression or anxiety or loneliness or despair or aging or feeling alone at a new school. Turns out those hills in front of us are collapsing or expanding based upon whether that that parent or that child is viewing

the world believing that they're alone climbing these hills or they're radically with other people, which means happiness, for example, can't be self-help. As soon as we put happiness books in the self-help section of bookstore, we make it 15 to 20 percent steeper for people to achieve because they believe I have to do this alone when what we're finding is those hills in front of us collapse as we start to see that and start to believe, I'm not alone climbing this hill, which is so important because, you know, I went through three years of depression back when I was at Harvard. And my parents wanted to help so much and just take that pain away from me. And they couldn't solve it. And what I see in this research is that if you know someone who's going through a hard time, it doesn't have to be depression. Maybe they've lost somebody or lost their job or lost their marriage. If they're going through that hard time, one of the most powerful things you can do in that person's life is to let them know that they're not a to shift that belief that I am not alone when I'm facing this loneliness after this marriage or the loneliness in this new job or the lack of a job or that feeling like the world has

changed in a way that I can't recover from. That as they look at those obstacles, when they believe that I am not alone, it changes what happens next. And we can see that even in the very perceptions of the world and then we can predict it with all the scientific research. So things like I am not alone is so incredibly powerful. Another one of those core beliefs is the belief that I matter, which, you know, somebody can, we talked about this at the beginning, but somebody can make a million dollars. They can be skinny. They can look beautiful, but if they feel like that they don't matter, then it erases a lot

of the joy or the benefits from those external things. that they have within their life. So one of the most important things that we've, when you look at the research and psychology, everything from suicide hotlines to how children perform at school, to the likelihood of people donating money or of surviving a cancer, is this belief that I matter in the midst of this world versus I don't, which is one of the things we actually see as people are getting older, that oftentimes they feel like after they don't have the job anymore, their life just became so much more free, except they feel like they have,

they matter less because they have something, they have fewer things to be able to contribute to society. That belief that, that I have something to be grateful for, versus I do not have enough. And this is a really important one, because I paired, this is one of the most interesting beliefs to me,

because it wasn't that I don't have enough versus I believe I have enough, because we don't have enough. because we don't have enough, right? We don't have enough time. We don't have enough money. We don't have enough energy to do all the things that we want to do with our life. It's not that I have enough or that I am enough.

I'm not enough alone. We certainly know that from the research I just mentioned about that we need other people. But the opposite side of this belief to me is not that I have enough, but that I have something to give. And when someone feels like, you know what, I don't have enough time to be there as a mom for my child because I'm working or I'm running all over the place or I have three children or I'm caring for an aging parent right now. That as they're looking at that world, if they're feeling like I don't have enough, that causes anxiety to rise. It activates a sympathetic nervous system. It tears down the tissues in our organ. Our stress levels start to rise. but when we feel like I have something to give,

like I may not be able to spend three hours with my child after school, but I can smile at them when I pick them up in the car and try and be peaceful for that five minutes that I have them on the drive home. Or I can, you know, I don't have time to sit down with all my employees and get to know everything about them, but I can write a two-minute email to them or a text message. I don't have time to or a babysitter to go out with my friends, but I can send them a, you know, 15 seconds. text message just to check in with them. And when people have their brain identify and realize that

they have something to give, it activates not only does my behavior start to matter, but what allows them to do is actually start to move forward. Because when I have nothing to give, I hoard. We cognitively hoard our resources, our time, and our energy, and we get panicked and we get angry at other people, even our kids, when they try to take that time from us. But if I'm like, I have something to give. It's the out valve that allows us to have an altruistic or kind action that allows us to be the type of person we want. I use that study for it because I've used it in my other books as well and it's a very famous study, the Good Samaritan study. But I love this one. So just very briefly because I'm sure people have heard it. But people at a divinity school were being trained to

become pastors and they were asked for a psychology experiment to give a sermon on a passage in the Bible called the Good Samaritan, which is a parable about these people that keep passing by someone who's injured on the side of the road, and then the most unlikely person decides to help them. And it's talking about how much love we're supposed to have for other people and that everyone is our neighbor. So they decide that they have to do this sermon across campus, and there's two main conditions. One condition is they say, you have plenty of time to walk across there. You just walk down this path. It's in that other building. When you get there, you have a few minutes, and then you can give your sermon. And then the other group,

