Your Beliefs May Be Your Stumbling Blocks To a Better Life
If you want to make life improvements, what you believe about
life may be your biggest stumbling block. As a self empowered
person working to build a better life you may need to adopt the
saying that believing is seeing.
If you're a person who believes that seeing is believing, you
may be limiting your own growth.Seeing is believing may be the
test of truth for many of us, but that doesn't mean that what we
see is truth. We tend to see what we expect to see based on what
we believe. I may read and re-read this article five times and
still not see a misspelling, extra word, or missing word. I read
what I expect to see and I believe I've seen it correctly.
To foster a foundation for strong personal growth, change that
phrase to read: believing is seeing. What you and I believe will
determine what we see. Beliefs are very strong, witness the
number of terrorists willing to take their own lives in pursuit
of their beliefs. But before we examine the link between beliefs
and self empowerment, lets review our five senses and the roles
they play in our lives.
We obviously rely on our senses for safety and security,
watching for danger around us, listening for unusual sounds
around the home at night, sniffing the air for signs of smoke,
and carefully approaching the hot pan before grabbing it.
We also tend to depend on our senses to explain the world around
us. Most of us believe that the world we experience through our
five senses is reality. The sayings, "seeing is believing," and
"I'll believe it when I see it," represent our dependence on
sight to confirm reality. Recall that most people at one time
thought the world was flat; that's the way it appeared. Some
few, though, saw beyond their sense of sight and believed the
distant horizon was not the edge of the world; they were right
and whole new vistas of reality opened because of their vision.
Recall the phrase, "a picture is worth 1000 words?" The
implication here is that a picture tells the truth, while words
can be deceiving. Now with digital photography, we've learned
that we can't really trust a picture. Even I can easily
manipulate a picture to remove or include objects. All is not as
it appears.
We all know human hearing is limited. As we age, we lose high
frequency sensitivity. Many animals respond to frequencies even
youthful humans cannot hear. It is only recently that scientists
found that elephants communicate through very low frequency
sounds--sounds that travel tremendous distances in their native
habitats. We know that sounds exist that we cannot hear.
Similarly, our senses of touch, smell, and taste are very
limited. Not only do our sensitivities to these vary, but our
interpretations vary too. Something that tastes salty to me may
be perfect for you. Pleasant odors to you may be distasteful to
me.
Scientists, with fair regularity, uncover aspects of our world
well beyond our senses. From black holes to quarks to dimensions
beyond our space-time reality, there is more to reality than we
can currently explain.
It's not only our vision that sometimes deceives us; our minds
contribute, too. We see what we expect to see based on our
beliefs. When you stop to think about it, that makes perfect
sense. Why would I "see" something that contradicts what I
believe? Most of us, most of the time, refuse to do that, albeit
subconsciously. Scientists even have a term for this phenomena.
It's called cognitive dissonance, cognitive for thinking and
dissonance for harsh inconsistency. We prefer to see consistent
with our thinking.
You've observed this before with a friend or relative who
smokes, but refuses to acknowledge that the risks of smoking
apply to them. If you've just bought a new object, especially
something that you looked for carefully and made a studied
decision to purchase, you'll tend to overlook defects or
limitations that turn up because to acknowledge them invalidates
your belief that you made a wise decision. Cognitive dissonance
gives us blinders that scientists term scotomas, blind spots we
can't see because to see them would require changing a belief.
If you have strong, long term beliefs about certain people based
on gender, age, race, or national origin, you'll have a scotoma
to characteristics that belie that belief.
Now, what does all this have to do with self-empowerment? Well,
our beliefs about ourselves and the world around us give us
scotomas, blind spots, about who we are and who we can become.
An example of this is the once broadly held belief that women
are inherently inferior to men in math and science. The saying,
"you can't teach an old dog new tricks" captures another widely
held belief about older people.
Don't get me wrong, the beliefs we hold dear aren't all bad. In
fact, our beliefs can be very helpful to us, when they are
helpful to us. The empowered person learns to use belief to
improve and to grow.
Belief about self is one of the critical components of a
person's growth. A strong self image is fundamental to the
decision to take over responsibility for one's life. A person
with low self image very likely will not feel sufficiently
confident to take full responsibility, preferring instead to let
others determine their life direction.
Our beliefs not only impact what we see, but they affect every
aspect of our lives. As Bert Carson said, "We are more totally
confined by our old ideas than a prison inmate is confined by
the walls of his cell." Beliefs can be our prison walls or our
source of freedom. They are that strong an influence upon us.
Here are some ways to strengthen your sense of self- empowerment.
1. Recall your successes. Think about past achievements and
recognize the part you played in this success. Refrain from
diminishing your role. Instead, give yourself as much credit as
you comfortably can.
2. Read about other people's lives, especially those who have
overcome difficult situations to achieve their dreams. These
people have the same inherent abilities you have. We're all
created with the natural ability to succeed at our dreams. The
primary determinants of success are attitude and perseverance.
3. Allow yourself to consider the possibility that you can
achieve whatever you dream. Daydream readily about your
successes, encouraging yourself to visualize how it will be
when (not if) you achieve your dreams.
4. Accept that your beliefs are simply ideas you hold about
yourself and the world around you, ideas that you've
accumulated to help you understand and explain your
surroundings. Reflect on beliefs you hold that may be preventing
you from the growth you desire; change beliefs that restrict
you.