Beliefs Drive Us In All Kinds of Ways

Excerpt

Beliefs drive everything we do, and we usually don’t realize this.  We argue that a new communications model explains well how beliefs work in our lives. 

Beliefs are driving us there right now!!! 

When you combine the empirical and anecdotal evidence that we have absorbed over the years, which we share openly, you will come to appreciate how accurate our model tracks. We receive feedback about this all the time. 

Making Choices

Making choices isn’t the simple selection of the chocolate cone in our left hand or the vanilla in our right hand. Some say choose. And once completed, you made your selection – choice. Ok, that defines the act of it, but there is more. 

We say that you choose because of a true belief which you sustain about your selection.  Oh, sure enough, it could include the taste, the pleasure you associate with the texture, the fact that you had your finger crushed in the car door getting into the car with the vanilla cone your mom bought you when you young, or a hundred other deeply embedded reasons in your thoughts – beliefs. Or maybe not. 

Belief Types

We argue there are many background beliefs, apparent and hidden beliefs, enabling and inhibiting beliefs. You may say “Not So” or “So What”? Thank you, because that is a wonderful question. We suggest that you can inspect your beliefs – easily. 

And we are about teaching you how to do that. We will point to things that help you get this for yourself – but it isn’t really that difficult – simple but not easy sometimes. This may scare some of you away. 

Let’s Take One Common Belief

Some people believe that they are not good enough, either because they don’t have the right credentials, the right certifications, come from the right schools, come from a less than wealthy family, have lesser skills or lesser experience, etc. You can expand this list with a few hundred more items that you have experienced or observed. Many people commonly hold this belief at one time or the other.

Is it a true or false belief? Has this belief been hardened with real-world experiences that set the belief in concrete to the point of being disabling or stopping us? For some people, the answer will be yes, no, or maybe.

(Wisdom Sidebar) We give meaning to each of our beliefs. The meaning can be decided upon when the belief is created or after some time during the remembrance of the belief, especially upon reflection (e.g., this reflection typically happens years after the event(s) mostly occurring as an adult). These beliefs are often created during childhood and hold no relationship to the facts of the situation or circumstances that create the belief. We could have been deeply affected or traumatized by the event when there was no other experience to compare for relating. Consequently, we made up what it meant to us. There are thousands of examples of this occurring. We suggest the belief is probably false and inhibiting.

Exercise

As an experiment, we suggest taking those beliefs that appeem negative (i.e., maybe one that haunts you) awritingite about what occurred and what meaning you gave to the event. Go into great detail about the belief as though you were an investigator attempting to uncover the facts. We further suggest identifying your feelings about the belief and also go into great depth about how you are affected. This may cause discomfort during the exercise, and we suggest that the discomfort not exceed an 8.0 on the CAM Awareness Scale. If it does, stop the writing and come back it another day - give yourself at least 24 hours before taking it up again.

Conclusion

After having gone through this exercise, what have you learned? How has this affected your thinking about the belief? We believe that you will have uncovered and revealed some real insights about the belief and may find that the belief does not hold the emotion you first started out remembering.

We also think the deeper you delve into the details, you will have lessened the emotions associated with the belief and can look at it from a very different perspective. We invite you to read an article that may prove helpful in your understanding - read this enlightening article, which will open you to new insights.

If you find that article helpful, then we invite you to read some of the more recent blogs on this topic of beliefs and others here in our accompanying articles.

Feel free to contact us with your feedback.