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~ Franklin Roosevelt, American President
UNFUCKING WHAT’S BEEN FUCKING YOU
D
espite almost forty years passing, I still remember my third-grade show-and-
tell. Excited, I galloped to the front of the class. In my hands was a remote-
controlled dune buggy with big tread tires and a cutesy flag poling its tailgate. I
started my presentation by matter-of-factly stating my cool toy was a gift from
Santa Claus.
Whoops.
Big mistake.
The classroom snorted laughter. In seconds, my suspicions were confirmed:
Santa Claus wasn’t real. And let’s just say the rest of the third grade didn’t go so
well.
As you can see, grasping a wrong belief, a wayward bias, or a piece of bullshit
can have consequences, even for an eight-year-old kid. Represented by the upper
portion of the lower triangle within the
UNSCRIPTED
Entrepreneurial
Framework, the 3(B)s are the mind maps driving—or derailing—your personal
transformation. They are:
BELIEFS: What you think is true that necessarily isn’t.
BIASES: Your mental shortcuts and default assumptions, either reaffirming or protecting
your beliefs.
BULLSHIT: Your internalized narrative about why things are, or simply, the bullshit you sell
yourself.
Many of us wander through life thinking we are architecting our will, living
uniquely and brilliantly with purpose. But the truth is, we aren’t. Behind the
curtain, our brains are recycling impulsive and reflexive actions based on our
preprogrammed 3(B)s. These beliefs, biases, and bullshit buoy the
SCRIPTED
OS
telling us what to think, what to say, and what to do.
Life stuck in a rut? The 3(B)s are the shovels that dig. Trouble starting or
finishing? Look to the ground—the 3(B)s are the trip wires. Until these wayward
code blocks are reprogrammed,
UNSCRIPTED
pursuits are likened to road-
tripping with four flat tires.
THE ENEMY WITHIN: YOUR BRAIN
I admit it. I’m a vitamin junkie. I think I’ve taken every fad fat-burner and
muscle-builder out there. However, my madness is not about a shortcut; it’s
about leveraging the psychological power of my brain, otherwise known as the
placebo effect
. Ingesting the latest hot pill gives me the psychological edge of
belief.
In my conversations with aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s clear many dismiss
their brainpower. Take for instance when I mentioned beliefs: I can guarantee
many readers will skip this section. “Meh, not important—just tell me how to
make money; give me exact steps.”
The reality is, your brain is the battlefield for success, more so than any
actions that come later. If your brain didn’t skew results, why does the scientific
method require placebos?
Your mind delivers a psychological impact—so
impactful that it must be scientifically accounted
.
For example, try this experiment I learned in competitive sports. Stand up
and look straight ahead. Extend your hand outward and point. Now swivel your
torso to the left (or right) as far as you can go. Notice where your hand is
pointing and landmark it. Now return to your normal standing position and
close your eyes. Now
visualize
yourself swiveling back to the same position,
except this time
see yourself
going farther. Visualize yourself swiveling with
tremendous ease, limber and flexible. Do this for thirty-seconds. Now open your
eyes and once again point forward and swivel. Voilà! You now should be able to
swivel your body much farther than originally.
Your mind is understatedly powerful. In fact, I owe three orthopedic
surgeries to this amazing power. By using visualization at the gym, I ably lifted
staggering weight that guys twice my size couldn’t lift. My brain’s visualizations
made these heavy lifts possible; however, after years of defying my small frame,
my joints finally said, “No freaking more.”
As you can see, belief’s psychological impact doesn’t correlate to truth or
effective action. A falsely held belief is equally as powerful as one that is true. The
difference, however, is what follows. A response imbued with a true belief is
actionable knowledge
. A response compelled by a false belief manifests as a
mistake, an illusion, or an inaction. Sure I could believe and ultimately bench
press 335, but my joints would eventually expose the truth. Exposing our beliefs
as either truths or falsities clarifies whether our actions are based upon actionable
knowledge or misperceived delusion.
Take for example the belief that your wife is trustworthy.
You might question this belief when, for the first time in years, your wife
buys some sexy Victoria’s Secret goodies. Suddenly you
suspect
she might be
cheating, and the belief is questioned. This suspicion might not incite action,
other than waiting to see if anything else fits your suspicions. Weeks, perhaps
months, may pass.
Conversely, when you return home early from a business trip and catch her
naked with Ricardo the pool man, you’ve moved from questionable belief, to
actionable knowledge: She’s cheating. Proof constitutes an immediate belief shift
followed by action. Old belief: My wife is trustworthy. New belief: My wife
cannot be trusted. Action: I want a divorce; I’m moving out; Ricardo, meet my
fist.
Validated beliefs unveil truth, and truth is the best basis for decision-making.
On the flip side, false beliefs do the opposite: they produce either inaction or
errant action. In self-help circles, such lies are called “limiting beliefs.” Under
psychiatric diagnostic criteria, they aren’t so kind—they’re called “delusions.”
For example, if you believe in Santa like I did, you might leave him cookies
on Christmas Eve and hope your name isn’t on his naughty list. Believe that
broke blogger’s advice that “do what you love” is the secret to success and you
might fail twenty businesses. Believe that suicide is the doorway into an alien
spacecraft tailing Comet Hale-Bopp and you might kill yourself like the thirty-
nine believers of the Heaven’s Gate cult did in 1997.
As you can see, delusional beliefs cause erroneous actions. But their
consequences don’t end there. Delusional beliefs also cause erroneous
inactions
.
For example, if you believe “entrepreneurship is risky,” you’ll avoid starting a
business. If you’re a woman and believe “lifting weights makes you big,” you’ll
avoid lifting weights. If you believe the Earth is flat, you’ll avoid a Carnival
cruise. Actually, no one should ever cruise Carnival, but that’s another story. The
point is, delusional beliefs cause both flawed action and inaction, spitting out one
gigantic shitstorm of undesirable consequences. And sorry, because life isn’t a
book, turning the page isn’t an option—you suffer the consequences.
Unfortunately, on your
UNSCRIPTED
quest, you’ll battle many conspirators
affirming your delusions and keeping your 3(B)s
SCRIPT
aligned. Until they’re
addressed, nothing changes. Simply put,
the road to “fuck you” starts with
unfucking the things that are fucking you
.
Flawed premises yield flawed results.
Different results need different premises.
If your brain was a separate person who spoke to you daily, would you label it a friend
and an ally?
Or a nay-saying enemy?
CHAPTER 17
THE LIES WE BELIEVE:
THE 8 BELIEF SCAMS
A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back to the
crowd.
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