Why Change Fades Fast

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Most of us have uh read the books, done the courses, tried the techniques. We feel good for a week, maybe a month, and then we are right back where we started. Wondering if anything ever really changes, today we are going back to ask the question almost no one in the personal growth world wants to sit with. Why does most of this work work for a little while and then

Meet Joel Bain And The Premise

SPEAKER_01 0:29

stop? Welcome to Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I am Rasmuneek, and today my guest is Joel Bain, who is here to talk about why most personal growth tools do not create permanent change, what he calls the Santa Claus effect. And we may even go and get a live demo. Joel, welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

So,

The Tool He Uses Personally

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Joel, before we get into the deep end, tell me what is the one tool or practice that you actually use yourself and not just teach.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I use the tool that I that I also teach. I mean, the most effective tool I've ever come across in my personal growth journey. I've been on a personal growth journey for, I don't know, 18 years, and I've done a lot of different modalities. And it's coming across this particular approach to rapidly and permanently let go of a subconscious limiting belief that's causing the anxiety, that's causing the negative self-talk, that's uh the root cause, and actually pulling that out at the root, pulling out the dandelion so the dandelion doesn't grow back. And so I've I've done this coming up on 2,000 limiting beliefs over the past five years just for myself and and hundreds of more people as well. Um, so I'm I've cleared a lot for myself, and it's been extremely effective, and I'm continuing to find little nooks and crannies in my psyche, my shadow to continue to come alive and be more and more free.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Okay.

Willpower Versus The Root Cause

SPEAKER_01 2:08

So, Joel, I want to ask with something that I think a lot of people quietly carry. They have done the journaling, the breath work, the courses, therapy, morning routines, and you know whatnot. But somewhere inside they still feel like the same person they were five years ago from everything you have seen, why there's so much of this beautifully intended personal growth work create a temporary high and you know, then quietly fade away, like leaving people right back in the loop they were trying to lead.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Yeah, that's a really common experience. I know I've been there. Um I remember being when I was 2020, I was making a big career change, and I was doing these pitches to companies, like creating videos and trying to stand out. And it took a lot of effort, it took a lot of audacity, and I just remember feeling a lot of resistance internally and having negative inner critics and like fear of failure type of experiences. Um, but I was just using my willpower, using my my my sense of gumption and and kind of overriding all that, even though I had been doing personal growth for 10 years. I'd been doing deep journaling and therapy and a lot of amazing approaches that had definitely brought value, but I still had these this inner resistance, this friction, and like the parking brake was still up while I was trying to drive the car. Um, and so the reason for that is not getting to the actual root of the matter, which is the specific concepts, the specific beliefs that the subconscious is holding on to, which are tied up in emotional charges. And so, in terms of actually having permanent results, you need to connect to that part of the psyche and have a logical conversation to see, you know, is that belief literally true? Just like, is Santa really really real? Santa Claus? Like once upon a time we thought Santa was real, and then one day we realized that's not true, and then it never came back again. So you can do the same thing with I'm not good enough, with I'm not worthy of success, with it's not okay to fail, with making money is hard. These types of stories, once that dialogue takes place and with the specific methodology, then the belief never comes back.

unknown 4:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

So was there a moment in your life uh where you realized that the loop was not about discipline, it was about something deeper?

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Yeah, I would say when my when my friend first showed me this technique, and I had this deep-seated sense of I'm not enough, and we had done we had recorded podcasts about the idea of being enough. We were trying everything we had could think of to try to like circumnavigate our enoughness and prove ourselves and reframe and kind of willpower ourselves to believe that we are enough. But once my friend found this technique and then he showed me, and he's like, Yeah, we can just clear the belief I'm not enough and it's gonna be gone forever. I'm like, that sounds insane, but I'm super interested, which is how most people react to that proposition, which is totally understandable. Um, but I was like, let's give it a shot. And then we did this 15-minute question and answer experience, and I just remember at the end, it just felt like this huge alien had been removed from my body. Like it was like this huge energy, then this huge weight that fully dissipated, and I just felt an enormous weight removed and a great relief and lightness, and five years later that is still gone forever. And so I was like, I need to learn this technique.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

