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B.Uma Maheswar Rao

B.Sc,MA(Phil), MA(PubAdmn),
B.L., MA & M Phil (Psych),
PGD HR, PGD Guid.Counsl
NLP Trainer, Hypnotherapist,
Motivator, Trainer

BELIEF SYSTEM
(its influence on Life and Health)

 “it's not the events of our lives that shape us,

but our beliefs as to what those events mean.”

 Life is nothing but a mirror of your consistent thoughts.

 If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.
Tony Robbins

Belief

“Your future begins with your next thought”

The belief system of a person or society is the set of beliefs that they have about what is
right and wrong and what is true and false. ...Human belief system is formed by all the
experiences learned and experimented filtered through personality.

A belief is nothing more than our ability to accept something as true. And as we all know from
our childhood beliefs imaginary friends, and monsters in stories , something doesn’t have to be real
for us to believe in it. Real or not, we have the ability to believe in anything that we want, we just
have to accept an idea as true.

In common usage the following are synonymously used to give a generalized meaning. Inter
changeably we tend to use them in different situations but mostly not conforming to their exact
meanings.

Belief
Trust
Faith
Conviction
Superstition

A Belief is said to be a “Feeling of certainty” – it could be with regard to any thing; a

situation, about a person, a religion, a happening, a consequence etc”. Whereas, the belief exists
within our system, at our mental plane and it is constant within us and with us. That is the reason we
should be careful as to what beliefs we carry and entertain continuously with us throughout our life
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– are they useful beliefs, are they troubling beliefs, are they being followed without
understanding that they are ruining our life towards negativity ?
Thus a belief is a feeling of certainty for example “ yes this is going to happen,” “ this is
true with me, “this will never occur”, “this is permanent”, “this is temporary” so on and so forth.
In all these examples, there is something within our system in the form of feelings generated,
sustained to ultimately give result without our conscious knowledge.

The popular saying goes: “As you Sow - so only shall you reap”

A Trust is something which is consciously or unconsciously agreed upon certain conditions

between two or more individuals. For example between two business partners, wife and husband,
parents and children, between friends etc. It serves a purpose like bondage between them etc.
A Faith is referred to the condition that certain things are followed by us without questioning.
Like religious practices, customs, taking those things as facts which are told to us by the elders,
sayings, histories etc. Important thing is that we do not question them and take them to be true.
A Conviction is said to be the strong belief. When a belief is continuously and repeatedly
enhanced at the thought level, it engraves on the mind as a permanent scar and becomes a
“Conviction”. It becomes a Stronger belief which is normally very difficult to change.
A Superstition also gives more or less similar meaning but it is something to do with illogical and
meaningless acceptance of certain issue or thing. For example a linkage of events, a dogmatic
view of certain thing to happen, an illogical calculation and many more which are generally seen in
the society which are basically formed out of fear or greed and also which are generated. In olden
days when explanations to certain happenings were not possible due to limitations as is possible in the
present days. In any case Superstitions are mostly baseless, meaningless and imaginary feelings.

Beliefs are explained as

“I am what I believe I am” - “You are
what you believe you are”. It requires a lot of explanation to these quotations.
We as individuals in our life are slaves to our beliefs. Every action and behaviour of ours is prefaced
by the beliefs we have already entertained in our thought process. Like our believes drive us whether
to do a thing or not to, to behave in particular manner or not to, etc. In short, we are nothing but what
we believe we are – our achievements in life, with people with situations, with our health are totally
dependent upon what we “Believe in”. if you believe you are intelligent, all your efforts, behaviour
etc., will indicate an intelligent manner and thus the results. On the contrary if you believe you are not
intelligent and the like, all your efforts, behaviour etc will take the direction towards unsuccessful
ends.

“Beliefs need not be facts. Beliefs are emotionally held opinions that we take to be true.”

The sequence is:

THOUGHTS→ BELIEFS+EMOTIONS → ATTITUDES → BEHAVIOUR → ACTION →
RESULTS

We may be spending our lives proving our beliefs to ourselves. If you think you are a failure, then you
will set yourself up to prove this to yourself. If you believe you can - you might, If you believe
you cannot – you won’t. There is a solution to every problem.

