The Power of Belief

The Power of Belief
By
Simon Hazeldine MSc

“Man is what he believes” - Anton Chekov

The beliefs that we have about ourselves, about other people, and the world around us, will exert a powerful influence over our performance in every single area of our lives.

They can power us to success and achievement or, like prison chains, shackle us to mediocrity and limitation.  So let us examine beliefs and the effect they can have upon us.

What are beliefs?

Beliefs are essentially judgements and evaluations about ourselves as individuals, other people and the world that we live in.  Beliefs are our guiding principles, the inner “maps” we use to make sense of the world.  They can give us stability and continuity in a constantly changing world.

Most of us share some basic beliefs about the world we live in.  The majority of people on the planet believe that our earth is round, for example.  However, I am reliably informed that there exists a society for people who still think that the earth is flat!

As amusing as this may seem, you do not have to go very far back in history to find a time when most people believed that the earth was flat and that the sun and planets revolved around the earth.
Many of our beliefs are very helpful and useful.  We believe that fire burns and that broken glass is sharp.  Therefore we avoid exposing our bodies to hot flames and don’t step onto broken glass in our bare feet.

Beliefs can be thought of as generalisations about what causes certain things to happen, what things mean and the boundaries in the world around us, in our behaviour and our capabilities.
Beliefs can affect our behaviour.  For example, depending upon which belief you have:

1. “Success requires hard work” or
2. “Success is mainly a matter of luck”

…will affect your approach to attempting to reach success!

Next time we will look at where our beliefs some from.