is the hurry condition. And they say, you do not have enough. You do not have enough time. You are already behind. You're late. They've been waiting on you. You need to get across campus as quickly as possible to deliver this sermon. And so they go on this path to go deliver the sermon on the Good Samaritan. And of course, along the path, the psychologists have a Confederate, an undercover researcher, who's sick and slumped against a wall clearly in distress. And it turns out the vast majority of the people who had plenty of time, who felt like they had time to go across a few minutes, they stopped to help the person in need, and they were just going to give a sermon about that. So they were already thinking about it.

But the vast majority, I'd have to go look back to this statistic, but it's an 80-20 split. It's something massive. It turns out almost 80% of them walk by the person to go give their sermon and don't stop the help. So you could see these are people that are both training to help other people with their lives. But one belief change that was not even consequential, you need to get across campus, you don't have enough time versus you have enough time. That one belief changed whether or not they lived the values that they wanted to have. They lived the life that they were training themselves to be.

So in the study, they talk about how hurry just erodes are. morality and I think part of the reason for that is the hurry we feel in our lives is that feeling like there's time poverty. I don't have enough time. I can't be there for other people and I can't be loving. So the final two core beliefs are the belief that there's something greater than me, which is the one I've gotten the most pushback on versus I believe that there's nothing greater than me and that I have something to be grateful for versus I am missing out, which is what we feel oftentimes in social media. Obviously, I have to ask you about the one that is the most controversial.

There is something greater than me. And I can imagine some of the pushback that you've gotten because somebody who is agnostic or an atheist is going to look at this and say, like, but that absolutely doesn't apply to me. And now you're actually, you're all, you're kind of giving me like a source of shame because I don't hold that belief. Tees this out for me. Sure, absolutely.

So it was one of the ones I wrestled with about including in the book. So I went to the divinity school. I was training to become a pastor. I am religious. I grew up Christian. I am Christian now. So when I write something in the book like the belief that there's something greater than me, some people are like, well, you just mean a God, right?

Why don't you just say God? And I do mean a loving God. When I write that to me, that means a loving God. But that is not necessarily what other people view that as. That belief could be, I believe that there's something greater than me. And it is nature. It is the universe. It is energy.

It is justice. It is karma. And that belief, that meaningful narrative about the world shapes what happens next within our lives. I thought about taking out of the book because it would be easier. And then I realized that I was possibly ignoring what to many people was one of the most predictive beliefs in their life because it activated so many of the other core beliefs. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, right?

Because if I broaden that out, let's take, you know, let's take God out of that sentence for the moment. Yeah. And let's say that's just not part of somebody's belief system. But maybe, like, let's swap in nature. Yeah. I'm in Boulder, so that comes as easy to me, right? Right.

If you believe that that's something greater than you, that you participate in, that you are, you both, you know, benefit from and also are, to a certain extent, behold, and too, and that thing is nature. It's the natural world around you. I can understand how, okay, so now, yeah, if I really care about nature around me, then, and I think about my behavior, like, I want it to matter in that context. I look at that, and there's so much that, even on the worst, the heart of the heart this day, there's so much that I can be grateful for. I can see all of the need of the natural

environment around me. And I realize there's something in me that I can give to that something, even if there's not a person, you know, that's standing across me where I can figure out what, you know, I could give to them. I have this feeling that I'm not alone in the world. I may not be surrounded by humans, but there are millions of different types of beings that exist all around me. And I can, I can do meaningful work in that context. So it's just, interesting. Like, I agree with you. I think, like, for some people, they're going to look at this as something that's more spiritual or whatever their version of God is. But it does feel like we can probably all find that something that is a bigger thing that we in some way are affected by and participate in.

And if we swap that in, it is kind of like, it's like the meta switch for the other ones. Yeah, I think you're right. And I even use the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote about, that I believe in God, I just call it nature with a capital end, right? And what you described there was twofold. One was you were participating as something greater than you. So you were part of something. You were not alone. But also that there was actions that could be taken that you could be part of. I did a study that got published in the top psychology journal, JPSP, with Elliott Crum and Peters Hallivay. and what we looked at was if someone, we found that for some people, stress tears every part of their life apart.

