Why do I keep repeating the same mistakes? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I do anything right?

A shattered self belief left unmonitored can become a traumatising voice inside our heads. Our minds create this destructive personal belief system. This damaged belief system can even end up questioning our very existence.

There is no hope. What’s the point of going on?

The power of belief is a tool. If controlled and used correctly, it can revolutionise the way we approach life. But if not, it can aggravate our unhealed thoughts.

Why do some people sail through the most tiring circumstances while others struggle to address ordinary situations? Why do we see people approaching and reacting to similar situations differently? In similar situations, why do some remain calm, confident and unbothered while others become anxious and doubt their capabilities? Why is self-love easy for some people while others struggle with their worthiness?

What is it that these people naturally or consciously do that makes their lives easier than others while going through similar life situations?

Is there a way to restructure the way we approach life so that we begin to heal? Can the power of belief be used to heal our damaging self belief and create happiness?

To understand this, let us first explore what is a personal belief system.

What is a personal belief system?

A personal belief system is a collection of principles, values, thoughts or ideas that an individual holds that informs them about the world around them.

A belief system is the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world. It helps us to interpret the world.

Some examples could be being unwilling to use plastic bags to safeguard the environment or the side of the bed you prefer to sleep. Your preference for a particular religion or atheism, moral values (what you consider good or bad behaviour), parenting style, and so on, all originate through your belief system.

Our belief system is based on our experiences and reasoning depending on the exposure to situations, life circumstances, relationships, information we receive, etc. It means it is inherently our way of interpreting life. So, people with distinct belief systems would interpret the same life differently while thinking their interpretation to be the truth.

Thus, your belief system creates your personal sense of reality.

Yes, you read that right, your personal sense of reality. Let me elaborate.

Power of belief: The illusion of reality

Reality is so ordinary that we do not even think about it. It is boring. Something all of us observe around us all the time. But do we really see the objective reality?

To explore this, let us see what happens when we use our senses (see, hear, touch, taste and smell). Our senses are mechanisms which collect data points from the surrounding environment. Once captured at any moment, our brain combines this data into information to interpret it. 

But this is where the objectivity of reality gets messed up, and the power of belief plays a crucial role. Within our brain, our beliefs function like a sieve. If we are not vigilant, they filter out the objective data to only let information pass through that our belief system agrees with. So, what we understand from the data around us is coloured by our self belief.

Example

Let’s understand the concept with an example. Person A is sitting in a cafe. A couple sitting near her has brought a dog. As the dog comes near Person A, she pats the dog gently at the back of his head and feels a sense of warmth within her being in his presence. She feels the dog is cheerful and loving and gives a nod of approval to the owners when they notice. This small interaction with the pet has given her a reason to smile and be happy. She feels grateful that this couple brought their dog to the cafe.

The dog now moves to a nearby table where Person B is sitting. As she notices the dog, she pulls her legs on the chair. Her facial expressions change to a mix of fear and disgust. She quickly notices the teeth of this canine as it pants, and her heart begins to race. She screams at the couple to control their dog and not let it roam free, as it can hurt someone. When the couple is late to respond, she gets angry towards them as well as the owners of the cafe for allowing an animal inside it. Even after the dog moves away, Person B’s mind is obsessed with the dog. She feels anxious and stressed, convinced that her day is ruined.

In both cases, what was the objective reality? Person A and Person B are sitting in the cafe. A dog owned by the couple is freely roaming around from table to table. That’s it. Here, the dog wasn’t exhibiting any dangerous signs or actions. It also did not depict any overt sense of love. It was just roaming inside the cafe.

Then why were the reactions, feelings and thought processes of Person A and Person B different to the same objective reality? What was the difference?

Analysis of the example

The difference was that their belief system created their personal sense of reality for the same data (objective reality) collected by their senses.

Let’s peek into the experiences of persons A and B that resulted in the creation of their corresponding belief system.

Person A loves dogs. She had a pet while growing up and had experienced a deep connection with him. The passing away of her pet a few years back had filled her with grief. This dog in the cafe brought melancholy happiness and feelings of warmth and love she felt with her pet years ago.

Growing up, Person B never had any particular feelings towards animals. However, she had a couple of close calls with dogs in her society where they had chased her, growled at her and often startled her when they barked near her. Her neighbour has a dog which is loud and barks most nights. It has been disturbing her sleep and affecting her work and personal life. She feels cranky and sleep-deprived. Despite multiple complaints, her neighbour is not able to solve this issue.

Who would you say has a correct response in cafe example, Person A or Person B? If you agree with the belief system of Person A, you would be horrified by the reaction of Person B or vice versa. Most of us might react similarly to person A or B (with varying degrees of intensity) or remain indifferent to the dog (neither caring nor disturbed). But this isn’t the objective truth. Person A and B reacted through their filters of interpretation from their brains, convinced that their perception of reality was the truth. For one, the dog was a symbol of unconditional love. For the other, it was just a dangerous animal. But for both, their reality was the truth.

It means we perceive the world through our past experiences and reasoning and not experience the objective reality. What we think of as reality is a fictional world we create through our belief system based on the truth.

A personal sense of reality. A different reality for everyone.

Often, we might not even know why we have a belief system, but we keep interpreting reality through it.  

But how does a personal sense of reality relate to healing and happiness?

Power of belief: How does perceived reality influence healing and happiness?

The power of belief can influence our view of the world. The world can be lively and full of love or a cold, dark, and heartless place based on the interpretation of our personal belief system. 

Our self belief affects how we see, talk to and treat ourselves. Whether we treat ourselves with respect, care, love and compassion or treat ourselves like shit is influenced by the power of belief.

Our belief system can make us face the same situation in different ways. The situation can devastate us, or we might treat it as another hurdle.

But the important thing about the power of belief while trying to heal is this:

Things become real if you believe them, not because they are true.

How to restructure our belief system for healing and happiness?

Things become real if you believe them, not because they are true.

But how do we do we make ourselves believe a belief system? How do we use the power of belief to change our self belief?

What is a practical way to restructure our belief system so that we can heal and create our journey towards happiness?

Let’s see how a simple method can help us harness the power of belief and restructure our belief system.

Vote to change your belief

We can change our belief system through a method called voting towards our new wanted belief.

What does it mean?

We vote towards our new identity that forms a new self belief. And how do we vote towards a new belief system?

We vote using our thoughts, speech and actions.

When we align our thoughts, speech and actions towards a belief system, we vote towards that belief system. Our brain then begins to create this new personal sense of reality as our truth. And slowly, with enough votes, this self belief wins the election. The power of belief thus convinces us to accept this new reality as the new normal.

Let’s explore it with an example. Imagine a belief system that has convinced you that you hurt people. You have mounting evidence – situations, interactions, opinions of various people, your thoughts and what you did in past situations to support this self belief. All these are our votes towards the belief system -‘I hurt people’.

Now, let’s create a new self belief – ‘I care about people’. Right now, we do not believe this statement as it is against our personal sense of current reality. So we begin by voting towards this new self belief.

We use speech as a vote and begin interacting with people lovingly and compassionately. We use actions as a vote and help people if they need us without any ulterior motive. When our thoughts corresponding to our older belief system – ‘I hurt people’, fill our minds, we gently switch them towards our current practice and evidence of – ‘I care about people.’

One by one, we keep adding votes towards this new belief system. As the mountain of evidence for this new self belief increases, our brain begins accepting this new personal sense of reality and moves away from its older version.

And we can do this with anything we want to. What are some of the belief systems you want to change?

I am a bad partner. I am stupid. I do not study. I am bad at my job. I fail. People hate me…. Yada yada yada.

Let’s begin by moving out of these personal senses of realities by voting for our new belief systems towards healing and happiness.