You are what you believe
What are your beliefs and values? Are they fueling you on or holding you back?
Here’s a story about how beliefs can impact your life:
Twin sons born to an alcoholic and drug addict who is serving life in prison for the murder of a liquor store cashier both didn’t have much going for them. One of them ended up just like their father, a drug addict who ended up in jail for attempted murder. The other, his twin however has no alcohol or drug addictions, he’s happily married with 3 children and is physically fit, has a good job and is happy.
Both were asked, unbeknownst to the other why their life turned out the way it did. Was was amazing was that they both had the same answer:
‘What else could I have become, having grown up with a father like that?’
We often choose to let events shape our lives however it’s really our beliefs as to what those events mean that shape them. It’s the meaning we attach to those events and how we interpret them that dictates what we are today and what we’ll become tomorrow.
We all have a set of beliefs and values and they are mostly unique to us. We will definitely have shared values and beliefs with other people but we all have our own combination which inform the choices we make.
Many of our values and beliefs are actually societal and common with the people who live in the same region or country as we do or who belong to the same religion, ethnic group, education and history as us. And it’s this set of beliefs and values that shape our personal beliefs and values. Many of us don’t ever stop and think about them.
Why you need to understand your beliefs and values
If asked ‘how would you spend £1 million if it were given to you tomorrow?’, some will say they’ll buy a house, some would invest it, others would give it away, others still will go travelling. The answer for you will have been obvious. This answer is determined by your values. And it’s your values and beliefs that determine your decisions. And guess what? It’s ultimately your decisions and choices that determine your life.
“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
― Gandhi
So why do we have beliefs? They are there to guide us through life and lead us away from pain and towards pleasure. What constitutes pain and pleasure for you is based on your beliefs and those are driven by your generalisations about what you’ve learned could lead to those feelings in the past. These generalisations dictate all our actions and therefore dictate the direction of our lives.
These generalisations come in handy a lot of the time. They allow us to function with every day tasks in our lives. But they can also lead to what are called limiting beliefs.
Limiting Beliefs
A limiting belief occurs when due to failures in the past you develop a limiting belief on your ability to perform in that area in the future. It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
An example would be if you have a tendency to fail to follow through on past endeavours. Then you develop a belief that you are incompetent due to this. Then you may start sabotaging yourself in the future by saying: ‘Why even bother because i’m not going to follow through anyway.’
Sound familiar?
These beliefs have the power to both create and destroy. The issue with them is that we rarely stop and think about them. These limiting beliefs are based on misinterpretations of past events and once we adopt them they get treated in our mind as fact rather than just an interpretation.
Every experience we encounter in our lives has a myriad of ways that it can be interpreted. This is why in the case with the twins, they endured the same hardship but interpreted these events in different ways.
These beliefs can have quite a powerful impact and there’s no better place to see this as with the placebo effect during drug trials.
See this excerpt from the Harvard Medical School:
Your mind can be a powerful healing tool when given the chance. The idea that your brain can convince your body a fake treatment is the real thing — the so-called placebo effect — and thus stimulate healing has been around for millennia. Now science has found that under the right circumstances, a placebo can be just as effective as traditional treatments.
“The placebo effect is more than positive thinking — believing a treatment or procedure will work. It’s about creating a stronger connection between the brain and body and how they work together,” says Professor Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, whose research focuses on the placebo effect.
Placebos won’t lower your cholesterol or shrink a tumor. Instead, placebos work on symptoms modulated by the brain, like the perception of pain. “Placebos may make you feel better, but they will not cure you,” says Kaptchuk. “They have been shown to be most effective for conditions like pain management, stress-related insomnia, and cancer treatment side effects like fatigue and nausea.”
What are beliefs?
In simple terms, your beliefs are ideas that you have certainty with. You may have an idea that you’re intelligent. If you’re uncertain about this, then it’s simply an idea. If you’re confident that it’s true, then it’s a belief. As this depends on how many reference points you’ve got to back it up. If you’ve been scoring high in tests, always know the answer to quiz questions and have been told that you’re intelligent, you’ll have reference points to back your belief. Whether or not it’s true is irrelevant to your belief.
The opposite is also true for a limiting belief. You might have a limiting belief that you’re terrible at math. You may have reference points where you’ve not done well in a test or didn’t learn your multiplication tables as quickly as other people. You use these reference points as proof to form the belief that you’re bad at math.
The issue is that we can find references and experiences to back up both negative and positive beliefs. It’s similar to confirmation bias. You can always find something to confirm this idea in your head.
What matters is the level of empowerment
Since we can back up both limiting and positive beliefs with the experiences from our lives, depending on which ones we choose and the lens through which we see it, it’s irrelevant whether or not these beliefs are true or not. What matters most is if they empower or disempower you.
Here’s another example. Remember the story about how Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile in 1954. For 1000s of years prior to this, the world had the disempowering belief that it was impossible. But Roger chose to believe that it could be done and mentally rehearsed the occurrence in his mind as well as doing the physical training. Once he proved it was possible, he shattered the limiting belief for everyone else and within a year a further 37 people broke that barrier too.
How to change them
All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs. But how do we do this? In order to change a belief, you need to associate it with pain and doubt.
We’ve all done this before, we’ve held a belief close to our heart but then years later we start to doubt and question it. This could be triggered by new experiences or new information. Once the doubt creeps in you can change the belief and start to build the foundation of it with new reference points.
Your beliefs have different levels of emotional certainty attached to them. They can be categorised into opinions, beliefs and convictions. Opinions are quite malleable however they can develop into beliefs once the reference points start to stack up. Finally, these can merge into convictions which are held with such certainty that a person would usually get angry if their convictions are questioned.
Convictions carry a lot of emotional attachment and are usually linked closely to a personal identity whereby changing the conviction would mean significant pain and giving up or changing your entire identity.
If you want a good example of convictions, then watch the Netflix documentary on flat earthers. Their belief that the earth is flat is linked so closely to their identity that no amount of science will make them change since there would be a significant amount of pain attached to the destruction of this belief.
On a positive note, holding the right convictions is the key to mastery in life. Having the right convictions can push and drive you through any obstacle and compel you to make healthy lifestyle choices giving you maximum enjoyment and fulfilment with your life.
So how do you move from destructive beliefs to empowering beliefs and convictions? You first need to associate the limiting belief with pain and doubt. Then you need to start building new powerful references to reinforce your new belief.
This can be more difficult than you think because many beliefs are tied to social proof. But social proof isn’t always accurate.
‘We are what we think. All that we are arises With our thoughts. With our thought, we make our world.’ — The Buddha
What are your limiting beliefs? What’s holding you back?
Write them down and ask yourself what the cost is to yourself if you don’t change this. Figure our why this belief is absurd. Come up with a new empowering belief and start by adding new reference points to that every day, one small step at a time.
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This article was written by Stuart Munnich. If you’d like to know more or receive notifications for future articles, please head over to the Agoge Project Website or subscribe to updates right here!