Their energy levels go down, their longevity goes down, they get sicker, and then we find people that stress actually improves their life. They recover faster from knee surgeries. When you onboard people at boot camp, you onboard them not with a beach vacation, you onboard them with one of the most stressful situations possible because it bonds people together. It creates social connection. So our question was like, why is that the stress sometimes tears people apart or sometimes

stress connects people together? And what we found in the study, without going into all the details, was what we found was that it's whether or not you identify that that stress was meaningful or not. And meaningless stress has a detrimental effect upon pretty much every aspect of our body. But if you acknowledge that you're stressed, but also identify the, the meaning behind it in the study of one of the things we talked about was um if i tell you someone's failing math right now you probably don't feel much stress but if i say your child is failing math right now we just got the email you feel stressed because there's meaning involved with that relationship if i tell you

your inbox is overflowing with spam we don't feel stress but if i tell you your phone is full of text messages of people who care about you that you haven't responded to you feel stress because there's meaning involved with those what happens is we get flooded by stressors in our life. And when we're overwhelmed, our brain triages our resources. So it stops processing the meaning. It's just processing the stressors. And when that happens, the stress in our lives tears apart. But when people stop to identify the meaning involved with their stress, it turns out we saw in the study a 45-minute intervention. Six weeks later, what we found was a 23% drop in the negative effects of stress. Headaches, back aches, fatigue, lower job effectiveness and

burnout, dropped by 23% for the people who identified the meaning involved with their stress and tried to connect with it while they were doing that stressful activity. So it wasn't decreased the stress in your life. It was finding meaning in it. And what you just described about nature or somebody might describe with religion, with a God, or fighting for justice in a political system or in a prison system, that that belief that, yes, I'm going through stressful situations working on this dissertation or going into this prison or waking up to make sandwiches for this child and picking them up and having to get their clothes ready for school started, that if it's meaningless stress, because there's nothing greater than us, then it has a negative effect. But if it has meaning,

even the stresses get transformed into something that makes us better. So if we buy into this idea that the underlying beliefs, and we have this sort of core set of have a profound effect on nearly not just our behaviors, but also the way that we feel, probably our emotional state, the way that we move through the world, and I'm sure in no small part the way that the world responds to us. And when you blend all of that together in so many ways, the outcomes that we experience in life, we start there. Like one of the big flashing questions then is, okay, so if these set of core beliefs is there are no small. way running the show of our lives. And there are parts of our lives that we wish we're different.

And we know that in order to make them different and then sustain the change, we can't just change the behavior, the environment, the habit. We need to change the underlying belief too. How do we figure out which of the beliefs are running the show so that we know which ones we need to actually drill down to and change? So this part is actually easier. changing the beliefs. So I think most people know when you start to look at this list, they'll be like, yeah, I believe my behavior matters work. I'm really good at what I do. Yeah, I'm not alone. There's lots of people. But deep down, I feel like I don't really matter, right? I don't matter to this company. My boss doesn't care. My kids aren't talking to me.

Whatever it is, that they can pretty much identify when you look at this list, which are the ones that they're weakest in. I know that for me, like, it's the mattering one. I go in waves of this. This is the one of the seven that I struggle with the most. I talk about it in the book because I took time off to be with Zoe. So to come back to that story I mentioned briefly earlier, eight years ago, we were going to have our second child and I had a book come out and we decided let's have this book come out the first week of February because my wife was pregnant. We're going to have a child the last week of April. So already knowing what's about to happen, the day before the book launch, my wife's water broke, and we didn't know what was going on. We didn't even have a name

for this child. And she got rushed into the hospital, and we almost lost her child three times in a two-day period of time. And she kept sparking back to life, which is how we found her name, her name, Zoe Sparks, Acre. And she's doing wonderful now. She starts second grade yesterday, so she's doing wonderfully. but instead of going on a book tour to talk about how we pursue happiness and success in an interconnected way, my happiness as a researcher sat in an incubator and NICU for the next 50 days while strangers tried to keep her alive. And what I got to do is to battle test some of the research that we find so important, like that hill study about this was a massive hill within our life. And there was actually an amazing study that I found at the time.