How beliefs affect behavior

Contrary to common beliefs people don't collect information from the outside world to form new
beliefs but they gather new information that supports their already existing beliefs.
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For example believing that someone is arrogant will result in changing your behavior in such a
way that you will only focus on his mistakes and ignore his good deeds.

Where do they emerge from:

The belief formation process starts when a seed of thought is implemented in the person's mind.
This seed could be a small remark made by an authoritative person, an advice given by a close
friend or even a phrase you heard from a complete stranger, a situation, an experience etc.

Contrary to common beliefs seeds don’t grow when real life evidence supports them but instead
people keep collecting biased evidence for the sake of watering the seeds they already carry!!

For example they collect supportive evidences like “didn’t I say it is going to happen, I knew
whatever effort you put in – “I told you it will be not give result”, “see what happened
ultimately as I professed”. Etc. Unfortunately, we tend to reinforce at the level of our mental
plane in support of our beliefs and construe satisfaction satisfied with the consequence or
happening as to be true.

The Power of Belief

The Power of Belief often empowers the highest levels of performance. Performing

with belief is a critical factor for achieving success at anything in life: sports, business, school,
family, friends, neighbors and communities all are impacted by your beliefs.

What you believe either empowers you or it limits you. Empowering beliefs pull your performance
up; limiting beliefs pull your performance down. This is especially true under competitive pressure
or in response to challenging situations. The good news is that what you believe is your choice.

Our values are important because they help us to grow and develop. They help us to create the
future we want to experience. ... The decisions we make are a reflection of our values and beliefs, and
they are always directed towards a specific purpose.

What is a thought?
Neuroscientists define thought as the interaction of billions of neurons in the same moment,
exchanging chemicals between them to communicate. The neuroscientists say that our brain has
roughly a hundred billion neurons.

What is really a thought? We know we think thoughts all the time, but there’s still a long journey to
clearly understand where our thoughts come from and how many cross our minds in one day.

Until we get there, what we know so far is that countless waves or loops of thoughts come and go in
our heads. We can’t control all of them. If you pay close attention to your thoughts, you will find that
most of them are useless and unreal.
We may not know much about thoughts, yet. But we surely know this:

We create our reality with the thoughts we think all the time and every day. Our thoughts dictate
the decisions we make. Our job is to find the core beliefs that make our life stuck and change them.
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What is a core belief?

Core beliefs are nothing less than deep-rooted presumptions we make about ourselves, the world we
live in and others. They are the result of impactful experiences, mostly from our childhoods. And if we
had repeated impactful experiences, chances are we made our core beliefs even more rooted and
harder to break.

Core beliefs are simply the thoughts you repeatedly think. As you do this, you reach a stage where
your subconscious mind takes them over. It starts holding them as absolute truth. When this happens,
you are no longer aware of your core beliefs, you simply think "that's just the way I am".

How to recognize a core belief

A core belief often starts with “I…” or “I am…”

Examples of negative core beliefs are:

 “I am not good enough; a failure; a loser; an incompetent. / Everyone is better than me. / I will
never succeed.”
 “I am bad. / I don’t deserve anything. / Everything I do is wrong.”
 “I am unlovable; undesirable; unattractive; ugly.”
 “Everything is my fault. / I never get it right.”
 “I will be hurt if I get close to someone. / People cannot be trusted.”
 “There is no point in life. / The world is unfair.”

These negative thoughts exist because something or someone made you believe so.

Can we change our core beliefs?

Absolutely. But you have to look into deeper aspects.

We have to understand what has been creating and shaping our core beliefs. You will have to
bring them to your conscious mind. What we want to do here is to make the subconscious, conscious.

To find our core beliefs, we must be aware of the things that upset us. As and when we get upset, we
have an opportunity to find out what is hidden in our subconscious mind.

