What are beliefs? We can have beliefs about religion, about which foods are good/bad for us, about different races, cultures, companies, people. On and on. Beliefs are fundamental to what it is to be human.
Beliefs can be so strong in fact that we will lose friends over them, go to war over them, maybe even die for them. And even be made well (placebo effect) or ill (witch doctors) on account of them.
They are so engrained into us that we often think of them as fact, rather than beliefs.
In this post, I want to address two types of beliefs. Global beliefs and rules based beliefs.
Global beliefs are things like
People are…..
Life is……
Governments are…..
Essentially massive generalisations that serve as fact which aren’t in fact necessarily try. E.g. People from France are rude and abrasive (not saying any French people reading this are, of course!). But the thing is, you only need to meet one French person who’s not like that and it can no longer be fact or true. And do you know all the millions of French people that exist in the world? Of course not.
Then next set of beliefs are rules based beliefs.
If….. then……
If I make a millions dollars then I’ll be happy!
If I get this job, then I’ll be a success.
If I eat healthily, then I’ll have no fun!
How to change beliefs?
Find a counter example that shakes the foundation that the belief is based on. For example, you find a person from France (sorry French people!) who is great. You find some healthy food that is great tasting and you can have fun with it.
The other thing you could do, is ask “what would happen if….”
“What would happen if I found healthy food that was fun to eat? What would that be like?”
“What would happen if this “belief” wasn’t true?”
This will give you the freedom to find out. Explore and be open to changing the belief.
Here’s another way (simpler) to put it.
What if your beliefs were really
beLIEfs
i.e. a LIE surrounded by a bunch of B S
b-eLIEf-s
Thinking about it that way may have you question a few things?
What do you think?
