Belief System — The Architecture of Your Life

Reading Time: 6 minutes • Published: June 30, 2020

You know you could be doing and achieving and experiencing so much more. Because there are people out there with lesser “talent” and worse circumstances accomplishing things you dream of.

What are they doing differently? How do their minds operate? Where do you fall short?

People with a defeatist attitude love to put it all down to luck. Because it absolves them of any responsibility for their own life. But it’s so much more than luck. You know that.

If you understand the mechanisms of your own behavior, you can figure out where exactly you are holding yourself back. So let’s talk about the most fundamental thing that drives your actions — your belief system.

Everything you do (and don’t do) is guided by your beliefs — your beliefs about…

  • How the world works
  • How other people think and act
  • Who you are

All these beliefs interact with one another and together form your belief system.

How we build our Belief System

Beliefs are the assumptions we hold to be true. These are the conclusions you’ve arrived at throughout your life based on your experiences. Here are some examples:

“Making money is hard”
“Hurting people is wrong”
“I need X to be happy”
“Life is not fair”
“Men are trash”
“That will never work”
“You need experience to do that”

Your belief system is predominantly a function of your environment. Most of your core beliefs were planted into you when you were a child. As kids, we are highly impressionable because our brains are frequently in a state similar to that of hypnosis (Theta wave). And our mind is somewhat of a blank slate. So the beliefs being planted into us don’t face any competition from existing beliefs. Not to forget, these early beliefs become a part of the subconscious mind. As we grow older, we solidify these beliefs to build a stable belief system that can help us navigate through life.

Of course, our belief system is always changing and evolving. We are constantly exposed to a vast amount of influential information through books, music, the internet, movies, friends, experiences, etc.

But a system — by its very nature — is made of multiple interconnected elements. Disturbing one element can destabilize the entire system. Especially if that element is one of your core beliefs. So we tend to adopt beliefs that are easily accommodated into our existing belief system (for emotional stability). And we tend to keep investing (emotionally and financially) in our previously held beliefs.

How your Belief System shapes your Life

Your beliefs decide the way in which you react to what happens in your life, the way you think about yourself, and the way you approach life. They are the invisible forces behind your behavior.

Above all, your beliefs about who you are — your identity — profoundly affect the way you lead your life. These are your “I” (ego) beliefs.

Examples:

“I am lazy”
“I am smart”
“I can start my own company”
“I have not got what it takes”
“I don’t enjoy doing that”

We have an instinctual desire to stay consistent with our beliefs and self-image. So once we have adopted a label (ex: “I’m a procrastinator”), our behavior tends to become consistent with that label. These labels become self-fulfilling prophecies. And the way you think about yourself turns into reality.

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.”

– Francis Bacon

Relevant plug: Self Herding — How Random Decisions Shape Your Life

A lot of our beliefs are self-limiting in nature. The problem is, our personal experiences make up an infinitesimal fraction of what’s happened in the world, but a major portion of how we think the world works. We get constrained by this first-person perspective. We form preconceived notions about who we are and how the world works. And if something does not fit that schema, our first instinct is to reject it or give up. This way we self-sabotage and rob ourselves of a lot of opportunities, some of which could have changed our life.

That’s why it is important to challenge your beliefs. And change them if needed.

But a lot of your problematic beliefs are below your conscious awareness. So how do we identify these “problematic” beliefs? Look at your life. It’s a reflection of your belief system. Anything you struggle with, anything that does not come easily to you… you probably have some beliefs in that area holding you back.

Investigating Your Belief System

What follows are some ideas to help you investigate your belief system:

Question Everything

Learn to be skeptical of your own beliefs. If you believe X, ask yourself why? (See if you can get to the root belief through repeated whys)

Most of the time the answer would be, “because that’s what I’ve always heard “. Or maybe because that’s what you’d like to believe.

“For some of our most important beliefs, we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs. Considering how little we know, the confidence we have in our beliefs is preposterous— and it is also essential.”

— Daniel Kahneman

I’ve realized that we are biased towards safer beliefs. We tend to adopt self-limiting beliefs to protect our sense of self.