The childhood experiences sometimes play key role in shaping our present beliefs. For example, every
single time throughout our adult life, when someone would criticize our work in any way, we
would collapse, we would feel so deeply offended and sad that it would make us question everything
about our work, skills and self-worth. This experience could be because during the childhood we
would have been constantly suggested that we were not upto the mark.

Not only would that we doubt ourselves but we would convince ourselves that the person who
was criticizing was absolutely right.
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We should understand that many of such beliefs have the roots down in the early experiences and
performances. So instead of collapsing every time we get upset about say our work, we would stay
still with that emotion. We could ask ourselves a few questions to reach the core belief that was
holding us back.

I would ask: “Why is this upsetting me?”

answer: “Because my work is being criticized.”

And ask again: “Why is my work being criticized?”

answer: “Because I did something wrong.”

And ask again: “Why did I do something wrong?”

answer: “Because I am dumb.”

And ask again: “Why am I dumb?”

answer: “Because I am a failure. I am not good enough.”

You can use the chunking method as an alternative. This is one way to get to the core of your beliefs.
Like you peel the layers of an onion.

Most possibly all this came from something that some people would have told me and created an
impact. This would have had the internal creation into believing that no matter what I did, I would
never be as good as others.

Replace your negative core belief with a positive one

Changing our negative core beliefs means we have to find our very best alternative of a new and
positive core belief. For example, a good replacement for the negative core beliefs mentioned above
can be:
A negative core belief (or a belief which is Replace with a powerful belief to change
stopping me) (may be you use conscious affirmations)
I am not good enough, a failure, a loser, an I am worthy, I am always learning to become
incompetent, everyone is better than me, I will better and I do my best.
never succeed
I am bad, I don’t deserve anything, everything I I am good, I can be good, Several times I do
do is wrong. what is right.
I am unlovable, undesirable, unattractive I am lovable just as I am, by loving myself
others will also love me.
Everything is my fault, I never get it right. Sometimes and many times I get things right.
I thing I have bright ideas but I don’t have I can try and be successful with my innovative
capacity to implement. ideas.
Though I know English I cannot speak in I have learnt many things on my own, it is only
English the way many people do. a practice and I will dedicate time to improve
my spoken English
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Beliefs and Health

It is a fantastic dimension on the subject of Belief system. Your beliefs are your strengths and
weaknesses. Your nervous system is the basis to carry your positive and negative thoughts to all
parts of your body. It doesnot have any discrimination between positive and negative beliefs. For
example If you believe the medicines suggested by a particular Doctor will have desired results,
you have the positive result in your health. Pain and pleasure is mental. It is only a feeling at the
mental plane decides whether you are happy or unhappy, pained or having pleasure. Strong belief
system could even control the spreading of cancerous cells further. In Hypnosis and NLP there are
umpteen number of exercises to show how the thought process and beliefs effect the
psycho-somatic processes.

The Placebo effect:

1. A beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the
properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment. The
placebo effect is due to the development of placebo beliefs (beliefs of the form ”This treatment is
going to cure me”), which may counteract the kind of cognitions that produce anxiety and depression;
placebo beliefs produce emotional responses (hope, calm, etc.), which work against depression
and anxiety. Placebo works on symptoms modulated by the brain like the perception of pain etc.

Some of the examples to show how without our notice we succumb to our beliefs:
1. I cannot sleep when the lights are on.
2. Reading Hindu paper will improve English knowledge
3. I forget all that I read during last night- I think something wrong with my brain.
4. Many diseases like leprosy are due to the sins/karmas of the past birth.
5. People belonging to that State are dangerous and tactful.
6. Two pegs in a day will keep the heart healthy.
7. I studied in Telugu medium and therefore I cannot speak English properly.
8. I get fever and other aches whenever there is an exam or interview.
9. I become nervous before a group.
10. All those fellows of that Religion are mere fools.
11. If I eat curd or Sambar in the night, it upsets my stomach.
12. That particular caste people are not at all trustworthy.
13. One hour walk a day will keep you away from all diseases.
14. No one can change the destiny
15. A cigarette after meals will digest food comfortably.
16. Ayurveda medicine is the best to cure all diseases.
17. Disciplined habits will lead to peaceful life.
18. All Govt. officials, Police, Politicians are corrupt.
19. People do not pay attention to me because I am not smart/ beautiful.
20. That particular Baba is the real incarnation of GOD.
21. I cannot succeed in any endeavour because my Jataka Chakra stated that only after my 30th
year I will be successful.
22. Corruption is on the increase in India.
23. I shiver and shake to speak before public.
24. There is a rebirth and we have to suffer if we do wrong things during this Janma.
25. One day God will come down in some shape and punish the sinners.
26. I am suffering during this life because my fore fathers have sinned.
27. Yoga cures all ailments.
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It is therefore necessary that to bring about any change in behaviour it is important to change
beliefs rather than attempting to change the practices. For example the logical explanations,
practical demonstrations etc. Many times while changing beliefs people need to be supported by
alternatives. This is one of the key factors in the absence of which a person will be left in confusion.