So

The Santa Claus Effect Explained

SPEAKER_01 6:08

okay. So, Joel, you just mentioned the Santa Claus effect. So I want you to take us properly into what you call the Santa Claus effect because the name alone makes people lean in it. What walk us through what it actually is, where it shows up in adult lives without even us noticing. And why you think it explains so much of why grown, intelligent, capable people still feel like they are pretending to believe in their own road.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Yeah, I mean, all I mean by the Santa Claus effect is what I mentioned a minute ago, is is simply it's a way to analogize the idea of a belief permanently going away. And so it sounds too good to be true for many of us, but when we think about our experience growing up and we believe in Santa, and then one day we have that light bulb moment, and we realize, wait, I just I just made that up. I just believe that there's no actual proof, right? So there's the difference between facts and beliefs, right? But it's the difference between truth and story, like make-believe, right? And so once you realize Santa's not real, then you never come back the next Christmas thinking that Santa Claus is real. It doesn't come back ever. So once you literally have a logical conversation, what we're interested in here in personal development that's actually permanent, is having a principled logical conversation. Is it actually true I'm not good enough? Is it actually true I'm not worthy of success? Is it actually true that work is the way, you know, the way to be successful is to work hard, whatever, whatever the case may be. And so once we connect and have that conversation, and the biggest, the biggest point in that conversation is helping that part of the psyche to realize that there's no literal physical proof anywhere in reality that I'm not good enough is true, that any of these beliefs are true. And we realize that we we created that growing up when we had an adverse experience as a child, whether that's a parent yelling at us or a teacher shaming us or whatever the case may be, we create this meaning in our own heads, just like we create the story that Santa Claus is real in our own heads. We create this, the meaning, I'm not good enough, or whatever the case may be, in a particular experience growing up. And that helps us to to cope and to survive and to adapt in that childhood experience. But when you actually go back and have a logical conversation, you help that that child part in the psyche to realize wait, have you ever actually seen this concept anywhere with your eyes? No. Oh you never seen it, it doesn't actually exist anywhere in the visual field. Where did it first come about? Oh, you made it up in your head. And so now we can help that part let go, but once it realizes the truth.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

So when someone is living inside the Santa Claus effect without realizing it, what are the small everyday signs that quietly give it away?

Signs You Are Wearing Belief Glasses

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yeah, I mean, I would just say that people are constantly living through the lens of their limiting beliefs. And this becomes the reality in which people operate. And these assumptions, there's think of it like having a pair of glasses on, and this is color. If you have a pair of like green glasses on and everything looks green, it's like if you have a certain belief that I'm not worthy of success, or the way to get love is to get approval, those are your belief classes. And now your whole reality is being filtered through that specific belief. And so everything is impacted from that. But it's like having an extra program up on your mental operating system. It's it's taking up space, it's creating friction, it's creating the negative self-talk and the the procrastination because you don't you don't think that you're worthy of success, for example, then you're going to procrastinate on fallen dreams because you just believe deep down I'm not worthy of success. And so there's some part of you comes up and it it it tries to criticize you or it tries to give you a sense of resistance in your body and you feel these feelings and you think of these thoughts, and then you decide I'm just gonna scroll on TikTok because that feels more pleasurable, right? So that's all the symptoms, right? But down at the roots is what's causing all this in the first place, the causing us to have these negative emotions in the first place. Um and so once you actually take off the glasses at the root level, then it's like, ah, I'm free. And then we don't have the negative thoughts anymore that are associated with that belief. Now, there could be other beliefs that are other self-worth beliefs. Again, I've cleared thousands for myself. The most important ones are the biggest self-worth ones that are like the first 50 beliefs, or like the big boulders in your psyche that you need to let go of that are the most the most heavy. Um, but as you clear those, you start having less and less noise in your head and more and more freedom in your body. One of my clients, Isabella, she just was telling me that she within 12 weeks of doing just one hour a week with me for 12 weeks, we cleared like a few beliefs each week. And then by the end, she's her anxiety w went down from 10 out of 10 to almost zero. And she said the noise in her head went from super loud to 90% less. And it's like, wow, that sounds insane, but it's it's legit. It's it's exciting.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yes. So uh Joel, uh, when was the first time like you first recognized this pattern in

