Beliefs create

Beliefs can have a powerful impact on shaping our experiences and reality. As cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman explains, “What you see around you is not the real world, but a user interface constructed by your brain.” In other words, our beliefs shape the way we perceive and interpret the world around us, and this perception can become our reality.

Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg adds, “What you believe, what you think, what you do, all changes your brain structure, function, and chemistry. In essence, your beliefs can make you or break you.” This is because beliefs not only shape our perception, but also impact our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

For instance, if someone believes they are incapable of achieving success, they may be less likely to take risks and pursue their goals, ultimately leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand, if someone believes they are capable and deserving of success, they may be more likely to take action towards achieving their goals, leading to a greater likelihood of success.

Thus, it is important to examine and challenge our beliefs, as they have the potential to either limit or expand our experiences and reality. As cognitive psychologist Albert Ellis once said, “The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

10 Self limiting beliefs

Here is a list of 10 thinking errors. It’s a tool that anyone can use for better self-talk hygiene.

1. Labeling: Fat, stupid, undisciplined, lazy, gauche—there weren’t many derogatory adjectives one hadn’t applied at one time or another.
2. Personalising: Taking personal responsibility for a bad thing when, rationally, it was outside one’s control — like choosing to go and see a film that turned out to be a bad one, and feeling apologetic towards the friend one would have dragged along to see it with.
3. Mind-reading: Believing that someone was thinking bad thoughts about us, on the basis of little or no evidence. If someone didn’t return our call, it had to be because they thought we are boring, rather than because they hadn’t picked up the message.
4. Fortune-telling: In our own mind, we’d already anticipated failure. Closely tied to…
5. Catastrophising: Imagining the worst possible outcome and expecting it to come true.
6. Black and white thinking: If something wasn’t a total success, then it was a total failure, even if, objectively, ninety percent of it had gone well.
7. Mental filtering: Focusing on the negative, rather than the positive, in any situation — like ignoring praise and concentrating on the one negative comment.
8. Disqualifying the positive: Construing positive comments negatively; mental filtering, taken to its logical conclusion.
9. Making demands: Directed at oneself, this is what is known as “masturbatory” thinking: “I must…”, “I should…”, “I ought…”. Trying to control uncontrollable people (i.e. everyone) is a guaranteed shortcut to frustration and stress.
10. Emotional reasoning: Using our emotions to evaluate a situation. For example, believing that because we feel unattractive, we, therefore, are unattractive.

These thinking errors were a list of ways one might fail to look at events rationally and objectively, and instead, to interpret things in the worst possible way.

Why does brain get influenced by beliefs?

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The brain gets influenced by beliefs because beliefs are deeply ingrained in our subconscious mind and influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Beliefs are formed based on past experiences, cultural and social conditioning, and personal values and attitudes. These beliefs can be positive or negative, and they can have a significant impact on our perception of the world around us.

Beliefs can also create cognitive biases, which are mental shortcuts that the brain uses to make sense of information. These biases can cause us to see things in a certain way, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. For example, confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that confirms our beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them.

Additionally, beliefs can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is when our expectations about a situation or person actually influence the outcome. This is because our beliefs can shape our behavior, which in turn can impact the behavior of others.

Here are 2 critical research studies about how the brain gets influenced by beliefs:

1. Alia Crum and Ellen Langer conducted a study where they found that people’s beliefs about aging affected their physiological and cognitive functioning. In the study, a group of hotel maids were told that their daily work of cleaning rooms was enough exercise to meet the recommended daily activity levels. Another group of maids were not given this information. After four weeks, the maids who were told that their work was exercise had a decrease in weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and improved attitude towards their job compared to the group that was not given this information. The study showed that beliefs can have a powerful effect on physiological functioning.
2. In a study by Carol Dweck, students were given a difficult IQ test. After the test, half of the students were praised for their intelligence and the other half were praised for their effort. The students who were praised for their intelligence were more likely to choose an easier task to work on in the future, whereas the students who were praised for their effort were more likely to choose a more challenging task. The study showed that beliefs about intelligence and ability can influence the type of goals people set for themselves and their motivation to achieve those goals.

Overall, beliefs play a significant role in how we perceive and interact with the world, and understanding the influence of beliefs on the brain can help us to better understand ourselves and others.

Our daily life is like a virtual reality

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The statement “Our daily life is like a virtual reality” suggests that the experiences we have and the world we perceive are constructed by our brains, and may not necessarily reflect an objective reality. Our perception of the world is shaped by our senses, past experiences, and beliefs, among other factors.

This analogy of life as a virtual reality is often used in discussions about the nature of reality and the limitations of human perception. It is a way of highlighting the subjective nature of our experiences, and the fact that what we perceive is not necessarily an accurate representation of what is actually happening in the world around us.

However, it is important to note that while our perception may be subjective, it is still a valuable tool for navigating the world and making sense of our experiences. Our brains have evolved to construct a version of reality that is useful for us to operate within, even if it is not a perfect reflection of objective reality.

