5 steps in mastering how beliefs (the critical aspect that define your life) work
There is a lot of stuff about beliefs. How to change them, how to overcome them, but I believe I couldn’t find something that actually shows you the vital importance of our beliefs and why they are the most single critical point which can make a difference in our lives. So I wrote this about it.
1. The Story
Imagine you are the emperor or empress of the entire world. Because of the vast territories you own and having 7.6 bilion subjects (world population on March 2018). The rules are: you have the divine right to be the empress/ emperor of the world. You are very wise and very good at what you do and you cannot for whatever reason be replaced or delegate your position, power and responsibilities.
The thing is you can’t manage directly everything happening in your empire. So you get governors, advisers, counselors, ambassadors and experts for each area and aspect of the world. It may look kind of like this:
Greetings, Your Wise Highness! With your permission, I dare to ask Your Magnificence some questions:
Would you take decisions based only on what you think or listen to others?
What kind of advisers and experts would you take into your council? Who would you trust taking advice from?
Who can give you the best advice about world education, economy, health, finances, tourism, population, environment, communities, law, life expectancy, religion, worldwide sexual education, communication and safety? Pretty important stuff, right?
And, most importantly, where and how would you get the best ones for you?
Take a moment, pause reading this and just let yourself imagine sitting on the Royal Armchair…
If it pleases Your Highness…
Take that moment!
You did take that moment, didn’t you?
Thank you, Your Highness…
Let’s go down a notch, and see how this really relates to your life.
How does being the empress/ emperor of the world relates to your life?
What if you were the empress/ emperor of your own world?
- World education becomes your own Personal Growth and Development
- World economy becomes your own Career/ Business
- Law becomes your own Lifestyle
- Life expectancy and health totally relates to Health and Well Being
- Money is Money the same subject, simply shifting the lens from worldwide to yourself
- Communities become Friends and Social Life
- You go from world environment to your Environment, the places you live your life
- Sexual education becomes your hands-on experience on Love/ Couple/ Sex
You get the point, right?
You, at this point in time and space, rule your own world on the same basis. You are wise and very good at it (you’re still alive!). You cannot be replaced and you cannot delegate anyone to live your life for you.
You had, have and are going to have different advisers for all your life’s aspects. Some of them are internal (your thoughts, ideas, attitudes, emotions, principles) and some of them are external (parents, friends, society, your boss, your peers etc.).
Amazingly, it’s the same whether you’re ruling the whole world or just your own life.
You get to have the same questions: What kind of advisers and experts you take into your council? Who do you listen to and who you don’t? And again, most importantly, how do you know which advisers are the best ones for you?
2. What are beliefs?
Beliefs are the advisers you take into your council, the ones that generate any and every thought you have, emotion you feel and action you take. Beliefs are the enforcers of Your Highness. They make your world go round for peace or for worse.
I’ve found on changingminds.org a good definition of belief:
“A belief is an assumed truth. Hence everything is a belief, including this statement.”
Beliefs filter the information you perceive and help you understand what is happening by forming your personal point of view. Through this filter your thoughts, emotions, words and actions are generated.
Basically, beliefs are the key element that get us to live the current life we’re living and determine all of it’s present and future circumstances. What you think it’s true tends to occur in your life, even if it’s not true for others.
And, note to self, most beliefs are unconscious. You may even consciously think something in a certain way and unconsciously believe the exact opposite. What you unconsciously believe has more influence over you just because your unconscious mind is more expanded and more intricate than your conscious mind.
Beliefs form through your own experience and they are or can be inherited from the people who raised you, your past and the collective unconscious.
Thankfully, they can be replaced with the best ones suited for how you want your life to be.
3. Why are your beliefs the critical point that define your life?
Beliefs are the single most important aspect you can work on to get what you want in your life.
If you want to know how important are the beliefs you have, imagine you’re going underwater and holding your breath.
Hold your breath for 1, 2 or 5 minutes and, when you run out of air, you are reminded how important air it is for survival.
That’s how important beliefs are in your life: like the air your breathe.
Why? Every decision you make is generated by beliefs. I’m sure you know that the decisions you make shape your entire life. Therefore
Your beliefs shape your entire life.
That’s it. How you live your life and how to improve it explained. This is it. One word: beliefs. Don’t believe me? Come back when you do.
Whatever you do, live through and experience (i.e. the kind of life you live) comes from beliefs. Here’s how:
4. How beliefs work?
The first thing in order to understand how beliefs work is to understand how they come to be in the first place.
- All beliefs are formed naturally by living your life, through your own experience, what you observe and what you learn. They form one atop the other.
