How to Disrupt a Belief

This educational content is part of Week 3 of the Money Story Rewrite, a 4-week journey to uncover the motivations, memories and beliefs that drive our relationship with money, and to shift our money story through small, deliberate actions.

Beliefs are shaped through experience. And they’re disrupted the same way - not through argument or willpower, but through new patterns that interrupt the old ones and offer the brain something different to work with.

Because beliefs are efficient shortcuts, the brain tends to preserve them unless it encounters consistent evidence that the shortcut is no longer useful. That evidence often comes in the form of small moments where behavior doesn’t match expectation... moments where someone does something that their belief wouldn’t predict, and nothing bad happens.

When Belief and Behavior Don’t Match

Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance - the discomfort we feel when there’s a mismatch between what we believe and what we do. The brain doesn’t like inconsistency, so it looks for a way to resolve the gap. Sometimes it dismisses the action as an exception. But if the new behavior is safe enough, repeatable, and emotionally coherent, it can start to shift the belief itself.

How Behavior Shapes Belief

This is where behavior plays a more central role than most people assume. Belief is often seen as something that drives action — and that’s true. But action can also revise belief.

This is known as self-perception theory, the idea that we learn about ourselves by observing what we do. When someone sees themselves behave differently than expected, and the outcome isn’t negative, it can prompt the brain to reconsider what’s true.

Why Small Actions Matter More Than Big Ones

Disruption doesn’t require a dramatic gesture. In fact, beliefs that have helped protect us - from shame, failure, or exclusion - are likely to resist forceful change. Sudden contradiction can feel threatening. What tends to work better is small, intentional behavior that gently contradicts the old pattern without overwhelming the nervous system.

What Disruption Looks Like in Real Life

For example, someone who believes they can’t be trusted with money might start by reviewing their spending once a week, just long enough to notice a pattern. If that review is paired with curiosity rather than shame, it introduces new information: I can look at this without shutting down. That’s a form of dissonance, and it’s the kind the brain can learn from.

A person who always says yes to financial requests, out of a belief that saying no makes them selfish, might begin by pausing before responding. The pause itself is the disruption. If they choose to say no, and the relationship holds, that outcome becomes evidence that the belief may not always apply.

What matters is not just the behavior, but how it’s experienced. When a small action leads to a neutral or positive outcome, and that outcome is noticed, it begins to interrupt the emotional logic of the original belief. That doesn’t mean the belief disappears. It means there’s now a counterexample in the system.

This is how a new feedback loop begins.

Why Repetition and Safety Matter

Disruption doesn’t happen all at once. In many cases, beliefs that formed under stress or emotional threat are reinforced not just cognitively, but physiologically. The body holds its own version of the loop - tightening, bracing, avoiding. Which means the body also has to feel safe enough for the pattern to shift.

This is why repetition matters. One small act of dissonance may register, but it’s through repetition, with variation, reflection, and emotional safety, that the brain begins to update its map.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Beliefs don’t all operate the same way. Some come from fear of failure, others from a need to belong or stay in control. Below are a few examples of how specific beliefs form, and why small behavioral disruptions can begin to shift them.

Belief: “I can’t be trusted with money.” This belief often forms through moments of financial chaos or secrecy — where mistakes felt costly or shameful. Over time, it becomes a way to avoid risk by staying away from decision-making entirely.

Disrupt it by: Looking at one part of your financial picture — like your recent grocery spending — and noticing one choice you made that was deliberate. The point isn’t to reframe the whole story. It’s to let one moment of control register.

Belief: “I have to take care of everything.” This belief tends to form in environments where dropping the ball wasn’t an option — emotionally, financially, or relationally. It offers safety through self-reliance, but often comes with resentment or depletion.

Disrupt it by: Pausing before your next automatic yes. Even just waiting 30 minutes before replying can loosen the sense that urgency equals safety.

Belief: “Success makes me a target.” In some families or communities, standing out creates risk — jealousy, rejection, or being labeled selfish. This belief works by keeping you small enough to stay connected.

Disrupt it by: Naming a financial win, even to yourself. Write it down, say it out loud. Let it exist without softening, apologizing, or earning it.gin to understand why they feel so convincing, and where there may be room to create something different.

What Makes an Action Effective

The kinds of actions that support belief disruption tend to share a few qualities:

• They are concrete and observable — not internal reframes, but visible behaviors

• They are small enough to feel safe but meaningful enough to register

• They are relevant to the belief being disrupted

• They are followed by some form of attention or reflection, even brief

It’s not the size of the action that shifts the belief. It’s the fact that the action provides new evidence, and that evidence is allowed to count.

Belief disruption is often less about changing your mind, and more about creating conditions where the mind can change on its own. Those conditions are built through experience, the kind that introduces something unfamiliar, allows it to feel safe, and gives it room to repeat.

Over time, those experiences can form new patterns. And when the new pattern becomes more reliable than the old one, the belief has less ground to stand on.