This is not my research, someone else's. but they found that women who have children way early, it's actually even before the three-month mark, I think it was 22 weeks, is something incredibly early, that the survival rate for women that join a support group is triple the survival rate of women who try to go through it alone. Same medical technology, same child being born early, but a difference in that I'm not alone as I'm going through this causes such a market change not only in the mother's life, but in the survival rate of a newborn child is just absolutely incredible to me. But because this happened, I remember sitting there the day after the surgery, I was trying

to hold this little baby's hand, Zoe's hand under that purple light. And they had her strung out and she was so little. And I was like, I need to step back from work. And I did. I decided basically to become a stay-at-home dad for the next six years of her life, to be there with her and with my son. And it was wonderful. I was able to do some research in the midst of COVID, which was because there was so much for us to learn during that period. But I was basically home for the next six years. And I started watching what I do a lot, which is write books and give talks. The talk started to slowly but surely go away. And people started coming into the space they were doing what I was doing. And at first I was trying to feel great that they were doing it. But I remember I went to a talk at Target, which was a great talk. It's for all of Target. It's a great opportunity to share this research. And that morning, in this, I'm going to tell a story that's very petty. But I think it's something we can, maybe some people can identify with. But I got, I didn't sleep. I got it on 3 a.m. And then I woke up that morning and got a text, like a, a, like a,

news alert that one of my peers had a number one New York Times bestseller in my space. And then I got another news alert in the next email saying that someone got to do something amazing with Oprah that I wanted to do. And I went into a mental tailspin. I realized like if I just disappeared and stopped doing my work, I don't think the world would be like, no, Sean. They would be like, who and that would and i remember i had this movement from maybe i matter less to the world because i've taken this time to be home with my kids and then i made the mistake of the next thought which was maybe i don't matter so i went from mattering less to feeling like it don't matter and i got into a car to go to the talk and i sat in the back seat and looked out the window and just watched

the world go by and it felt like the world was passing me by and i got to the talk and I was at the wrong place and they had to send someone to me and they were like, don't go anywhere. We'll send an escort to take you to the event. And so I didn't listen. I went up the escalator to target headquarters to go because I thought I'd be going closer to them. And this guy ran up the stairs next to me while I was going up the escalator and shook my hand over the escalator. And he said, are you Sean? I said, yes.

I assumed it was the escort. And as we got awkwardly to the top of the escalator, he said, I just want to let you you know, I read your book like 10 years ago and it saved my life. And then he walked through a turnstile and disappeared into Target headquarters. I still, even after having written this in the book, don't know who that person is. I was in the wrong place at the right time. And I heard a message that my brain desperately needed, which was a reminder that you matter. Right. And that's an extraordinary version of it that it had such an effect upon. I have no idea why the research effect. I didn't get to talk to him. But in that moment, things started.

to change where suddenly it was like the scales fell from my eyes, I could see that this talk was meaningful because maybe there's one person that talk that needed to hear this research as well, like that person did, right? And I remember after the talk, I got back into the same car that took me to the wrong place. And I still felt replaced in the world. That didn't go away. But I pulled out these little Paw Patrol characters that he had given me. And I made a little video for her on the same window cell that I had looked out before. And what it was was as soon as we start to believe that we matter, it starts to change what happens next in our life. And it opens our eyes to our possibilities. Let me give you an amazing scientific addition to this story.

So there was a study done by Richard Weissman, a demonstration experiment where he had people read through newspapers and give you five pounds, which was in the UK, if you got the right, if you counted the right number of photographs in the newspaper. But before taking the test, he asks you, do you think you're a lucky person or an unlucky person? Do you think good things just naturally happen to you or the bad things naturally happen to you or that you never good stuff just happens to you? Basically, it's a proxy for optimism, but it's a luck test. And then you read through the newspaper and everyone goes through it very quickly. On page two of everyone's newspaper, but in big letters, it says stop the experiment now. If you stop the experiment,

