The Currents Beneath Our Beliefs and How Repeated Information Shapes the Beliefs We Build
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Vince Morales is a mindset, self-image, and resilience coach. In addition, he is skilled in leadership consultation and development. From April 2016 to June 2017, Vince was a homeless veteran in San Diego, CA. While homeless, he made a powerful decision to change his thinking and mindset, launching into life coaching.
One day, my wife and I were walking along a beach in San Diego when I noticed some trash washing up near the shoreline. I remember thinking that it was ugly and that someone ought to do something about it. We continued our walk without addressing the trash.
On the way back, I decided that I would pick it up myself. By then, it was gone. Perhaps another person had removed it. Perhaps the tide had pulled it back into the Pacific Ocean. I never found out, but the moment stayed with me because the trash had disappeared from view before I had dealt with it.
At the time, it was nothing more than a minor interruption during an ordinary walk on the beach. Over time, however, it became a useful metaphor for the thoughts, memories, fears, and assumptions that surface in our minds, briefly capture our attention, and then go unexamined. A memory can emerge unexpectedly during a stressful conversation. An old insecurity can return while driving home from work. A thought that seemed settled years ago can rise again after a disappointment, a loss, a conflict, or a simple cue that we barely notice.
When this happens, people often say that the thought came out of nowhere. Sometimes that description is understandable, but it may not be entirely accurate. The thought may have arrived in conscious awareness without warning, yet it may still be connected to prior experiences, emotional learning, repeated messages, or associations that have been active outside deliberate attention.
I began thinking about this more seriously after reflecting on the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011. The disaster swept enormous amounts of debris into the Pacific Ocean. Much of that debris moved beyond sight, carried by currents, wind, and weather patterns. In June 2012, more than a year after the tsunami, a floating dock measuring 66 feet washed ashore near Newport, Oregon. By 2014, NOAA had documented numerous small boats and skiffs potentially associated with the tsunami reaching the coasts of Oregon and Washington.
The debris had not disappeared simply because people could no longer see it. It had continued moving through a system larger than any one person could observe. Its arrival on a distant shore may have seemed sudden to the person who found it, but the journey itself had been underway for a long time.
I do not offer this as a literal explanation of the mind. The mind is not an ocean, and the unconscious is not a hidden force that intentionally chooses which thoughts to release into conscious awareness. The metaphor is useful because it reflects a familiar human experience. What leaves conscious attention is not necessarily resolved, erased, or irrelevant. It can remain connected to memory, emotion, personal history, and learned associations that continue to shape how we interpret life.
Psychologists use the term involuntary autobiographical memories to describe memories of personal events that come to mind without a deliberate attempt to retrieve them. These memories often arise in connection with cues in the present environment, including a familiar phrase, an image, a place, a smell, a song, or an emotional state that activates related material outside deliberate awareness (Berntsen, 2021). The experience may feel spontaneous, but the mind is often responding to connections that are not immediately visible to us.
This becomes especially important in an era when people are exposed to an unending stream of information. Through social media platforms and other digital channels, we encounter claims about health, relationships, leadership, money, danger, success, politics, appearance, personal worth, and risk. Some of that content is useful and accurate. Some is incomplete. Some is distorted. Some is built to provoke outrage, fear, comparison, or certainty because those emotions hold attention.
No one can investigate every claim before moving to the next post, headline, video, or message. The deeper concern is not that every piece of content becomes a belief. It does not. The concern is that repeated exposure can influence what feels familiar, and familiarity can shape what feels believable, normal, threatening, desirable, or representative of reality.
Daniel Kahneman described a related tendency with the phrase “What You See Is All There Is” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 85). His point was that people often form judgments from the information most available to them, even when important context is absent. In a digital environment, repeated exposure can create the impression that a message is common, settled, or widely accepted simply because it keeps appearing.
Research on the illusory truth effect helps explain why that matters. Repetition can make a statement easier to process, and that ease can increase its perceived truthfulness. Fazio et al. (2015) found that repetition increased the perceived truth of statements even when participants possessed relevant knowledge that should have helped them reject false claims. Pennycook et al. (2018) also found that a single prior exposure to false news headlines increased later perceptions of their accuracy, including after a delay of one week.
That research does not suggest that people are helpless or incapable of critical thinking. It does show that repetition can quietly change the conditions under which an idea begins to feel plausible. A dramatic claim that omits essential context, a recurring message that equates visibility with worth, a steady stream of content based on fear, or relentless comparison with the highlight reels of other people’s lives may not persuade someone in a single moment. Over time, however, those fragments can become familiar mental material.
Belief systems are rarely built through one formal decision. More often, they are assembled gradually through lived experiences, family systems, relationships, culture, faith, success, hardship, and the interpretations people attach to those experiences.
“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” – Anaïs Nin
Digital content is only one influence among many, but it has become part of the psychological environment in which people interpret who they are, what they can expect from others, and what they believe is possible.