Money And Sales Beliefs In Action

SPEAKER_01 12:12

yourself? Like, what did that moment feel like inside your body or your mind? Like this pattern of uh the Santa Claus effect.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Well, Santa Claus effect is just referring to like how it's an analogy for helping us realize things are permanent. Um, but for me, I've I'll just share some different experiences I've had and these different buckets of of life, whether that's self-worth, whether that's work ethic, whether that's money, um, whether that's relationships. So, you know, I I had a I grew up, I didn't have any exposure to business or entrepreneurship entrepreneurship. My parents didn't make a whole lot of money. They both worked in the public sector. I didn't have any exposure to that. And so I kind of and I kind of created a lot of beliefs about money and sales, for example, that that turned me away from going into that. And so five years ago, I had never sold anything for more than a hundred bucks in my life. So the idea of selling like a high-ticket thing was like a big resistance. And I remember trying to have a sales conversation and having a uh anxiety when I was going to make the ask, to make the close. And I felt black, a lack of confidence and there was less security. And so then my friends and I helped he helped me find this belief. Sales is dishonest. And I realized that that was a huge block for me. You think about that. If you just believe deep down sales is dishonest, then you're gonna that party is gonna try to stop you from doing sales because you don't want to be dishonest, obviously. So that was creating the anxiety. Once we cleared that, huge relief happened. And then from there, I just started climbing you know, closing 5k plus type of deals in my in my businesses. Um, which to me, that's that's not even that's not a lot of money now, but it was a huge amount of money back then.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Right.

Belief First Then Behavior Follows

SPEAKER_01 14:11

So uh something I see again and again, both in conversations on this show and in my own life, is that people change the behavior first, the habit, the routine, their diet or schedule, and they hope that uh hope that the belief will catch up later. But often it doesn't, and the behavior quietly collapses. So, in your work, how do you actually reverse that order so that belief shifts first and behavior follows almost effortlessly?

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yeah, that's a that's a really good question. It's very common. I mean, you look at something like the book Atomic Habits by James Clear, which is a really instructive book with the specific nuts and bolts of habit shifting from a behavioral standpoint. And so this people get value from that. Um, however, it doesn't get into the depths of motivation really, or the depths of what would be causing you to feel their friction or to do the bad habit in the first place. And so instead of trying to learn new habits and add, add, add, add and change, change, change, those are all symptomatic type of approaches. But what I focus on is subtraction. What I focus on is unlearning. Instead of trying to force yourself to change your habits through a willpower or morning routine to do this creative work or do this project that you want to do that you're procrastinating on, you can do that, but it's gonna take a lot more force, right? It's gonna be like driving the car with the emergency breakup. It's possible maybe, but it's gonna take a lot more force. And so what I focus on is why would you have that resistance to begin with? Okay, there's parts of you deep down that have these beliefs. And another great way to look at parts of the psyche is the movie Inside Out, or the movie Inside Out 2, this Disney Pixar movie. It's a great introduction to how we have different parts of ourselves. And the second movie, Inside Out Two, is in particular, specifically shows very accurately how limiting beliefs are formed through adverse experiences, where the girl in that movie she's trying out for the hockey team and she's all stressed and overwhelmed. I mean, she literally creates and hatches this belief, I'm not good enough. And I remember being in the theater and I could feel everybody around me resonate with that because it's the most common belief in the world that I found. And so it was a really poignant moment. And so that's the root, that's at the depth. And so you can spend all day doing the habits and and doing the behavior change, and that's I'm not saying there's zero value to that. I've gotten value from that. But what I found is if you just let go of the things that are causing you resistance or causing you to do bad habits, then you then you become more free and more in contact with your true self, which is just naturally curious and creative and aligned with who you are, right? And you let go of all these defense mechanisms and all these shackles from your conditioning from childhood, and you get in contact with your desire and you let go of beliefs like my desires don't matter, by the way. Like a huge block for a lot of people is like just suppressing beliefs, suppressing their own desires and creating these beliefs. And so once we we unlearn that stuff, now we get in touch with intrinsic motivation and desire. And now we start doing the habits because we love ourselves, we start doing the habits because we want to do them, not because we're trying to willpower it.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

Right.