we'll give you 10 pounds. Double the pay you would get from counting the photographs. And what they found was the majority of the people who said that good things just don't happen to them, the majority of them finished reading the newspaper and had the right number of photographs and got paid five pounds. But the majority of the people who claim the good things just naturally happen to them, they feel like that they're pretty lucky. It turns out the majority of them, vast majority of them, them stopped the experiment, got paid double. After that experiment, they did eye tracking studies and some neuroanalysis. And what they found was your brain actually scans over the opportunity, but it deletes it if it's not looking for opportunities. So if you believe that you could have a

meaningful effect upon the world, your brain scans for, where can I have that effect today? If you believe that good things happen to you, you look around for opportunities for good things that could happen to you. And as a result of that, you start to find it more often. My wife says that she has parking karma that I don't know why she would deserve this, but it's a parking belief that she's going to find the parking space. And she is right statistically an incredible, incredibly high number. But I think that's because she's actively looking for it and gets encouraged to keep looking around to be able to find it. And that's exactly what we find in these studies. So that story about Zoe is one of those examples that I know which one I struggle with. Like if I go up and down about whether or not I matter. But when I take the time to look at the effect upon my kids or to read the emails that come in, it changes whether or not to keep writing books or changes whether or not I stay home. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

So what I'm hearing you saying underneath all of this also is this idea that if you're trying to figure out what is the underlying belief that's running this show and that I will need to address in some meaningful way if I want to change my objective experience of X, Y, or Z in my life, that it's probably a pretty straightforward process. Like basically sit down and do a quick audit of these core beliefs. And you're probably going to hit one or maybe two where you're like, oh. like you're just going to know you're like that this is and and i would imagine and tell me if you've seen this also that if you go into this exercise and there's one thing that you're looking to make different in your life and you're like let me go find the underlying belief so that i can make sure that i'm rewiring that too and then you find that belief i would bet that once you key on the belief you could probably then start to see three four five six seven other parts of your life or

behaviors or circumstances that you would love to see be different, that also all tie back to that same thing. Do you see that happening? Yes, actually had to cut it from the book. I had a whole fourth part of the book. That's exactly what you're describing, because what we find is that it creates a constellation of these beliefs within your life. But what's amazing is that once you realize that there's changes that could be made in ways that we thought, well, maybe I think some people hear this information, they're like, this is who I am. So it's like a personality test. And what I am is that I'm a person who struggles with this. But a lot of the beliefs that we have are based upon our memories. And one of the most powerful and practical parts about the book is about how to change

once you find that. And I think one of them that I think leads into what you were just describing is one called the Memory DeLorean, which is about how our beliefs, that constellation that you just described are based upon core memories sometimes. So for example, the fall that I was writing the book, I was shifting away from just being home with Zoe and Leo. And I worked so hard on the book, I felt like I crashed into it. And I was like, I did not do a good job. I missed this whole fall. I worked, I worked too hard. I didn't live up to my values. I miss this finite time with my kids. I'll never get it back. And you can hear the spiral coming, right? And I started pulling from my phone, my favorite photos from the fall. And as I did it, I actually had to start adding pages to this little

photo book that you can make online. And because there was so much. There was like their first day of school and a hiking trip that we went on and three Harry Potter parties and like going to give a talk, whatever it did. And I started to realize there was all this meaning, but that was not my belief that fall. My narrative for the fall was I missed out. When I looked at it, there was so much meaning that my brain had deleted when the narrative was that there was nothing there. So as we're looking at some of these beliefs, like, I'm not good with other people, or the world is against me, or I've always been alone, that one of the most powerful ways we can combat that is actually so simple and it uses the technology we have in our hands all the time. What we got people to do is just for five

minutes a week. It's better for 10, and it's better if you do this with other people. But you go to the favorites on your photos and you just scroll through them intentionally looking for past meaningful moments. But as you're doing it, your brain is re-encoding those memories and they're always the positive meaningful ones. So you're actually curating a positive list for your brain. And as a result of that, you see those deep relationships, those great moments of awe and wonder out in nature, those opportunities to travel to parts of the world that you don't normally get to see. And at the end of it, as you do this, we started doing this as a family on Wednesday nights. We would get into what we call our memory delorean. You'd get into a car, you go back in time to

change the future. And the whole point of it was that as my children grow up, their storehouse of memory, it will be the storehouse of all these meaningful experiences over and over again. They become a drumbeat of what happens next within our lives. So there are very simple ways, like just scrolling through the favorites on our phone, that start to shift your beliefs about whether or not your life is meaningful and whether or not you're alone or not and whether or not change is possible. So I love that.

