What We Believe We Are

What we believe shapes our reality—and others'. Belief isn’t passive; it’s how we create. Sustain it, focus it, and share it. Because reality listens.

There was a time in my life when I stopped believing in anything. Not just the inspirational kind of belief—"you can do it!"—but something deeper, the kind that quietly holds up the scaffolding of your day. I didn’t think of it as a big decision. Just a subtle change in perspective. But that shift had real consequences. Everything around me started to decay. Not physically, but energetically. Projects stalled, relationships turned sour, even the things I once enjoyed began to feel hollow. I wasn’t just failing—I was dragging reality down with me.

It took me a while to realize what was happening. I’d always thought the world was out there, doing its thing, and I was just moving through it. But what if that’s not true? What if the world reflects back exactly what we bring to it?

Jan Rak, a professor of quantum physics who’s spent years working at CERN, believes just that. And not as a metaphor—he means it quite literally. In quantum mechanics, particles exist not as fixed objects but as clouds of probability. They only become real—take on location, spin, momentum—when observed. This isn’t fringe science; it’s the heart of quantum theory. Reality doesn’t fully exist without a witness.

Which sounds a lot like what happened to me.

If you're not paying attention to life—or worse, if you’re looking at it through a lens of distrust and frustration—it starts to blur. You stop shaping it, and it stops caring. Just like those subatomic particles waiting for an observer, your life floats in a kind of probabilistic fog, waiting for you to commit to a version of it. Rak says consciousness doesn’t just perceive the world—it participates in its creation.

But here’s the twist: most of us are bad at belief.

We’ve been trained not to trust ourselves. Or worse, to defer belief entirely to someone else: someone with a title, a certificate, a louder voice. We outsource our faith in reality to “the competent people”—the doctor, the teacher, the CEO—assuming they’re the ones shaping things. But what actually makes them capable? Is it their resume? Or the fact that someone believed in them long enough for them to believe in themselves?

Rak says the universe is participatory. That what we observe matters. But observing isn't just seeing—it's focusing. It's believing with attention. You can’t passively watch the world and expect it to snap into a shape you like. You have to commit. And that’s what belief really is: a sustained act of mental attention. Not a moment of optimism, but a continuous frequency you're holding.

I didn’t realize I was broadcasting a signal of doubt. But once I did, it was obvious why things around me stopped working. Doubt is heavy. It bends everything toward failure, like gravity. It eats possibility before it even forms. I didn’t need more resources or more time or more friends. I needed a lighter signal.

Strangely, the gym helped.

At the gym, you see change. You start with something small, barely noticeable. A muscle twitch. One more rep. A little less pain. But over time, those changes compound, and you get evidence—hard, visible proof—that belief plus action equals transformation. It’s no accident that people who go to the gym consistently often start changing more than just their bodies. They learn to focus. To trust the process. To believe in things they can’t yet see.

Belief needs feedback. It thrives on loops. If you expect something to improve and you pay attention to it, it tends to improve. Not because you willed it magically, but because your focus helped you notice the right things and ignore the wrong ones.

The quantum world and the gym are saying the same thing: what you pay attention to becomes real.

The thing is, belief doesn’t only operate inward. It flows outward too. The way we see others has real consequences for them—just as our own doubts have consequences for us.

This might be the most overlooked form of power: the belief we project onto other people. When we assume someone is not smart, not capable, not ready, we shrink their field of possibility. And most dangerously, we do it without ever saying a word. It’s like putting weights on someone’s feet, then wondering why they aren’t moving faster.

But the reverse is also true. When we believe in someone, especially before they’ve proven anything, we create the possibility for them to grow into that belief. Confidence is rarely self-generated in a vacuum. It’s social. It builds inside the reflection of others' eyes.

So when we treat someone like a “third-class citizen”—intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually—we’re not just being unfair. We’re actively writing their constraints into the code of reality. Not just their reality, but ours too, because we now live in a world where they’re playing small. That makes everyone smaller.

Which brings me back to titles. We often assume a person’s capacity from the outside in: the doctor is wise, the CEO is capable, the professor knows something we don’t. But maybe what really matters is the degree to which someone has sustained belief—either in themselves or in the belief others have given them.

What’s the difference between someone who hits ten three-pointers in a row at the park and someone who does it on an NBA court? Belief. Not talent, not stats—at least not at first. One believes in himself when no one’s watching. The other does it when the world is. But it’s the same skill: managing the internal signal. Holding the belief steady even when the shots miss.

The hardest part of belief isn’t starting—it’s sustaining. You can catch fire by accident. You can have a good day, hit all the right notes, feel like the best version of yourself. But the real game is what happens the next day. When it’s quiet. When no one’s cheering. When you miss five in a row. Can you still see yourself clearly then?

Jan Rak’s vision of quantum physics shows us that reality is unstable until observed. But here’s the twist: maybe belief is the highest form of observation. It’s not passive like sight. It’s participatory. It involves intention, expectation, and responsibility. It doesn’t just measure the world—it forms it.

So maybe the world doesn’t respond to what we want. It responds to what we can hold. Not for a moment, but over time. The strength of belief is the bandwidth of creation. It determines how much reality we’re allowed to shape.

That’s why what we believe we are matters so much. Not because we need to trick ourselves into thinking happy thoughts. But because belief is how we aim consciousness. And consciousness, if Rak is right, is how reality happens.

So if belief is a full-time job, then we should start treating it like one. Not just for ourselves, but for each other. Believe in others like it’s your responsibility—because it is. Reality is a shared construct. And the most powerful thing you can give another person is not advice, or critique, or even help.

It’s belief.