Where Do Our Beliefs Come From?

Our beliefs can come from a variety of sources.  They can come from the way we were brought up, from observing and copying significant people in our lives (such as our parents), from past events that have scared or traumatised us, or from repetitive experiences. 

We build our beliefs by having an experience of the world and other people and generalising it.

We may currently believe some things as a result of what we were told when we were growing up.  When you were young you had no way of knowing if these things were true or not.  The expectations that that people around us had during our childhood can instil beliefs.  Some of these beliefs may persist and influence you to this day.

When we believe something, we act as if it is true.  This makes it very difficult to disprove. 

Our beliefs act as very powerful filters on what we perceive.

What The Thinker Thinks…The Prover Proves

Leonard Orr models the human mind as having two main parts, a “thinker” and a “prover”.  The thinker is very flexible, and can think any number of things.  The thinker can think the earth is flat, the thinker can think the earth is round.  The thinker can think pretty much anything!
The prover, however, is far more predictable.  Whatever the thinker is thinking, the prover will search and sort for evidence to support the belief.  If someone believes that they lack intelligence (perhaps from comments made to them by their parents or teachers at an earlier stage of their life) then the prover will show that to be true.  Evidence to support the belief will be noted and evidence that contradicts the belief may be ignored or deleted.  In this way beliefs can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Beliefs are very powerful and help us to get a sense of certainty and direction in a world that can be anything but predictable. 

Beliefs can become so powerful that we don’t remember that they are not necessarily true – but we behave as if they are. 

Beliefs are not just “maps” of what happened in the past – we also use them as “blueprints” for our future actions.

Perhaps the point to reflect upon is not if your beliefs are true or not.  The question is: Are they useful or not?

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.

How to Bounce Back From Failure

Let’s face the facts. Let’s face the brutal truth. You are going to fail.  You are going to lose. Or at the very least you are going to experience failing and losing if you are challenging yourself enough. 


The simple truth is that if you have dedicated yourself to achieving exceptional levels of achievement and exceptional levels of performance then you have chosen to expose yourself to far higher possibilities of failure or loss.So the first step in bouncing back from failure is to realise that you have chosen to put yourself into situations where you could lose.  You have chosen to challenge yourself.  You have chosen to test yourself and your abilities in this demanding way.The majority of people do not have the courage to place themselves into such challenging and demanding situations. They prefer to play it safe; they aren’t brave enough to take the risk. Such people are also often characterised by their eagerness to criticise the performance of those that are brave enough to challenge themselves! It is very easy to criticise someone’s performance. It is not so easy to have the bravery and courage to step outside of your comfort zone yourself.


You have chosen to test yourself, to challenge yourself, to seek victory and achievement. In doing so you have the courage to place yourself into situations where you may experience failure.


On the path to achieving mastery in your chosen field it is inevitable that if you are challenging yourself and your abilities sufficiently, that you will face challenges and setbacks.  High achievers know that this is the price you pay for achieving any significant success. 


You have chosen to place yourself into a situation where you may experience failure.  You can also choose how you wish to manage losing or failure - if it occurs.  You could choose to get angry and frustrated with yourself, or to moan and whine.  Or you could choose to view such events as a positive and good thing.  A positive and good thing! How can failure be a positive and good thing?

If you have chosen to achieve exceptional levels of performance and achieve mastery in your chosen field then you have made a long term (perhaps even a lifetime) commitment to improving yourself and your abilities on an on-going basis.  You have chosen to challenge, stretch and develop yourself.  Without this you would not be growing as a human being.

Therefore it does not make sense to get frustrated and angry with the very setbacks that you yourself have invited through your chosen commitment!  You need to learn to welcome and even enjoy the challenges and the setbacks, for in this way you will truly learn.

Simon Hazeldine

Every living thing must continually seek for the enlargement of its life, because life, in the mere act of living, must increase itself.

A seed, dropped into the ground, springs into activity, and in the act of living produces a hundred more seeds; life, by living, multiplies itself. It is forever becoming more. It must do so, if it continues to be at all.

Intelligence is under this same necessity for continuous increase. Every thought we think makes it necessary for us to think another thought; consciousness is continually expanding. Every fact we learn leads us to the learning of another fact; knowledge is continually increasing. Every talent we cultivate brings to the mind the desire to cultivate another talent; we are subject to the urge of life, seeking expression, which ever drives us on to know more, to do more, and to be more.

In order to know more, do more, and be more we must have more. We must have things to use, for we learn, and do, and become only by using things. We must get rich so that we can live more.

The desire for riches is simply the capacity for larger life seeking fulfillment. Every desire is the effort of an unexpressed possibility to come into action. It is power seeking to manifest which causes desire. That which makes you want more money is the same as that which makes the plant grow; it is life seeking fuller expression.