Making Change Feel Effortless

SPEAKER_01 17:38

So uh let's say if someone is listening and they just uh had a real moment, a real shift, the kind that doesn't feel feel like any temporary high. So once that change is real, how do they protect it from the gravity of their old patterns, the old relationship, the old self-talk, or the old environments that are still very much set up for that person they used to be?

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Yeah, I mean, again, the the positive behaviors become a byproduct. And so there's incredible benefits once you clear belief, and it takes like 15 minutes. We just do this question and answer, more left-brain, Socratic method, and then the belief completely evaporates. And I just did a session, some the other day, and it was like we cleared I'm not good enough. You've been holding it on for 40 years, and then at the end, he was like, Wow, that just sounds like nonsense. That's a very common thing. It's like, what? That doesn't make sense doesn't make any sense. I'm not good. Mm-hmm, it makes no sense. And so you you have this immediate like freedom because you're like, no, that's not true. No, and you feel more relaxed, you see you see people um drop the the weights in their body and the the the tension in their body, and there's they're lighter, there's a lighter count countenance, and and then the behaviors just start happening automatically. Um, you just start seeing my clients. I just ask them to just five minutes a week, just write me your all the positive things that are happening as a result of our beliefs, of the beliefs clearing, right? I don't ask them to do any habit change, it just we just clear beliefs. They feel better right away after that, after one session, and then we start seeing results. We start seeing, oh, I've I noticed that I felt more confident when I was talking to my significant other. I noticed that I just started getting to getting in productivity mode, and I didn't like ambush myself or sabotage or have any resistance on it. I just started doing it, and I noticed that I started making more money because I wasn't anxious about money, and so things like that just start happening. You still need to take action in order for things to happen, but the action becomes more frictionless.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Right. Okay, so Joel, uh what's the one thing that you want to uh lead the viewers uhlessness with?

Compassion Plus How To Try It

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah. I guess I've given a lot of uh like specific concrete information and perspectives. And I would just just give everybody some compassion and some grace and acceptance and because we we grow up in a very unhealthy culture, you know? And so we grow up and we're children, we're going through our lives and our families and going to school, and we don't really have a lot of autonomy and a lot of choice and a lot of freedom. And and so we create these beliefs because we're just trying to like we're just trying to get by, you know, it's a survival mechanism. And and I just just first just invite everybody to just let go of being hard on yourself about even having beliefs or about let go of being hard on yourself about the fact that you've been trying to heal or trying to grow and it might not be getting the results, and just kind of taking a step back and giving yourself the big hug um is really valuable. And then recognizing that maybe it that change doesn't actually have to be so hard. Um, because you just haven't actually found a really effective tool. But I'm here, if you're listening to this, you found a tool. This is really helpful. I'm I'm not just saying that because it's my business, I will literally know that's true. And so um, I mean it's like extremely high success rate for all my clients. Um so I just want you to know that you might not have just gotten to the root with it, and so just just give yourself some some acceptance and you have a chance to to shift things and go from there.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Okay. Uh so Joel, where can I uh where can our listeners find you, uh your work and experience this in a deeper way?

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah, absolutely. So if you want to experience a session, I work with purpose-driven entrepreneurs in particular, but it basically anyone who's ambitious and wants to to grow. And so I'm giving away complimentary sessions for this. I've done hundreds of those because I'm so passionate about this. If uh you're interested in being completely free of the self-doubt or the stress or whatever the case may be, then I'd be happy to show you this as a gift to you. So my website is thehumanliberation.co thehumanliberation.co. My business is called human liberation. And you can just click on the the button that says try it, and you can just book a call with me, and we can we can go into a little bit more about what's going on for you, but then I'll just give you the experience of clearing one belief and you can experience it for yourself. Outside of that, um I also have a podcast myself, the Joel Bine Show. If you want to hear more of what I'm talking about in this vein, and I've also done like live demos on the podcast there of that technique. So again, the humanliberation.co.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Okay, sure. So thank you so much, Joel, to everyone listening. You are not broken, you are unfinished. We'll see you on the next episode of Healthy Mind, Healthy Light.