Your core beliefs written down, sorted, and checked against whether they’re actually yours.
Time commitmentSixty to ninety minutes, better split across two sittings. Your work saves in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back.
Before you startThis one digs deep, so be gentle with what comes up. Lean on the 5 C’s, the Habits of Rebellion that keep you grounded: Curiosity, Courage, Compassion, Connection, and Commitment.
There’s a belief you never question
Some things you say about yourself like they’re facts. I’m not creative. I can’t slow down. People leave. There’s no heat in them, and you’ve said them for so long you don’t even hear them anymore.
You’d never think to argue with any of them. They just feel true.
That’s a core belief: a story you’ve told for so long it stopped feeling like a story.
A belief you’ve never questioned feels like fact. That’s the bedrock everything else gets built on.
These beliefs guide your life. When you believe you’re capable, you take a swing at hard things. When you believe you’re not enough, you pass on the same chances and call it being realistic.
The same goes for people. If you believe everyone eventually leaves, you keep one foot out the door of every relationship you have.
Most of this guiding happens where you can’t see it, which is exactly why finding these beliefs and writing them down is worth the trouble.
Beliefs run upstream of your Habits, the H in the C.H.E.A.T. Code. They decide which habits feel available to you, and that decides how your Energy, Attention, and Time get spent.
Get them out of your head
Write down every story you tell about yourself, about other people, and about how the world works. Don’t sort them or fix the wording, just get them on the page.
If you go blank, that’s normal. Tap a starter to begin a sentence, or look at what you say on repeat: the advice you give everyone, the complaint that comes out of you every week, the line about yourself you deliver flat, like a fact.
Go one layer down
Some of what you wrote is surface, complaints and habits and symptoms. Use Go deeper on any line and this page will ask: if that’s true, what does it say about you? Keep answering until the answer stops moving. That last line is bedrock.
Where they show up. Then sort them.
Take each belief and find it in your actual behavior. What does it make you do? What does it stop you from doing? If you can’t point to something real, keep looking.
Then sort: Personal beliefs are about you. Interpersonal beliefs are about other people. Existential beliefs are about how the world works.
I have to be available and do everything myself or things fall apart. — Personal — I answer Slack at dinner. I’ve never once let a message sit overnight.
What it costs, what it provides
Now weigh each one. What has it gotten you? What has it cost you?
Even the worst of these did a job for you once. Maybe it kept you safe in a house where being useful was how you got loved. Maybe it carried you through a workplace that punished rest. Beliefs that protect something stick around long after the danger is gone. So find what it protected, then be honest about what it costs you now.
I have to be available. Benefits: a reputation for being reliable, two promotions on the back of it. Costs: six years of late evenings. My wife stopped asking if I was coming to dinner.
That’s a full sitting.
You’ve written them down, sorted them, and weighed them, which is a full sitting. Stop here if you can. The next part asks whether these beliefs are even yours, and it goes better after a break. Your work is saved in this browser.
Are they even yours?
Go back through your list one more time and ask two questions of each belief. Who taught me this, and who was it good for?
You’ve heard these
Rest is something you earn. If I slow down I’ll be replaced. Asking for help is weakness. If I save enough, nothing can reach me.
Nobody sat down and chose those. They came from a boss or a parent or a culture that needed something from you, and they came in so quietly they feel like personality now.
I have to be available. Who taught it? A manager who rewarded the all-nighters, and a family where being useful was how you got loved. Who was it good for? Them. Mark it: handed to me.
Going deeper
Your beliefs, for reference
You don’t need all of these. Open the ones that spark something and skip the rest.
Say one out loud
Your beliefs, for reference
Pick the belief with the most weight on it and tell one person this week, out loud. Not a post or a journal entry, an actual person.
Decide now who you’ll tell and when. If it doesn’t have a name and a time on it, it won’t happen.
Here’s what you found
The calendar button downloads a file. Open it and it puts one hold on your calendar, thirty days from today, with one question on it: which of these beliefs ran the month? It lives in your calendar app, so there’s no email involved and nothing leaves this device.
Want the check-ins by email instead?
Same thirty-day arc, delivered. Three emails: a nudge at one week, the day-thirty question, and a closing note. Nothing else unless you ask for it. Take the calendar hold, the emails, or both. Your answers stay on this device either way.
Live by the ones that serve you. That might mean changing a behavior, or letting go of a belief that finished its job years ago.
Catch them in the moment. Beliefs are easiest to spot right when they fire, in the meeting or in the email you keep rewriting.
Tell someone. Saying one of these out loud to a person you trust does something writing can’t.
If one of them has to go
A belief fades when a different one starts collecting evidence, and not before. Take one you marked handed to me and write what you’d rather carry, in your own words. Keep it close enough to believe today, half-believable beats inspiring. Then give it one test this month, one moment where you act as if the new belief is true and watch what happens.
I have to be available becomes things hold without me. The test: one Saturday with Slack off.
Bedrock is the first of ten
The Rebellion Manuals are a series of working tools like this one, and nine more are in the workshop. They all live at manuals.rebellioncollective.com. If you took the emails above, the last one offers a door to hear when each new manual ships.
If this brought up something difficult
That happens, and it isn’t a sign you did this wrong. Talk to a friend you trust, a mentor, or a coach. If what came up needs a therapist, get a therapist, and if you’re not sure what kind of help you need, email us and we’ll sort out where to point you.
How was this one?
Email us at hello@rebellioncollective.com and tell us what you found. We read every one.
Be patient with yourself here. You may be getting to know yourself for the first time.