Consider the thought, “I am behind.” It may begin after seeing someone else’s achievement online or hearing about another person’s promotion. On its own, it may be a passing reaction. Yet when it is repeatedly reinforced by comparison, disappointment, selective attention, and similar messages from the outside world, it can begin to function as a working assumption. A person may start noticing only the evidence that seems to confirm it and overlooking evidence that does not. Eventually, the thought may become woven into an identity narrative about being less capable, less successful, or less deserving than others.
The thought was not necessarily true when it first appeared. It did not become true simply because it returned. However, a thought that repeatedly surfaces without being examined can become familiar enough to be treated as evidence. Once it is treated as evidence, it can become part of the framework through which a person interprets future opportunities, setbacks, relationships, and personal limitations.
Richard Feynman offered a warning that applies well beyond science when he said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool” (Feynman, 1974). That does not require harsh criticism of oneself. It calls for intellectual honesty. It asks us to examine the assumptions we carry about our value, potential, risks, limitations, and the stories we tell ourselves about why life is unfolding as it is.
This is where the beach metaphor moves from observation to responsibility. We do not control every message that reaches us, every memory that resurfaces, or every thought that arrives unexpectedly. We do, however, have influence over what happens after it reaches the shoreline of awareness. We can slow down before accepting a conclusion. We can seek context before sharing a claim. We can distinguish a feeling from a fact and familiarity from truth. We can ask whether a recurring thought reflects reality or whether it has simply become familiar because we have encountered it so often.
The goal is not to interrogate every thought or turn inner life into a constant project of monitoring ourselves. Some thoughts are transient. Some memories are simply memories. Some content passes through the mind without taking root. Yet when the same fear, assumption, comparison, or claim continues returning, it is reasonable to become curious. Where did this idea come from? What evidence supports it? Is it a fact, an interpretation, a fear, or a familiar story? Does it belong in the structure I am building?
These questions matter in leadership as much as they matter in personal growth. Unexamined beliefs do not remain private for long. They influence how leaders interpret people, respond to conflict, assess risk, establish expectations, and shape culture. A leader who assumes that people cannot be trusted will lead differently from one who has examined that belief and tested it against evidence. A leader who consumes constant scarcity messaging may create anxiety in a team even when the facts do not support it. A leader who confuses confidence with certainty may miss information that challenges a preferred narrative.
The same dynamic affects anyone trying to live with greater clarity and intention. We cannot stop every current, and we cannot prevent every piece of debris from reaching the shoreline. What we can do is become more discerning about what we allow to remain there. Not every thought deserves to become a brick in the architecture of our belief system, particularly when it has never been examined closely enough to earn that place.
The trash I saw on the San Diego beach may have been removed by someone else. It may also have been carried back into the ocean, where it could continue moving until another tide brought it ashore somewhere else. I will never know. What I do know is that something can disappear from conscious view without being truly dealt with, and the same may be true of the messages, memories, fears, and assumptions that move through our inner lives.
The most important question is not whether unwanted material will ever wash ashore in the mind. It will. The question is whether we will recognize it, examine it, and decide whether it belongs in the structure we are building.
Vince Morales, Mindset Mastery Coach & Leadership Consultant
Vince Morales is a mindset, self-image, and resilience coach. In addition, he is skilled in leadership consultation and development. From April 2016 to June 2017, Vince was a homeless veteran in San Diego, CA. While homeless, he made a powerful decision to change his thinking and mindset, which led him to launch into professional coaching. He developed his niche for resilience and mindset coaching. The growth of his business ultimately led to the end of his homelessness. Vince is the Founder of Validus Coaching and Consulting, formerly Zoe Transformation. His story has been featured in online articles and online news outlets all over the U.S. He is a certified John Maxwell Team Coach, Trainer, & Speaker as well as a motivational speaker. In 2021, Vince earned his Master's degree in Psychology of Leadership from Penn State University and recently completed a second Master’s degree in Executive Coaching and Consulting from the Townsend Institute, Concordia University-Irvine. He is a 2020 inductee in The National Society of Leadership and Success, 2021/2023 Brainz 500 Global Award recipient, 2022 SUCCESS Magazine 125 honoree, and is the 2024 IAOTP Top Coach and Consultant of the Year.
References:
Berntsen, D. (2021). Involuntary autobiographical memories and their relation to other forms of spontaneous thoughts. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 376(1817), Article 20190693.
Fazio, L. K., Brashier, N. M., Payne, B. K., & Marsh, E. J. (2015). Knowledge does not protect against illusory truth. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(5), 993-1002.
Feynman, R. P. (1974, June). Cargo cult science [Commencement address]. California Institute of Technology.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2012, July 2). How is Japan tsunami marine debris cleaned up on the West Coast?
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2014, May 30). April showers bring … marine debris to Pacific Northwest beaches?
Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018). Prior exposure increases the perceived accuracy of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(12), 1865-1880.
