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Unlocking the Power of Belief: How Your Mind Shapes Reality

Posted on October 1, 2023

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The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. -Jiddu Krishnamurti. The Second Krishnamurti Reader.

I bet you have encountered many situations in your life where the behavior of certain people didn't make any sense to you. If you are like me, you may wonder why some people are more prone to believing in conspiracy theories. If you are an atheist, you wonder why people believe in god or religions. On the other hand, if you are religious, you may wonder why atheists are out there and what's going on with the world. Is the end of the world coming?

Who knows...

The reasons for such disparity and paradoxical scenario in the previous example can be explained as follows. The atheist believes that "god doesn't exist," while the religious person thinks the opposite. Of course, this is quite a simplification. Still, it illustrates the key concept I want to discuss in this post: Beliefs. 

What are Beliefs?

If you are scientifically minded, you may associate the word "belief" with some religious dogma or weird ideas, but this would be a mistake. No matter who you are, you hold hundreds, if not thousands, of beliefs. The shocking reality is that they are so subtle that they feel "true." 

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines belief as 

a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.

This is a good starting point. The problem is that we often confuse believing with "thinking" that something is true or false. For example, you may "think" that democracy is the best political system out there, while the most precise word should be "believe." From this simple example, I hope you can see that most things you "think" are true or false (or something in between) are beliefs. 

For completeness, let me list ten beliefs (by no particular reason):

• The Earth is round (or flat)
• God exists (or doesn't)
• I'm [not] X (smart, dumb, pretty, ugly, etc.)
• It's good to not harm others
• It's difficult to stay in shape
• AI will make us obsolete
• The best diet is X (vegan, carnivore, keto, omnivore, etc.)
• There is [isn't] life on other planets
• Life is unfair
• My beliefs are reasonable

I hope that with this list, you can see now that most of what we hold as accurate are beliefs. I challenge you to come up with ten more of your own beliefs. 

Now, you may object to saying that "The Earth is round" is a fact! Maybe, but how do you know that? Let me be clear here: I'm not a flat-earther. But it is a belief if you think the Earth is round because you learned it at school, from a scientist, or watched a photo online. You can only know that the Earth is round by testing it yourself (and there are many ways). 

Of course, trying to test every scientific fact by yourself is, in practice, impossible. Thus, we have to believe what scientists tell us is accurate and true. This by itself is another belief!

You see, beliefs are everywhere, and they literally shape the way we see the world. I like to think of beliefs as mental maps. They help us "navigate" reality. In practice, we need them to survive. I have to believe the seat I'm sitting on right now writing this post is safe enough and won't fall apart and injure me. And up to this point, I've never been aware of that. Some beliefs are so subtle that we don't consider them as such. And that's the root of why beliefs can also be problematic.

Giving a complete description of beliefs would take a book to write. Thus, in what follows, I will describe some aspects that will be important to understanding how beliefs work and shape our reality.

Believing and knowing are not the same. We often confuse knowing something with believing it. As a working mathematician, I have to "believe" most of what I use to prove theorems. I have to assume the papers I'm citing are sound and that the peer-review process was performed correctly. In reality, it would be pretty time-consuming to check all the proof details by myself, so a lot of trust is involved. Often, we get asked if we "know" about a particular result. We say "Yes!" while in reality, we only believe we know it.

There are many types of beliefs: we hold beliefs about

• the world 
• others 
• ourselves
• the past and the future, and 
• beliefs themselves (meta beliefs). 

The last type of belief is tricky. In the list above, the belief "My beliefs are reasonable" is a meta-belief since it is a belief about beliefs. Most of us believe their views are reasonable. Otherwise, they wouldn't hold them. But if you think that, how willing are you to question them? This may explain why some people are open-minded while others are dogmatic and close-minded.

Your identity is a bunch of beliefs. Who you think you are can be defined as a list of beliefs plus your personality and values. But you hold these values because you believe they are necessary. That's why we take it so personally when others question our beliefs. Ultimately, our identity is at risk, and our minds interpret it as life-threatening. That's why it's usually difficult to change our beliefs.

So, almost all of what is "You" is a collection of beliefs. And you acquired many of them as a child and by social conditioning. So, how genuine are you really?

Beliefs are not rational. You may believe your beliefs were acquired by logic and reasoning. In reality, most of them come from 

• culture 
• our upbringing
• social conditioning 
• other people's opinions 
• emotions (what "feels right")

We acquire the beliefs first and then justify them using logic and reason. You may even have beliefs that you don't know how did you get them in the first place!