Belief system works on every aspect of human living and behaviour. Belief on religion, health,
environment, people around, efficiency, success or failure etc. It is said that belief preludes all
actions i.e. you believe and you do or act in any given situation.

There are also practical exercises to get rid of negative or useless beliefs from our system
consciously.

Our values and beliefs affect the quality of our work and all our relationships because what you
believe is what you experience. We tend to think that our beliefs are based on reality, but it is our
beliefs that govern our experiences. ... Beliefs are precious because they reflect who we are and how
we live our lives.

Beliefs originate from what we hear - and keep on hearing from others, ever since we were
children . The sources of beliefs include environment, events, knowledge, past experiences,
visualization etc.

What are Values?

Values are the principles, qualities, and standards that we hold in high regard. They guide the way we
live our lives and shape the decisions we make. A value can be defined as those things we consider to
be worth.

It is commonly formed by a particular belief that is related to the value of that idea. Some people see
great value in saving forests. However, someone else who relies on logging of timber as a way of life
may not see the same value.

Values have a significant influence on most of the judgments we make as well as having an impact on
the support we offer to others. Common values are those that are shared by a group of people,
community or culture. They are passed down through sources such as religious organizations,
institutions, family, and even media.

 Family: family comes first; I should care for my family

 Personal: the importance of working hard in life, how should I behave at a certain age?

 Spiritual: belief about being right and wrong, belief in gods

 Cultural: importance of standing firm in your beliefs as opposed to conforming to societal

expectations

What are Limiting Beliefs and how do You Overcome Them?

As mentioned before, the beliefs we hold true make up the fabric of our experiences. The stronger they
are, the more they seem unshakable, and the more we will find evidence to support and prove them.
What many people don’t realize is that the majority of these beliefs are not really true. They only seem
true because we’ve decided so.
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There are a lot of collective limiting beliefs that you’ve probably agreed to:

The most common human limiting beliefs are:

 fear of success.
 Fear of success is more about anticipating how other people will react to your triumph. Fear
of success can also be referred to as “success anxiety” or “success phobia.” It's even been called
“achievement phobia.” Whatever you choose to call it, it's associated with a negative impact on
overall life satisfaction.
 fear of failure.
 fear we are not good enough to achieve what we want.
 fear of not being loved/being unlovable.
fear of rejection – generally leading you to avoid relationships or people please.

HOW BELIEFS AFFECT THE HEALTH

Very Important : Your beliefs affect the functioning of the trillions of cells in your body. It is
true. Your thoughts trigger chemical messengers in your brain, which in turn trigger your cells to
take action. : the “fight-or-flight” response.

This response is something all animals have, and it is triggered when an animal is faced with a
predator, one that may kill or eat it. In this situation, the animal has two choices: to fight the
predator or to run away. The animal’s body is flooded with hormones to give it the ability to do
one or the other. We human animals have that same response, and it is triggered every day of our
life. There are n number of examples in everyones life.

Your body, and its trillions of cells, hears everything your brain says. This is both concerning and
empowering. Science shows us that negative and worrisome beliefs predispose your body to
illness; positive and hopeful beliefs are healing and curative. Medical research on beliefs
shows us that your beliefs can be self-fulfilling prophecies. Your body hears everything your brain
says.

