What Is A Belief?

A belief is an idea or opinion we hold as true and no longer question. When we believe something is true, we place our faith in it, and it becomes our truth.

Why Do We Create Beliefs?
We have beliefs for a purpose. We use them to help us navigate our world. We assign meaning to the events in our life, seeing something as good, bad, or neutral so we will steer clear of those things that we believe are bad for us and move towards what we believe is good. Our ability to adopt beliefs is a useful function for us. We will adopt and discard beliefs all throughout our lives. This is how we are designed to take care of ourselves.

What Do We Have Beliefs About?
We have beliefs about everything. We hold beliefs about politics, education, religion, moral behavior, science, history, love, work, relationships, health, child-raising, women’s rights, success, money, happiness, unhappiness, and much, much more. We also have beliefs about ourselves, such as our ability, our beauty, our talents, weaknesses, value, etc. There is no end to our ability to make up beliefs about anything and everything!

What Do Our Beliefs Do?
The act of placing our belief in something is an enormous creative process. Our beliefs are creative. Our beliefs create our feelings and behaviors. Once we adopt or agree to a belief we no longer see them as beliefs, but as a fact or our truth. Once they become our truths we respond automatically, having feelings and engaging in behaviors that flow from those beliefs. Because our feelings flow so automatically we can often feel like they are “happening to us” as we experience them at a lightening fast speed, yet they arise from the beliefs we hold to be true.

Outside Events Don’t Cause Feelings – Beliefs Do!
We live in a society where we are taught, and routinely encouraged to believe, that outside circumstances cause unhappiness. Outside circumstances have never been the cause of our unhappy feelings. No matter how undesirable we find our situation to be, it is not the event that causes our unhappiness; rather it is our beliefs about it. It is our choice of what to believe about our circumstance that determines our feelings. 

Why Is This Good To Know?
Knowing that our beliefs create our feelings and behaviors is the first step to empowering ourselves to feel better. Understanding how our feelings are created frees us from being victims of the outside world, or of our unhappy feelings. We now have the personal power to change what we think to create an extraordinary life.