Anchor Beliefs

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There’s an important type of belief most of us have, which we call “Anchor Beliefs.” These beliefs are, by definition, those beliefs we hold that are almost impossible to change. To the believer, an Anchor Belief doesn’t feel like a mere belief – it feels like an undeniable truth. These beliefs are often too deeply rooted to change, and the cost of giving them up may be extremely high (e.g., questioning the belief might cause you to lose your family, friends, livelihood, or your understanding of what reality looks like).

Understanding the role that Anchor Beliefs play in human psychology – and identifying your own personal Anchor Beliefs – can help you make better sense of the world around you. Additionally, such an understanding can help you search for false Anchor Beliefs, those apparently unquestionable truths that make up the foundations of some people’s worldviews, despite being wrong! Challenging your own false anchors is very difficult, but the consequences may be life-changing.

How do Anchor Beliefs work?

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Anchor Beliefs almost never change, yet we still have to make sense of new information that we come across (some of which may strongly contradict our Anchor Beliefs). Our solution is to warp the evidence that we receive such that we can fit it into our worldview AND keep our Anchor Belief intact at the same time. This is how Anchor Beliefs get their name: they are like huge, steel anchors securing boats to the ocean floor – only an enormously powerful current will be able to make them budge; any lesser current will simply swirl around the anchor. In this way, only incredibly powerful evidence can pose a threat to our Anchor Beliefs. And even then, our brains are highly adept at interpreting evidence so that our original Anchor Belief remains steadfast.

While you may think that you wouldn’t fall for a false Anchor Belief, being particularly smart or logical doesn’t necessarily help you challenge these kinds of beliefs. You’re more likely to come up with smarter and more logical reasons why your Anchor Belief must be correct (regardless of whether or not it is). If you search hard enough, there is almost always a way to reinterpret the evidence so that your Anchor Belief can remain steadfast.

What happens when our anchor beliefs are wrong?

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Anchor Beliefs aren’t necessarily false. A lot of them are true. They just aren’t necessarily true. So, it’s important to distinguish between two types of Anchor Beliefs: (1) “False Anchors” and (2) Anchor Beliefs that happen to be true. False Anchors are obviously much more worrisome. However, they often aren’t easy to spot.

Remember, Anchor Beliefs feel to us (the believer) not like mere beliefs but like indisputable truths. However, it’s almost certain that we learned them from the people around us, or derived them from shoddy generalizations, and they may not be obvious truths at all (that doesn’t mean they are false, just that they may not be indisputable like they seem).

Our own Anchor Beliefs are like the dark matter of the self. They flow through us without detection, and they influence our actions. It’s not that doubting these beliefs is impossible, but we tend to automatically dismiss scepticism towards our Anchor Beliefs (or entirely ignore evidence that contradicts them), so that we don’t have to face abandoning our worldview.

False Anchor Beliefs can have negative consequences the way any false belief can: by causing your predictions to be out of sync with reality. What makes them worse than your average false belief is that they are hard to change, largely because so many other beliefs tend to rely on them. But remember that not all Anchor Beliefs are false (so it wouldn’t make sense to give up a belief merely because it’s an Anchor).

A debate is not an argument

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The more you try to argue with someone, the less likely you are to convince them of your perspective.

The reason for this is that most arguments are emotional in nature. They come from someone’s values or self-perceptions being violated. Logic is only used to validate those pre-existing beliefs and values. It’s rarely about the objective or logical truth as much as it is repairing people’s worldviews.

For any real debate to truly exist, both parties must be making an honest concession to put their egos aside and only deal with the data.

Being skeptic

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Skepticism involves accepting our beliefs may be mistaken.

It is that kind of skepticism where you can’t choose whether to or not believe all those things around, but what you do is ask yourself why you believe those things, and whether the basis of your belief is really a good basis?

It’s worth subjecting our beliefs, including some of our most fundamental commitments, to rational, critical scrutiny. We should as an individual take stock on occasion on what we believe and why we believe it.

We have a responsibility to do that and not just be gullible, not just passively accept whatever we’re told by others.

And it’s that kind of skepticism that we should be interested in, that kind of methodological, rather than philosophical skepticism, where you’re taking stock, taking a step back, and thinking for yourself and just critically assessing why you believe the things you believe, are these reasonable beliefs?

Anchor Beliefs

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There’s an important type of belief most of us have, which we call “Anchor Beliefs.” These beliefs are, by definition, those beliefs we hold that are almost impossible to change. To the believer, an Anchor Belief doesn’t feel like a mere belief – it feels like an undeniable truth. These beliefs are often too deeply rooted to change, and the cost of giving them up may be extremely high (e.g., questioning the belief might cause you to lose your family, friends, livelihood, or your understanding of what reality looks like).

Understanding the role that Anchor Beliefs play in human psychology – and identifying your own personal Anchor Beliefs – can help you make better sense of the world around you. Additionally, such an understanding can help you search for false Anchor Beliefs, those apparently unquestionable truths that make up the foundations of some people’s worldviews, despite being wrong! Challenging your own false anchors is very difficult, but the consequences may be life-changing.

This article provides an introduction to Anchor Beliefs, including an explanation of how they differ from other beliefs, what can make them so hard to change, and a list of common categories of Anchor Beliefs that can help you identify your own.