Is our belief system helping us grow or pulling us back?

The day we were born we have been living with many thoughts, some of them have been created by our surroundings or people around us and some of what we have attained through our life experiences. There have been some conventions that work as proven truths for us like eating healthy on time will benefit our physical and mental health as told by our parents or reading more will grow our intellectual side as guided by our mentors. We still feel and interpret these as the thumb rules of our lives but there is still more to it. We develop so many sublimations in the form of our experiences and interpretations from our life that develops and strengthens our beliefs on any particular situation, person or activity and slowly that belief starts to become imperative in our subconscious mind and creates a whole belief system on which we start to lead our lives.

The beliefs that we have differs from person to person based on our mental abilities and our capabilities. For example, we have asked for some help in our presentation from one of our colleagues but somehow he did not help, so we end up making inhibition in our head that since he did not support us in the times of need so maybe he is non-generous and non-reliant. Hence we start to avoid that person and mark that person in no friend’s zone or in second thought we may start to think that since he already has his deadlines and hence could not help me in that particular presentation is another belief that we are creating. So we need to understand one thing that belief system is like a web that we are creating and based on which we will start living our lives and slowly it becomes our reflex action throughout.

"To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let thepast slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds. " –William James

 Belief is in a way gives us a feeling of permanence, certainty, assurance, and rigidity because once we interpret some notion in a particular situation or about a particular person, we start to stand by it so firmly that it becomes a kind of dead-end for our mind for as long as we live. But there is surely a possibility to change our belief system with a little more acceptance towards widening our thoughts, opinions, convictions, theories, and presumptions with changing scenarios. We need to understand that with changing times people, their positions and their situations changes and since nothing is permanent, so we need not stay glued to any particular belief as such and since failure and success are the two sides of a coin so any one situation cannot decide upon our future as such.

Let us now try to blow away the cobwebs by finding out ways to change our belief system through some simplified points

• Do not judge a book by its cover – The major problem with any strong belief is that we create them without getting into the root cause of the situation. So before having any strong notions about any such circumstances or people, be sure of the main causal element of that situation before imposing it as an add on in our conjecture. We need to understand that all social beliefs or personal beliefs are not true every time for everyone.
• Draw reasonable interpretation from your failures and tragic events – We all have many stories of failures and tragedies in our lives but what is needed is not to be hard on ourselves and try to draw some rational interpretations from them as these will form our belief systems tomorrow and a simple belief that we form today will nurture or hinder our generations to come because whatever we seek today will be imparted to our generations tomorrow.
• Self-belief is the key – No matter how many times we have fallen we should still find reasons to stand based on our courage. The failures should not make us think as non-worthy rather failures should make us aware of our problem areas and motivate us to bounce back with a belief that we still have the potential to hit the bull’s eye. 
• Train your brain – Instead of thinking that whatever good comes to us needs a lot of hard work and efforts, start thinking that no matter how much hard work it will take we will get the results with a lot of life-changing and learning experiences which will help us in our future growth. We need to give our mind reaffirmations that we will sail through all the good or bad times with our courage and self-determination.
• Listen to all but follow your mind – We have all kinds of people giving us bits of advice and their real-life stories on similar incidences, listen to them carefully and draw out only the positive traces from their life experiences but keep their inhibitions away from your boundary of belief systems. Do not let these social taboos restrict your thoughts, learnings, attainments or wisdom.
• Talk your heart out to someone without favoritism - If ever you feel being overpowered by any particular thought that may run you into creating an intense belief, just be courageous enough to talk about it with someone who is much more neutral, mature and unprejudiced in life. We may worry about being judges at once but sometimes many walls of fallacious beliefs can be broken with this kind of counseling cum conversations.

We need to understand one thing that the belief system is the foundation of our attitudes which eventually decides our altitudes, so have a heart to seek knowledge, learnings, and experiences from everywhere and every person around us but do not have a narrower mindset that diminishes our growth and success because remember we reap what we sow. So we need to be positive in our belief system with an open mind exposed to all the possibilities towards our evolvement.

"Whatever belief system we are seeking today will be our teachings to generations tomorrow, thus either nurturing them or hindering their thought processes. So be wise with your thoughts."

Swati Jain

(Life coach)