Beliefs can be attractive and repulsive. Some beliefs make you more prone to believe in some things while less likely to believe in others. For example, believing in one conspiracy theory makes you more likely to believe in others. After all, the mechanics are similar. Scientists are more likely to believe in scientific beliefs than spiritual ones, and vice versa.

Beliefs form a sort of "House of Cards." By the previous point, we can see some "core" beliefs (at the bottom of the house of cards) that support beliefs in the upper layers. In particular, dropping or changing one belief at the "bottom" can produce a chain reaction that may change your worldview. Think of beliefs about god or about what reality is, for example. Usually, traumatic events and crises can trigger this situation.

Personal crises can reshape your whole "Web of beliefs." This is a corollary from the previous point. When I experienced deep existential crises, I was forced to question my worldview and be open to new possibilities. Ultimately, in those situations, you must face the question, "What the hell am I ?" This is a terrifying situation. But it can also be a chance to experience deep and fast personal growth. I will discuss how to use personal crises to experience rapid personal growth in the future.

Fears are based on other fears and beliefs. This complements my previous newsletter about fear. There, I conceptualized fear as a tree based on other fears and beliefs. By doing the recursion exercise mentioned there, you will end up with a list of beliefs that support the main fear you are trying to eliminate. Thus, to stop our fears, we must drop those beliefs that make us fearful. I will discuss how to drop beliefs at the end.

Beliefs and group thinking. We are social creatures. In our tribe's times, being against our tribe was a synonym for isolation and death. We still carry this behavior to our modern times. Many of us would rather conform to what our peers believe (even if they are wrong) rather than face the risk of rejection or being labeled as crazy. 

On the other hand, a small group of people can reshape the beliefs of a whole country or culture in a relatively short time. Consequently, it's common to see cycles of long periods of relative stability followed by a quick transformation to a new set of beliefs. Consider the views associated with LGTBQ+ people in the last 50 years, for example.

Open-mindedness and self-improvement. I always wonder why some people are open to change while others are closed-minded. If you are into self-improvement, you must have high levels of openness. Otherwise, you will get stuck at some point. On the other hand, the more self-improvement you do, the more open-minded you will be as a rule.

I could continue illustrating more points, but I want to make this brief. I hope you can get the main picture here. 

Now, I want to address the holy grail of beliefs: how do we change them????

How do we Eliminate (or Change) our Beliefs

As far as I know, there is no clear-cut way of doing that. After all, we still don't know how our minds work. Still, I will outline some ideas I've used in the past which were helpful to reshape my mind:

• Let's say you want to eliminate one belief. If you don't have one, think of something you are afraid of. Ask yourself, what beliefs are supporting this fear? To illustrate the method, let's assume you want to drop the idea that "women are only attracted to men with money and fame." 

• Ask yourself, can you remember the time when you got this belief? Remember when this belief came to the surface or the first time you became aware of it. 

• Ask yourself how this belief came into place? Was it because of your parents, a friend, a book, a forum, a YouTube video, or an internet article? Or is it a combination of factors?

• Ask yourself, why did you adopt this belief? It may be because it made sense to you in the past. In this example, you could have bad experiences with women in the past. Or you believed it on pure faith, because it sounded right, or because X told you, and you trusted this person back then. You should be very clear and precise here. You must mention the reason that justified the belief originally, NOT NOW. Don't come up with actual reasons, but the ones you used in the past.

• Ask yourself, are these reasons still valid? Can I find counterexamples IN MY OWN EXPERIENCE about it? Books or scientific articles don't count. In a nutshell, does this belief still make sense to you? If yes, come with examples IN YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE that support this belief. I don't care if you read it on Reddit or a friend told you. You may have experienced your belief recently. But it's also important that our beliefs tend to be self-reinforcing (confirmation bias). So be careful, and try to be open to the possibility of the contrary. In this example, is your mom or sister (if you have one) only attracted to guys with money and fame? If you find counterexamples, notice if your mind makes excuses or rationalizations to justify them. Your mind can be your biggest enemy here. Also, see any emotions you may feel. Are you scared, angry, or in fear? Notice if images come to your mind. If past experiences come to you, notice that these are figments of the past. They do not form your actual reality.

• It could also be helpful to have an honest, nonjudgemental conversation with someone who does not hold your beliefs. Try hard to grasp their point of view. If you highly esteem them, you will be more open to change.

This process may take some time. At first, you may face a lot of resistance. So take it easy and go through life, asking yourself whether the opposite point of view can be valid. Acknowledging that a different point of view may be right is a good starting point. 

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