Beliefs & Evidence

An interesting thought, once you form a belief about something, you will always find evidence to back it up, otherwise it would be stupid to be holding the belief. (A caveat here is  the world of science, where discipline and conditioning says, that you start with the evidence and then work from that to build support for a hypothesis).

For most of us though, we develop ways of looking at evidence so that our belief is preserved, we filter out what does not fit and filter in, if you like, more of what supports the belief (it is not seeing is believing, it is believing is seeing!) Remember my definition of a belief, as a lens through which we perceive reality 🙂

This insight is in my view, fundamental to becoming the real you. Beliefs that we currently hold  about ourselves, will need to change, on the journey to becoming the real you. 🙂

Let me give an example that may strike a chord. In school, in front of the class, the teacher says “you’re hopeless at maths, you’ll never be able to get this, will you?” Your reaction may be a polar response of, I’ll show her and you set your intent to become brilliant at maths actually, or you say to yourself, “she’s right I am useless” and then you begin gathering the evidence to prove it. Each time you get a wrong answer or low mark in an exam it’s just proving to you that you are right in your belief that you are rubbish at maths. You never really ‘see’ the fact that some of what you are doing is good!

Whether you believe you can or you can’t do something, you are right! Because, as I have said in a previous post, the biggest belief we all have is I am right! 🙂

What is the belief about yourself, that holds you back the most?

When did you ‘learn’ it?

How old were you?

What if you learned a belief now that really helped you ?

What would that be?