The Power of Beliefs: Warrior Mind Podcast #285

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In this episode of the Warrior Mind Podcast I’m going to discuss the power of beliefs, where they come from, what are they and how they affect our lives in ways we don’t realize.

The Power of Beliefs

What is a Belief?

Belief is the psychological state in which an individual holds a conjecture or premise to be true. Dispositional and concurrent belief concerns the contextual activation of the belief into thoughts (reactive of propositions) or ideas (based on the belief’s premise).

The concept of belief presumes a subject (the believer) and an object of belief (the proposition). So, like other propositional attitudes, belief implies the existence of mental states and intentionality, both of which are hotly debated topics in the philosophy of mind, whose foundations and relation to brain states are still controversial.

Beliefs are sometimes divided into core beliefs (that are actively thought about) and dispositional beliefs (that may be ascribed to someone who has not thought about the issue). For example, if asked “do you believe tigers wear pink pajamas?” a person might answer that they do not, despite the fact they may never have thought about this situation before.

Simply, a belief defines an idea or principle which we judge to be true. When we stop to think about it, functionally this is no small thing: lives are routinely sacrificed and saved based simply on what people believe. Yet I routinely encounter people who believe things that remain not just unproven, but which have been definitively shown to be false.

In fact, I so commonly hear people profess complete certainty in the truth of ideas with insufficient evidence to support them that the alarm it used to trigger in me no longer goes off. I’ll challenge a false belief when, in my judgment, it poses a risk to a client’s life or limb, but I let far more unjustified beliefs pass me by than I stop to confront. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have time to talk about anything else.

Beliefs are generalizations about how the world is. Your beliefs are so powerful that they do in fact determine your life! They are the presuppositions that we have about the way the world is that either create or deny us personal power. In effect, they are our on/off switch for our ability to do anything in the world. It is important to understand our beliefs as they explain why we choose to do what we do.

Beliefs are the second set of internal filters. Beliefs are convictions, what is held to be ‘true’ in life. For instance, if someone believes that she can learn anything that she puts her mind to regardless of age, then her experience of life is going to be very different from someone else who believes he is not that smart and can’t possibly learn something new.

Beliefs often form the boundary conditions of thinking. Depending on how much individuals are unwilling to believe is possible, beliefs can either keep them boxed in, or allow them to live a bigger life. Small possibility thinking has little chance of providing anything other than small results, just as big thinking can often lead to gaining big results. When transformed, beliefs allow people to fulfill their highest potential.

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What Beliefs are Based Upon?

• Experiences in the past, therefore, Your Past = Your Future
• Personal or professional perceptions
• Habitual stories you continue to tell yourself
• Religious, professional, legal, social, political dogma and doctrine
• Your Rules for life
• An ‘Aha!’ or an Epiphany
• What your parents or significant role models told you was true

How Beliefs Are Formed

Various studies on belief formation and the relationship between beliefs and actions have arrived at the conclusion that beliefs form in a variety of ways:

• We tend to internalize the beliefs of the people around us during childhood. Albert Einstein is often quoted as having said that “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.” Political beliefs depend most strongly on the political beliefs most common in the community where we live. Most individuals believe the religion they were taught in childhood.

• People may adopt the beliefs of a charismatic leader, even if those beliefs fly in the face of all previous beliefs, and produce actions that are clearly not in their own self-interest. Is belief voluntary? Rational individuals need to reconcile their direct reality with any said belief; therefore, if belief is not present or possible, it reflects the fact that contradictions were necessarily overcome using cognitive dissonance.

• Advertising can form or change beliefs through repetition, shock, and association with images of sex, love, beauty, and other strong positive emotions.

• Physical trauma, especially to the head, can radically alter a person’s beliefs.

However, even educated people, well aware of the process by which beliefs form, still strongly cling to their beliefs, and act on those beliefs even against their own self-interest.

In Anna Rowley’s book, Leadership Therapy, she states “You want your beliefs to change.  It’s proof that you are keeping your eyes open, living fully, and welcoming everything that the world and people around you can teach you.” This means that peoples’ beliefs should evolve as they gain new experiences.

What Exactly is Going on Here?

Why are we all so apparently predisposed to believe false propositions?

The answer lies in neuropsychology’s growing recognition of just how irrational our rational thinking can be, according to an article in Mother Jones by Chris Mooney. We now know that our intellectual value judgments—that is, the degree to which we believe or disbelieve an idea—are powerfully influenced by our brains’ proclivity for attachment.

Our brains are attachment machines, attaching not just to people and places, but to ideas. And not just in a coldly rational manner. Our brains become intimately emotionally entangled with ideas we come to believe are true (however we came to that conclusion) and emotionally allergic to ideas we believe to be false. This emotional dimension to our rational judgment explains a gamut of measurable biases that show just how unlike computers our minds are.

• Confirmation bias, which causes us to pay more attention and assign greater credence to ideas that support our current beliefs. That is, we cherry pick the evidence that supports a contention we already believe and ignore evidence that argues against it.

• Disconfirmation bias, which causes us to expend disproportionate energy trying to disprove ideas that contradict our current beliefs.

Accuracy of belief isn’t our only cognitive goal. Our other goal is to validate our pre-existing beliefs, beliefs that we’ve been building block by block into a cohesive whole our entire lives. In the fight to accomplish the latter, confirmation bias and disconfirmation bias represent two of the most powerful weapons at our disposal, but simultaneously compromise our ability to judge ideas on their merits and the evidence for or against them.

Request an Introductory Consultation right now if you wish to learn how to work with the power of beliefs.

Do you have the courage to start on the path of self-mastery?  Contact Me about The Warriors Quest.  It will transform your life forever!

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