Belief — The Bigger Ask
On beginning again at a higher level, the courage to say things out loud, and why joy is the compass not the destination.
This issue in brief: The Belief Loop begins again. Yet this time at a higher level, with more awareness, more capacity and more trust than when we started. Issue 9 explores what happens when we expand the ask, share our goals with believers, and choose to feel good as a practice rather than a reward.
Writing this issue feels like a moment to pause and reflect.
Not on how far there is to go. On how far this journey has already come.
The Belief Loop has completed its first full cycle. Returning to Belief, the stage where it all begins, I find myself more grateful than I expected. More humbled by the people who have joined this journey. More moved by the messages from followers who shared that a particular issue landed exactly when they needed it.
That is the loop doing what it was always meant to do, meeting each of us where we are.
As I shared in my UTS graduation address: you can’t choose the timing. The timing chooses you. And if something is for you, it won’t pass you.
I recently received the official video of that address. It has been published online by UTS graduations yet this is the first time I am sharing it with The Belief Loop community. Perhaps something in it will land for you too.
The bigger ask
Oprah Winfrey has said that we get in life what we have the courage to ask for. Yet something she said in a previous Super Soul podcast has stayed with me even more deeply:
You become what you believe.
I am now willing to say things out loud that may have felt too big before.
A desire to give a TED talk. To qualify for the Boston Marathon as an age grouper. To interview a global thought leader in person. To publish a book. To take this work to bigger stages and more rooms.
Belief doesn’t guarantee I’ll get there. Yet disbelief almost guarantees I won’t.
That distinction matters. Belief isn’t certainty. It isn’t a promise. It is a decision to stay in the game rather than remove yourself from it before it has even begun.
There is a practice to this that I keep returning to. Ask. Believe you have it. Put your attention on it. Take action. Receive. The Belief Loop in its most distilled form.
And here is something I have come to understand about the asking: sharing our goals with believers releases them to the universe. We never know who might be able to help us. The moment we speak a dream out loud to someone who believes in us, something shifts. The goal stops being private and starts becoming possible.
Huw’s post-it note and the synergy of the universe
Our friends recently visited their family in Australia before returning to Florida. Our kids had spent a few wonderful weeks playing together as neighbours. When they left, my youngest son Huw wrote a goal on a post-it note. We are going to visit them in Florida soon. He stuck it on the wall and said, Mum, I'm manifesting.
At that stage I hadn’t even contemplated trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Then I looked up the qualifying time for my age group, realised it was close to what I had run in a previous marathon, and something clicked. I reached out to our friends. And discovered that Boston and Florida are only a few hours apart by plane.
A goal I hadn’t yet formed connected to a goal my nine year old had already written down.
That is the synergy of the universe. When we set an ask, to ourselves, to the universe, to a post-it note on the wall, we don’t need to know how it will happen. We trust. We believe. And we stay open to the connections we couldn’t have planned.
Joy is the compass
Throughout the first cycle of the Belief Loop, one thing kept surfacing that I hadn’t fully anticipated.
Joy.
When we feel good, we attract positive things. A quest to feel good really underpins the whole loop. Not as the destination but as the compass. Joy isn’t the reward for getting it right. It is the signal that you are moving in the right direction.
If you are not having fun, you are not doing it right, as a mentor of mine says. And I think this is worth sitting with as we begin the second cycle. Where is the joy in what you are building? Not the satisfaction of achievement, though that matters. The actual aliveness of it. The fun.
That is worth protecting.
The yin and the yang
On the same day I completed a 30km training run, I visited the dentist and discovered a mouth infection. Likely from pushing harder in winter training and lowering my immunity. A short course of medication and probiotics. A reminder to rest.
The yin and the yang.
The loop doesn’t ask us to be perfect. It asks us to be honest. And the honest truth of high performance is that striving and recovery are not opposites, they are partners. Push and rest. Effort and ease. The 30km run and the reminder to slow down.
Knowing when we are pushing too much is its own form of awareness. The body whispers before it screams. I am learning to listen more than I push.
Preparedness as belief in action
One more thing the UTS graduation address taught me.
I prepared properly. I worked hard on the speech, shaped it with my believers, rehearsed it, and then stepped on stage feeling genuinely ready. The confidence came from the preparation, not before it.
That is what I am trying to replicate with the marathon. My husband has written me a coaching program, the work is mapped out, the preparation is underway. Belief without preparation is wishful thinking. Belief with preparation is a plan.
Be brave before you feel confident. Yet do the work that earns the confidence too.
A practice for this fortnight
Write down one ask that feels too big to say out loud.
Then say it out loud to one person who believes in you.
Notice what shifts when the goal moves from private to shared.
That is belief at a higher level. That is the bigger ask.
The loop begins again.
Dani x
Next issue: Alignment at a higher level, what changes when we realign with a bigger version of ourselves.
In summary
The Belief Loop begins its second cycle at a higher level. The bigger ask requires courage to say out loud what we previously kept private, to share our goals with believers and trust the universe to connect the dots. Joy is not the destination, it is the compass. And belief without preparation is wishful thinking. Belief with preparation is a plan.
Referenced in this issue:
Oprah Winfrey — Super Soul Podcast, 24 February 2021, UTS Business School Graduation Address — Dani Matthews, May 2026