Beliefs need to be earned

HC Masterclass
Nov 8 · 2 min read
Photo by Levi Saunders on Unsplash

Once again, this is something of an extension to yesterday’s post, which was all about moving on from who you were told you were, growing up. I try to keep these short, but three minutes is never enough to explore a topic, so sometimes there will be a bit of development in the next day’s post.

We all hold beliefs about ourselves. Bad beliefs will send you into a destructive spiral, but it’s helpful to hold good beliefs; they are part of what keeps us mentally well. I suppose I’m a skeptic skeptic. I think belief is the sister of hope, and the world would be a worse place without it. Can you feel the caveat coming?

There’s a lot of self-help stuff out there about believing things into existence. Make yourself believe you’ll be rich and you will be; make yourself believe your life is great and it will be. Well, I might be wrong, but I don’t think that’s how belief works. I think it follows, rather than leads. You have to lay the groundwork for it.

Beliefs need to be earned

I recommend checking in regularly to see whether your beliefs about yourself still seem reasonable. If you always fancied yourself as a generous person, where’s your recent evidence? What have you done today to back that up? Or maybe you were always told you were lazy. Well, are you being lazy today? Challenge it! Correct it! Fight for the good beliefs, let the bad ones wither on the vine.

You have control over the ideas you choose to develop about yourself. Prove the good stuff to yourself every day, let everything else go

Today’s lesson

Write down four beliefs you hold about yourself, two positive, two negative. Underneath them, write down evidence from the last week or so that challenges or negates the negative beliefs and supports the positive ones.

For more posts like this and to find out more about the HC Masterclass series, please visit hcmasterclass.com

HC Masterclass

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Daily posts as part of the Hack Circus Masterclass series: expert advice and free materials to help you to thrive in today’s world. A @hackcircus spin-off.

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