. Your beliefs influence your behavior.

It is because what we believe to be true has a huge impact on our lives. All beliefs guide our
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors on a daily basis, even if they aren’t based on factual
information.

A belief such as “facing a black cat while going out of house for a task”,or considering “It’s bad
luck to step on a crack on the sidewalk” may seem superstitious and silly to many people, but to the
person who believes it to be true, they will spend a lot of their focus and energy making sure they
get back into the house and start again or walk carefully and avoid stepping on a crack.

Since we are driven by our beliefs through out our life in matters of our individual performance,
inter personal relationships, decision making etc. it is essential to basically understand the nature
of our beliefs to the extent possible, able to differentiate between useful beliefs and the beliefs
which might be causing problems or on the contrary which are not useful. A simple exercise
to consciously differentiate between such beliefs could be made as a measure to understand how
beliefs dominate our behavioural pattern.

As we discussed that “I am what I believe I am” and “You are what you believe you are” which
means it is the global or aggregate picture of his or her belief about the knowledge, skill,
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education, creativity, problem solving capacity, different approaches in dealing with people,
character, conduct, culture etc., which in his/her opinion that individual possesses. It will be
very much helpful if such person is entertaining positive, constructive or useful beliefs. Whereas,
along with them we also tend to carry such beliefs which are either causing inconvenience to us or
to others because of our such beliefs. In the process we may be attempting to influence our such
undesirable beliefs on others around us without knowing that they are perhaps our unchecked, many
times unreasonable beliefs which are driving us to do so. The root cause for many conflicts in
human relations this is one of the important factors.

Take pad and paper, sit down in a relaxed mood with least disturbances around and write down the
beliefs which are in your opinion are positive, useful and have been helpful to you regularly in
number of situations.

To give some cues, may be you will write: I am intelligent, I understand things very easily, I
dressup well, I am liked by many, I communicate well and I do not hurt any one during my
conversation, my listening skills are good, my conduct and character are appreciable, I am highly
creative etc., etc.,

Now let us look in to the beliefs which are not important or may be causing sometimes difficulties
causing inconvenience to others. Again they are only cues:

Beliefs that people should behave in a particular way, a wife or husband should conduct in a
particular way in the family, manners at dining table or other places should be in a particular way,
eating habits are very important and we should insist on others to follow because I suggest for their
advantage only, following politics and interest in movies will damage the character and conduct of
persons, certain rituals and age old practices are must and I insist to be followed because others do
not understand the importance, since I know many such important things I am angry at others
and get disturbed if others defy, etc. etc and likewise we will be driven by hundreds of such beliefs
about which we hardly have any knowledge consciously because as we discussed, all these beliefs
are taken at mental plane to be true or correct.

So now, write down all these beliefs separately. Please do not do it in a hurry. You keep your
writing pad and papers at a convenient place and take your own time to jot them down whenever
you come across to recall such belief.

It of course, requires the intervention of an expert like a Psychological counselor to interpret, to

give a logical explanation to the genesis of such “unhelpful” beliefs and very important aspect to
reframe them to be useful. However, the above exercise will definitely indicate to individual what
are nearly troublesome beliefs which could be deliberately changed or totally avoided. Repeating
positive suitable affirmations will come handy in many situations.

There are again plenty of tips to get rid of those beliefs which are otherwise hindering our
relationships with others.

A formula to remember always to better the relationships:

 Don’t brood over the past

 Live in the present
 Have high hope and expectations about future.
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Past is past and passed...no one can change it…if we are interested we can learn perhaps some
lessons to benefit our present behavior. Unfortunately, many of us spoil days and months
brooding over the unfortunate, mostly painful past ‘today’….not knowing that we are not living in
‘today’ but in the past. Live positively today…be enthusiastic, put a smile on your face, get
excited, believe that ‘today’ will be a fantastic day in all matters. Only when you deliberately
have the favourable emotions every day, you have any chance to dream and construct high hopes
and expectations on future.