And at the same time, it brings up another question for me, which is, so you went through this and you're scrolling back and you're realizing, okay, so my belief was that I kind of blew the fall. You know, it was, and then you're going back, you're scrolling through and you're like, wait a minute, I have photo evidence that says, like, this isn't right.

So you actually have the visual evidence to refute this improper belief. What if you went back and you're scrolling through and the belief was true? And there are no photos of you. You were just your heads down. You're working on the book. You know, you were in a meeting so you couldn't walk the kids to the first day of school. And the evidence supports the fact that this negative belief is actually true. I guess maybe that's just reinforcement that says, okay, now I need to change something else. So I think, you know, I'm a researcher, so I love data. And so if the data confounds my original hypothesis in a positive way, then something beneficial has happened, meaning that if I thought that I was missing out and it wasn't true, there were great things, then it changes my perception in that moment.

But if I had gone back to the fall and, like you said, saw that things were not going well, right, and that I had missed out, I would do two things. One is, you know, I wrote originally about happiness in my first book. And one of the things I argued is that the opposite of happiness to me is not unhappiness. Unhappiness fuels great change. It tells us when we're lonely. Unhappiness tells us when we're being unethical or that we're being mistreated by a structure or a society. It shows us changes that we need to make our life.

It causes us to stand up for civil rights. There are very specific ways in which we look throughout history that unhappiness has created great and positive change. The opposite of happiness to me is apathy. Apathy is the loss of movement or joy as you move forward or the belief that change is possible. Because then at that point, that's what we fight so hard against. So if I look back in the fall and saw I messed up this fall, then what I would hope would happen is they would trigger one of my other beliefs. And the other belief is, I believe my behavior matters, which means I screwed up this fall, but I know I can change what happens next. Now, if I didn't believe that, then the second thing that I was going to mention is that if I saw the fall was bad and I'm like, well, I can't change it.

That's how the fall was. I missed this finite time. And I'm just going to keep on being a bad dad because I care too much about this research. Right. If I go down that path, it's leading me to a place where I'm going to resent my work. I'm going to feel not good enough as a dad. I'm going to feel unhappy as human being. So what I would do is I would intentionally look, if you can't go back through photographs and do it,

I would go back and think about times in my life where things were not good, but then I was able to change it. So I would think back, I was depressed for three years. I have genes for depression. It's all throughout our family. I don't, I haven't feel depressed, yeah, more than 20 years. I know that change is possible and it requires other people changing my beliefs and changing the, the actions that I'm doing with in my life, right? So if I saw the change was possible from there, I can definitely pivot on this fall. And if, you know, getting into a graduate program was hard,

so is shifting this right now. So you go back and look at previous moments where you needed to make a change and you're able to. And that's what allows people to move forward, which, you know, if I could insert one thing here, as we're looking at these beliefs, and I think you made such important critique about, okay, what if you look back and you're not seeing the beliefs you want, right? Or you look at these beliefs and you're like, yeah, of course I'm alone. I believe I'm alone. I am alone. I think it comes back to, after you write a book, I feel like you really learn what the book is about for me. I'm like, I didn't get the happiness advantage until like a year afterwards. And I'm like, this means something different than when I wrote the book. And now I get it.

And now this is what I talk about. One of the most. powerful things in the book was something that we wrestled on whether or not to include in the book. Because it sounded like it was philosophy. I was like, well, it might turn people off. My editors, maybe you should cut it. That if, when we make a belief, like, I believe I can change my fall, right? Or I believe I'm going to become a professional athlete, or I believe that I'm going to find love someday, or I believe my kid's going to get into Harvard, or I believe that I'm going to lose 10 pounds, or I believe that I'm going to overcome cancer. Those sound really, really. positive and optimistic. But they're what I call belief stems. They don't give the brain enough

of a foothold to make the change to go next. So if I'm like, I believe I can change this fall, but I don't have any strategy how to do that. I haven't thought back to previous memories about where I've accomplished this and there's no meaning to springboard off of. Then I'm not going to, my January is going to look a lot like my fall. So the two things that I think are the most practical ways, and I don't want to make this sound trite, but like people are just like, it's not like a hack. It's the fastest way to upgrade the way that we try to convince ourselves and other people of the positive beliefs is that if you have a belief stem, like you're going to love this new school. My child just started second grade. If that's all I say, I've missed out on two things.

