Beliefs

Internal recurring thoughts that have a significant influence on how you react to people and events.

Beliefs are rather like Attitudes in that they are internal recurring thoughts that obviously have a significant influence on how people react (ie behave). Beliefs are, in effect, conclusions that you have reached based on experience. They are often deep-seated (which is why they tend to recur) and not necessarily rational, in the sense that they often fail to stand up to close scrutiny or to match ‘the facts’.

Beliefs have a tendency to be self-reinforcing. If, for example, you believe that all redheads are short-tempered, then you tend to sustain that belief despite the fact that most of the redheads you have dealings with are no more short-tempered than anyone else. If you were unfortunate enough to meet a redhead who was short-tempered, then you would seize on that as ‘proof’ and conveniently forget all the redheads who had failed to match the belief.

Beliefs are useful because they are a short cut. Without them we would have to process all the data and come to a carefully considered conclusion every time in every situation, which would be onerous as well as time-consuming. The problem with beliefs, however, is that they are often:

• behind the times
• dogmatic and absolute
• unrealistic.

The combined effect of these characteristics is often most unfortunate.

Whenever you get upset and agitated, for example, it is because a belief you hold dear has been violated. Suppose you believe that people ought always to be polite. (The ‘ought’ is significant. Beliefs are usually in the form of oughts, shoulds and musts.) Armed with this belief you are clearly vulnerable when, as will inevitably happen from time to time someone is rude to you. The occurrence of rudeness is in direct contradiction to your belief that people ought always to be polite. This causes you to get upset to such an extent that you might even match rudeness with rudeness and therefore escalate the situation.

The solution is to break the vicious circle and, instead of retaining unrealistic beliefs and therefore getting upset whenever they are violated, subject the belief itself to scrutiny and modify it to something more reasonable. This is the key to preventing unwanted feelings. Here, to whet your appetite, are some typical unrealistic beliefs and, beside each, a more realistic version: