Become the Landlord of Your Beliefs.

Beliefs are an interesting thing. They aren't there from the day you are born. They are gradually passed on to you by your parents based on their lives and experiences. These beliefs are for them a way of thinking - a way of life. They take them for granted as fact for your safety.

Without knowing any different, we take on and follow these beliefs. After all, our surroundings and environment are supporting these beliefs so there's every reason to begin to support them ourselves.
As you grow older and begin to socialise, you are potentially exposed to a wider range of beliefs. Some of these new beliefs may be in conflict or difference to what you have taken on as your own, and some may also be the same or similar to what you have come to believe and accept as true.
So, what is a belief? If you were to break it right down, a belief as a convenient assumption that something is true or false. Quite often people mix up beliefs as facts.
This can be simply illustrated by a familiar scenario.
Let's say there are 2 cars that smash on a suburban street, one is a red car and one is a blue car. These are the facts – irrefutable and undeniable. Let's say there are a couple of witnesses including the driver of each car. One person says that the driver of the red car is at fault, another says the blue car did the wrong thing. The driver of the red car complains that the blue car didn't give way for a sufficient amount of time which caused the accident. The driver of the blue car says that the red car was going too fast, which caused the accident. The differences in these stories all come back to beliefs. Believing what is seen from the angle that we see it.
Beliefs are a powerful thing, but more importantly and maybe difficult for some to swallow – beliefs are not real. Beliefs are completely made up. Remember, a belief as a convenient assumption that something is true or false. And we have a belief for everything – and I mean EVERYTHING!
We are very quickly able to assess any situation that we meet by running it through our ‘belief filter'. In milliseconds, we can choose whether something fits within our belief system or not. Even if it's something completely foreign to us, we are able to make an almost immediate assessment and create a belief around it. We instantly call upon reference points from our surroundings, our past, and our peers – anything, so we can create a belief that makes sense to us and is congruent to our other beliefs.
When you were younger, there was very little to question in regards to our beliefs. They were generally there to keep us safe or to help us grow. But some beliefs have an expiry date and are no longer valid or useful.
I'm presuming that those that are reading this are adults and therefore I can safely talk about the belief in Santa Claus (fingers crossed…). This is a belief that a lot of people are familiar with, and has been used by many families for generations. Some will defend it and some will tell you that it's lying to children. Those conversations are all based on beliefs! But the point I wanted to make by bringing it up here, is that there is a point that parents generally reach where they feel that this belief has reached its expiration date – that the child is ‘old enough to know the truth'.
I'm not going to enter the conversation as to whether I think it is helpful or not to indulge in this belief – that's for you to decide. But it's a perfect example of assessing and deciding whether a belief serves or hinders.
There are beliefs that served us at one particular point in our lives that we have carried around far longer than we have needed to. There are also beliefs that we have created that have never actually been a healthy choice but were made to get through a specific time because we thought it would help.

Are the beliefs that you hold on to and live by helping you today?

By Hasan Imti