They're called warrants and qualifiers. The warrant is just the because statement. So if I say, you're going to love this new school, the kids thinking, yeah, right, mom, or yeah, right, dad, right? Like, I want to be at the old school. But if I say, hey, I know I saw how fast you made friends on your soccer team. And at your old school, you made so many friends. You didn't even want to leave that school. And you were so kind of the people I saw what you just did for Kyle.

because of that, I know you're going to make friends and you're going to love this new school. I've given three warrants and suddenly that belief sounds rational with the brain and gets past those mental barriers that oftentimes stops the belief from inception. And then the other side of it is the qualifier. It's the if-then statement. So if I think to myself, I am going to beat cancer. I believe I could beat cancer. That's admirable.

But what's much more powerful is if someone thinks, If I listen to my doctor, if I keep exercising, if I eat healthy, if I sleep well, if I surround myself with positive people and deeply embed myself in a social support community, if I spend time out of nature, I believe I have an increased chance of beating cancer. That's a completely different story because what you've just done is you've got a belief that leads to future actions. You've changed the path. So as we're talking to ourselves or when we're parenting someone or with a spouse and we're

trying to get them to believe that their behavior matters or that they matter or that they're not alone. Providing those warrants is what moves them forward. A great example of this, I was leaving to give a talk on this new book. And my wife, the door was closing. We were like passing ships in the night because she was coming back from a talk. And she was like, you're going to do great on your talk. And the door was closing as the Uber was coming. I was like, you don't know that. And the door closed. And it was a joke because all she did was, you're going to be great, right? Now, I know what she's thinking. really good at this normally. She's better at this than I am. But she's thinking, like, I saw you give talks for years and people enjoyed it. And I see how you can think quickly on your feet

and you've worked so hard at this research. You know it so well. I think you're going to do well in this talk, right? Or just be yourself, right? Like those warrants change whether or not I'm going to believe that walking out the door, right? And if you make this talk about other people, not about yourself, it's going to be a great talk, right? If you practice it on the plane, then I believe this is going to be a great talk for you. Those change how those same beliefs we were trying to get ourselves to believe in other people, just that warn and qualify, you're going to catch yourself so much over the next 24 hours, just saying beliefs. Like, I can do this, or I'm enough, or I can make myself read these books, or I can start this habit,

or, you know, you're going to find someone to take the prom. Like all those comments are the belief But if you just add in the qualifier warrant, it becomes so much more powerful for the brain. Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. I love that. I'm going to think so much about how I not only say that to other people, but also to myself. Because these are the same things. I could be like, oh, like, you can totally do this. But what if I actually tell myself because, like, you've done this here before, you've done this here before, you've done this here before. And, like, if you add in that stuff, not just when you're trying to encourage somebody else

or help them, sort of like shift a belief. But actually with ourselves, too. I'm curious about one other thing. Let's say you go back and you're like, okay, so you're saying to yourself, Okay, I'm looking back over, and you have this belief that says, I'm alone. And you go back and you're looking for evidence to try and show that you're not alone. And you can't find it. You literally have to kind of isolate yourself for a long time.

What about the idea of taking that same belief? Okay, and instead of saying, okay, so I am not alone, I can't easily validate that. What if I inserted the word or inserted something like, I can be less alone or I'm capable of not being alone. And then you add the question, it's like, how would that happen? Like if you add the can in there, like I don't matter, but I can matter.

You know, so you're sort of like taking those core beliefs and if you look historically, the negative of them, you're validating. Like I really haven't been showing up in a way that genuinely matters to anyone I care about, but I can matter. and what would it look like for me to step back into that mode? Do you feel like that's effective?