“I’m not cut out for entrepreneurship.”
“It’s almost impossible to succeed as an artist.”
“You need a lot of luck to achieve X.”
“I need to perfect this before launching.”
“I am unattractive.”

These beliefs give us the perfect excuse to not risk failure and rejection. We also then selectively look for evidence that reinforces these beliefs. One way to get out of this trap is to deliberately look for evidence that invalidates your beliefs.

Don’t hesitate to discard or change any beliefs that do not serve you. It’s exciting to be wrong. Because it means that when you fix that behavior/action/belief, you’ll level up.

Exposing Yourself

We like to stay in our own little bubbles where our thoughts and beliefs go unchallenged. Of course, this constrains our growth. That’s why it’s important to constantly check the validity and quality of your beliefs by exposing them.

Now, there are two aspects to “exposing yourself” here —

One is exposing yourself to new ideas, new environments, new people. Travel is a great way to do this. Another way is consuming a wider variety of content. The idea is to have your existing beliefs challenged by new information. And maybe find new beliefs worth adopting.

The second is exposing your ideas to the world. If there are flaws in your beliefs, you’ll be more likely to spot them when you try to express yourself. Writing publicly is a great way to do this, even if it’s just on your social media account. Share your thoughts and invite people to share their thoughts on your thoughts.

Writing

Writing puts distance between you and your emotions, allowing you to objectively analyze your beliefs. Also, labeling your emotions reduces their power over you. If you write regularly, you’ll start seeing thoughts and belief patterns that run in the background of your mind. And over time, you’ll see your thinking mature right in front of your eyes.

Here are a few journaling prompts that will help you investigate your beliefs:

  • What am I avoiding? Why?
  • What is bothering me? Why?
  • What do I desire? Why?
  • What’s my relationship with money like?
  • What makes me feel inadequate or not good enough? Am I overcompensating for it in any way?
  • What do I feel a lack of? How is that influencing my behavior?
  • What is something I’m scared of? How is that fear connected to my past?

Changing Your Beliefs

“Okay I used to believe X because this happened to me, but now I’ve seen the light. It all makes sense. And I’m going to start believing Y instead” — This does not work.

You cannot change your beliefs propositionally. It’s not about what you tell yourself, it’s about what you experience and have experienced. Your mind believes that which it has evidence for, an experiential felt sense of, and a lack of contradictory evidence against.

Changing your beliefs involves collecting evidence against your problematic beliefs. Maybe that evidence already exists in your memory, but you’ve ignored it because it didn’t fit the “narrative”. That’s why sometimes just making a belief explicit is enough to start to dismantle it. The brain has a built-in detection system that compares any consciously experienced beliefs for inconsistencies with other things you have experienced.

But often, you’ll have to go out there in the world and earn the evidence. A lot of our beliefs originate from a place of fear. The only way to win over those beliefs is to step out of our comfort zone and face those fears. When you do something that you believed you weren’t capable of, you gain contradictory evidence against your self-limiting beliefs, allowing you to reconsolidate your belief system. You create a fundamental shift in your mindset.

Deliberately put yourself in situations you are scared of. Most of the time your reaction will be, “Hey that wasn’t such a big deal “.

One other way to approach this is the method of exposure therapy. Exposure therapy is about exposing yourself to your fears in a gradual manner. For example, if you don’t find it easy to talk to new people, start with small gestures like asking a stranger for directions or time. You may even fail at whatever you were attempting and still make progress because your mind realizes that the fears and imagined catastrophes in your head were irrational.

I’ll leave you with this tweet:

 

Thank you for reading. Most of the content on this website has emerged from conversations with readers like you. Every Sunday, I send out an email dissecting some aspects of the human mind.

If you can take out a few minutes every week, I’ll try to help you develop a strong understanding of how your mind works. So that you can shape your life exactly as you want. 

You can sign-up below. Or you can sign-up after reading my story and the core idea behind this website:  We Should Be Getting More Out of Our Lives