Like needs, fear is a motivator that drives many of our actions but in an opposite manner. We pursue needs and flee from fears.

Many authors have created lists of fears, just as psychologists have documented many phobias. For the purposes of investigating beliefs, perhaps fear can be viewed as bringing uncertainty thus strengthening the need for certainty.

A simple, but useful, list of fears is:

• Success. Despite pursuing success, we often fear the consequences of achieving it: it will change our lives.
• Failure. This fear is often around the judgement of others on our failures. This often overshadows the opportunity to learn from failure and become better.
• Change. All things change- something we can’t ultimately control, only modify the consequences.
• Worthlessness. We are social creatures and weigh our usefulness to others (not really in our control) heavier than our internal self-worth (which is under our control).
• Losing Identity. If we form strong attachment to our current identity, we fear its loss if situations change, which of course will. Identity is a process, not a fixed point.
• Poverty. This is really a fear of loss, centered around material possessions.

It is easy to see how to expand this list,  even just by elaborating on each fear. You can also contract the list to three key fears:

• Control. The best way to deal with this is to realize what is truly under your control and what is not.
• Change. Embracing change rather than fighting a losing battle to reject it.
• Loss. Besides trying to avoid material attachments, have confidence is your abilities to overcome.

You might recognize some of the comments on these fears as being aligned with Stoicism (which is not being emotionless and have some parallel to Buddhism) – a philosophy woth exploring.

 

What is a Belief?

A belief is an explanation for why things seem to happen that we accept as true.

Just because we believe something to be true, doesn’t it make it so. One definition of knowledge is when truth and belief overlap:

 

 

A belief is different from a judgement, which involves consciously evaluating a proposition for its truth. If the conclusion is that it is true, judgement may lead to forming a belief. The belief acts as a representation of how part of the world works and therefore influence the actions we take in this world. If you believe something is true, you must be willing to act accordingly- otherwise you can’t claim belief [1]. Beliefs drive all our behavior, including how we react to the behavior of others (driven by their own beliefs).

Types of beliefs include [2]:

• Existence. One of the most basic beliefs, that something actually exists.
• Association. We use reference to things to understand another, stating something is like something else in some aspect.
• Equivalence. Believing two things are the same, often ignoring differences and leading to incorrect generalizations.
• Enaction. Things happen like change and the flow of time.
• Causation. The belief that one thing causes another thing, sometimes accepting a false correlation of events.

Another way to classify beliefs is by where they apply (to ourselves or the world) and how they are adopted:

 

 

Religion and Philosophy are belief systems that guide how we should behave- they are more internally focused. Religious beliefs are associated with faith while reason plays are stronger role in philosophical belief.

We tend to accept the beliefs of the society in which we live, often without much thought since we are exposed to such beliefs long before we have developed a capacity to reason.

The profound influence of science is due to its systematic search for knowledge (truth intersecting with belief). Science minimizes faith while religion seeks to maximize faith. But science still rests on some assumptions taken on faith [3]: external object reality exists and has a structure that permits making generalizations and predictions. It’s key strength is the ability to revise beliefs based on new evidence. While the scientific method can never absolutely prove a belief is true, it is excellent at disproving false beliefs using the tools of hypothesis formation and testing. These are learned tools that don’t get exercised in our early formations of beliefs in life (and sometime rarely in adulthood too).

Why do we have Beliefs?

We are incredible pattern recognition machines, observing and making conclusions about how the world works from birth. This ability to model the world is critical for our survival and has lead to our increasing ability to hold beliefs.

How do we form Beliefs?

We form beliefs from our own experience and accepting what other tell us [4]. Combining our experience and intentional experiments we may try, we can generalize (often using internal reflection) this information to form beliefs. We also listen to trusted authority figures and experts to leverage their experience and often adopt beliefs that they hold. Despite our self-image as a rational species, emotions play a large role in how we form beliefs [5]. We tend to become attached to some beliefs and reject others based on emotions, leading to biased reasoning:

• Confirmation bias. We tend to selectively choose evidence supporting a belief and ignore contrary evidence.
• Disconfirmation bias. We spend significant effort trying to disprove beliefs that are not aligned to existing beliefs.

Like in software, you can envision a ‘stack’ that we use to process our perceptions of the world that starts at a physical level and proceeds up to an intellectual level. The interface between emotional and intellectual levels is beliefs:

 

 

References

Beliefs drive most of our actions, sometimes to our benefit. However, incorrect beliefs can lead to actions that may hold us back from achieving what we want or need.

This blog is an exploration of how we form beliefs, recognize when they limit us, and how we can change them. I’m a technologist that values self-improvement and philosophy and make no claims to being an expert on behavior and psychology. My interests in personal productivity have lead to investigating the major role beliefs play in actually taking actions. Very often the strategies we need to achieve a goal are readily available, yet we fail to act on this information. The problem is usually some limiting belief, which we may not even be aware of, that holding us back. Being able to do something about these limitations is just as important as having a strategy to reach a goal. Ideas are worthless without action.

Much has been written on this topic from various viewpoints: religious, philosophical, and scientific. My bias is toward exploring pragmatic approaches that leverage science. The objective is to find ways to help take the right actions to reach goals. While you may not agree or find some of the techniques don’t work for you, I hope it leads you to further investigate this topic.