I think it's incredibly effective because the way that I'm framing the core beliefs is about the present. But as you can hear of the qualifiers, we're trying to move the future. And where we oftentimes get stuck is that people start to argue with this. Like if I say, if you believe that the world is against you, you actually respond in a different way. You stop looking for opportunities, just like we saw with the newspaper study, right? But the problem is there are lots of examples we can have about how the world might be against us with inequality or discrimination or racism, whatever the person is dealing with. And then they can give you that litany of reasons why that belief must hold. But in addition to that, we should be asking the question, is this belief serving me?

And is this the only possible belief that can have about the world? Are there people like me that have experienced things like me? like I have, they can still believe the world can sometimes go in my favor. The world sometimes can provide kindness instead of discrimination. And then you start to look for those opportunities. Now, the reason for that is not to say, let's not look at the negative. That leads to irrational optimism. And those people don't put on seatbelts.

Optimism is great for a lot of things. doesn't stop cars from hitting us. That's not what we're going for. What I'm interested in is what's going to make me move forward in a positive direction to deal with those societal ills or challenges in my life. And if all I see is that the world is against me, my behavior doesn't matter, and I'm alone, there's no movement forward for that person. So we have to look at, I can do actions that will lead me towards other people.

I can be part of something that's greater than just me. So I love what you're doing there about shifting this to the actions that we can take next in our lives to be able to look for those moments. But let me tell you one thing about the alone one because I think this is where most people would go with this. They'll be like, I am alone. That's why we have a loneliness epidemic. And I think that what happens in our life, and I've done it in my own life and I have to actively fight it is that we denigrate the weak ties. that's the people that aren't our best friends or family members. And we do so at our own cost because there's meaning involved with those relationships.

And the more you start to see that there's meaning, even in the weak ties, then suddenly you very quickly start to realize you're not alone. You've got your kid's teacher at school. That person might not pick you up at the hospital if you're injured, but there's meaning involved that relationship. They might not be there at Thanksgiving for you. but the person who remembers your name and writes it on the coffee cup at Starbucks every morning because you come in every day, that's also a source of meaningful connection to something greater than ourselves. I love that.

I love the reframe that kind of says, you know, it's like part of the big lesson here is just because you've been somewhere doesn't mean you have to stay there. And if we really dive into what are the beliefs that have been keeping us there, good or bad, that there's something that we can do to shift those underlying drivers to then change the way we think, change the way we feel, change the way we behave, change the way our situation, our circumstance exists, and very likely change the way the response to us along the way. It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of Good Life project, if I offer up the phrase, to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life, you have to identify the meaning and pursue it. I think that's the key, is that we have to look for the meaning that might be present in our connection to the world, or our connections to our social support network, or the meaning involved with our work or our actions, even doing the dishes. I'm in charge of the dishes to our house.

If I see that meaning and I pursue it, it's a completely different life than one where I'm waiting for me. to happen to me, or I'm going through life responding to stressors and being responsive and reactive instead of living a meaningful life. And it's a difference to me between life that's a grind and a life that's pursuing a joy as we move towards our potential. Thank you. So let's talk about some big takeaways here. One thing I keep thinking about is that hill.

Sean's research found that a hill that you have to climb looks 15% of the way. steeper to your brain literally looks 15% steeper the moment you believe you're climbing it alone without anyone else. It made me think about how many things I have made harder for myself just by trying to carry them solo. Three other things that jumped out of me. Sean's memory delorion. Five minutes a week scrolling back through old photos actually rewires which memories your brain reaches for first. Such a cool and simple concept here. Warrants and qualifier. turn flat belief like you'll do great into something that your brain can actually use because you gave it a because and an if.

And finally, the simple awareness of core beliefs that secretly drive nearly all of our behavior and in turn our lives and how we might begin to rewire the ones that maybe we think would be helpful to rewire. So this week, maybe pick one hill you've been climbing alone lately and just tell one other person you're on it. Not to fix it, just so the hill has a chance to look a little less deep by maybe knowing that you're not alone in the journey. Hey, before you leave, do me a quick favor. Share this episode, this conversation with just one person who you know needs to hear it.

And maybe leave us a review wherever you get your podcast too. It helps us get discovered and brings more people into the conversation. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Troy Young and Alejandro Ramirez, Chris Carter crafted our theme music, and of course, if you haven't already, please go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcast so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.