The Biology of Belief: How M.U.D. Warps Reality
Misguided Unconscious Decisions (MUD) aren’t just emotional scars—they’re biologically encoded distortions of reality...
You didn’t just inherit your mom’s blue eyes or your dad’s temper.
You inherited their beliefs. Not consciously… cellularly.
And what if I told you that the stories they told you (and the ones you tell yourself) don’t just shape how you see the world… but how your body functions inside it?
That belief that you’re not enough?
That story about stress being toxic?
That silent expectation to always be strong and never need help?
It’s not just psychology. It’s biology.
The Big Idea
Your beliefs are not just mental concepts… they are biological instructions.
They literally rewire your brain, reshape your hormones, recalibrate your immune system, and change the way your body metabolizes food, heals itself, and responds to the world.
And most of those beliefs?
They weren’t chosen.
They were programmed.
We call this M.U.D. (Misguided Unconscious Decisions)… and it may be the most overlooked root cause of disease, burnout, and suffering in modern life.
The Breakdown
M.U.D.: Where Belief Begins and Biology Bends
M.U.D. stands for Misguided Unconscious Decisions… beliefs not formed by logic, but by emotional necessity. They are judgments we made during difficult life events…times when we didn’t yet have the maturity, wisdom, or tools to cope or make sense of what was happening.
Those judgments become stories.
Those stories coalesce into beliefs.
Those beliefs harden into identity.
And that identity becomes the lens through which we view ourselves and the world.
From that moment forward, the M.U.D. begins to cloud everything.
It distorts perception. It reshapes biology. It becomes reality.
Dad leaves the room?
“I must not be lovable.”
Mom cries in silence?
“I have to fix her to be safe.”
We don’t get trauma… we get training.
And that training becomes our unconscious operating system.
Some M.U.D. is loose, like a puddle… easy to splash through.
Some is thick, like clay… sticky, hard to move in.
Some hardens into cement… so fixed we mistake it for truth.
But unless you clean it, clear it, or crack it wide open…
change is impossible.
Belief Changes Physiology: The Science Backs It Up
At Stanford, psychologist Alia Crum has been studying how mindset affects metabolism. In her famous “milkshake study,” two groups drank identical milkshakes. One group was told theirs was a 140-calorie “sensible shake.” The other group believed they drank a 620-calorie “indulgent” version.
The results? Their ghrelin (hunger hormone) levels responded not to the actual shake… but to the belief about the shake (Crum et al., 2011).
In another experiment, people who were told stress could be helpful—rather than harmful… showed better physiological responses during stressful events (Crum et al., 2013). Their blood vessels stayed relaxed. Their cognitive performance improved.
The belief about stress changed the biological response to it.
In other words: belief is biochemistry.
Mindset Alters Brain Function and Growth
Carol Dweck’s work on the “growth mindset” shows how the belief that intelligence can be developed, rather than fixed, increases motivation, resilience, and even brain activity in learning regions (Dweck, 2006).
People’s perception of their own capacity doesn’t just affect their effort… it alters their neurology.
This isn’t woo. This is what happens when belief and brain collide.
The CPNEI Model: A New Lens on Health
The Conscious-Psycho-Neuro-Endocrine-Immune (CPNEI) model recognizes that your consciousness, what you believe, perceive, expect, sits upstream from everything else in your body.
Psycho = Emotional patterns and meanings
Neuro = Brain architecture and electrical signaling
Endocrine = Hormonal regulation
Immune = Inflammatory responses and healing
Belief ripples through all of it.
For example, a recent 2022 study showed that people who strongly believe in free will or dualism had reduced sensitivity to biological motion (Zhao et al., 2022).
That’s a basic perceptual shift, not just an opinion or philosophy.
The study suggests that deep-seated worldview beliefs can affect core sensory processing… how we literally see and feel movement.
Let that sink in: belief isn’t just thought. It’s the lens through which you interpret everything… and that lens changes the body interpreting it.
Placebo Is Not a Trick—It’s Proof
When someone believes a sugar pill will heal them, and it does… we don’t call it fake.
We call it placebo. But what that really means is:
The body can respond to a belief as powerfully as it responds to a drug.
And yet, we still pretend that thoughts and feelings are separate from physiology?
Placebo shows us that belief has pharmacological power.
It’s time we stop treating that like a fluke and start understanding it as a function of consciousness.
M.U.D. + CPNEI = Why You’re Still Stuck
So why does this matter?
Because if you don’t clear the M.U.D., your beliefs will keep distorting your biology no matter how “healthy” your behavior is.
You’ll stress-eat kale.
You’ll cold plunge to prove your worth.
You’ll fast to punish yourself, not to heal.
Until your unconscious operating system is updated, your conscious habits won’t stick… or worse, they’ll be weaponized by your wounds.
Practical Takeaway
You cannot out-supplement a subconscious belief.
You cannot out-lift a nervous system stuck in M.U.D.
And you cannot optimize your metabolism while operating from an outdated identity.
So start here:
Name your M.U.D.
Ask: What did I unconsciously decide about myself or the world that’s still running my life? This is a hard question to answer consciously, but you should ask it anyway. At Next Level Human we have specific techniques we use to access the unconscious to uncover this critical answer.Challenge the belief biologically.
Instead of just affirming new thoughts, act as if a new identity is true. This rewires your CPNEI system.Feel it to unseal it.
Use breathwork, somatic practices, and memory reconsolidation to release the emotional charge behind the old belief.Choose again. Consciously.
Write a new belief. One that aligns with your current truth—not your childhood survival script.
This process is what we refer to here at rewrite, rewire, retrain. It’s the three step process required to clear the MUD that keeps us stuck. Unfortunately therapy, coaching, energy work, psychedelics and other change modalities either don’t address these three areas or get them in the wrong order.
Closing Thought
Your beliefs are not private.
They’re public. Physiological. Perceptual.
They change how you heal. How you see. How you are.
Most of us are not living our lives.
We are living our M.U.D.
But once you understand that belief is biology… you can begin to write your story from the inside out.
That’s the moment you stop reacting… and start creating.
PS Call-to-Action
If you’re ready to stop living from your M.U.D. and start living from your Essentia… the core of who you really are…explore my Next Level Human Architect program today. Spots are limited. Don’t wait.
👉 http://www.nextlevelhuman.com/human-coaching
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