- Then, based on what you believe to be true (=beliefs), you make decisions that form your life.
What happens when something you believe to be true is challenged?
- First you will look for anything (arguments, emotions, situations) when your beliefs are right. This can generate conflicts or situations when suffering appears or get you through the challenge better than you were.
- When you understand that what you believed isn’t really true, new beliefs are formed and you start believing to be true what you’ve just learned.
THIS IS HOW YOUR BELIEFS SHAPE YOUR ENTIRE LIFE:
If you want to test the fact that Beliefs shape your entire life:
- Take a piece of paper and make 2 columns
- 1st column: Think about a particular aspect of your life and write down how it is — the present circumstances, fact-like
- 2nd column: Write down what you think about that particular aspect of your life. Write like answering someone who asked you: “What do you think about *that aspect you thought of*?”
- Observe if how the current circumstances of the life’s aspect you chose match what you think about it
Fortunately, there isn’t a perfect match-up. That’s because we, as human beings, are designed to grow and evolve and that is what creates the differences. And also, you mostly took into account what you consciously think you believe. The unconscious beliefs might or might not be taken into consideration, depending on your level of self-awareness.
All beliefs are or were helpful for you at some point in your life.
There may be some beliefs that served you at some point in your life but aren’t helpful in the present moment because you want something different.
Think about something like “I prefer being told what to do”. This is belief is very helpful if you’re an employee, because you have a job description that tells you what to do. If you’re a business owner (or want to be one), you have to decide yourself on how to best invest your time and energy. Being told what to do here is something that doesn’t serve you and can even lead you to inaction.
Then imagine that all this happens without you even being aware that it happens and you judge yourself for not being productive — That’s how beliefs work…
Using the example in the infographic above, the belief “People don’t get it” can be obtained by trying to explain something to someone repeatedly and not succeeding. Therefore, by experience, “People don’t get it”.
How is this helpful? It might’ve helped you refrain from explaining something to somebody at a certain point and saved you both some time or gave you the opportunity to focus on what really matters.
5. The complexity of beliefs
Now that you understand how beliefs work, there is one more thing you need to take into consideration.
Beliefs don’t work alone, they always come in a network.
Imagine a network, any kind of network. That’s how beliefs are structured, by one being linked and built upon the other. The newer a belief is, the more conscious you can be about it. The older a belief is, the more unconscious it is.
How is a problem linked to the beliefs in your unconscious mind?
Here’s an example I had with a client. The problem she said she had was (in her own words):
“ I’m too busy and things should be simpler at work and that’s why I won’t get to make the trip I wanted this weekend”.
The solution she wanted was:
“I want to be sure of what I want and to make a satisfying decision”.
How was this problem structured in her beliefs?
It first two beliefs, which she was conscious about, were about wanting something else and being worry of not thinking about all the options she had.
Below, you can see all how her beliefs were structured:
So, the real problem was that she wasn’t confidant enough in herself. It wasn’t about being too busy or get to make that trip she wanted. It was about confidence.
Before coming to this conclusion, she could think about ways to be more productive, invest more energy in researching for more options for her trip, complain to her boss for having too many tasks or do some other things that, theoretically, would’ve helped her. She would have gone on that trip thinking that wasn’t the best choice she could make and come back disappointed.
What do you think would happen next time she had to make some similar choices? The same.
By having confidence in herself, she handled all her tasks at her job and found the best solution for spending her weekend. And confidence helps in all areas of your life.
The easiest way to solve challenges and problems in your life (and getting what you want) is by shifting your beliefs to get yourself to be used to living the solution (and having what you wanted).
By the way, remember that beliefs don’t have to be logical or linked in a logical way. The implications start from one aspect of life and can impact others.
How is being the ultimate authority in your life and having awesome beliefs sounds for you?
Yep, it’s awesome! Yow want that, don’t you? You are the ultimate authority in your life, by the way…
My goal writing this
was for you to understand how beliefs work and for you to be aware of the fact that beliefs the base of any action, thought or emotion we have and, as such, they are the base of how we live our life.
I would really like to know if you got this message.
I believe working on and shifting our beliefs is the key that can actually make a difference not just in our own lives, but the whole world. This is really something I believe in. Working with beliefs helped me and others to significantly improve our lives. It wasn’t in a spectacular way, but in a meaningful one that brought more joy. It wasn’t that kind of burst of joy, but the kind of joy you have when you feel at peace.
Can you give me some feedback on this? I’m asking you because it would help me understand if I made myself clear or not. You can do it in the comments or on facebook. I will do my best to reply to you and give any more information you want.
Thank you,
