Life Hacks

Here’s How I Manage My Beliefs.

Unless we understand, challenge, and methodically change our (deeply held) beliefs, they may adversely affect our health and well-being.

Belief management is an essential life skill.

Belief management is a less-spoken yet high-impact skill. Based on my personal and professional experience, I structured this article under three sections to make it helpful. First, I define and highlight the importance of beliefs in our lives.

Then, I discuss the implications of faulty beliefs for our health and well-being. Finally, I summarize my approach to belief management ending with five takeaways points.

One of the best knowledge and skill for my personal growth, health, and happiness was learning about cognitive distortions at an early age and finding practical solutions to deal with them quickly and effectively. When dealing with cognitive distortions, I learned about managing my beliefs.

Cognitive distortions are inaccurate and irrational thoughts and beliefs. They can interfere with our perception of reality and influence our emotions, judgments, and behaviors.

These beliefs come from our unconscious mind, coded as emotional memories. With strengthened neural pathways in our brains, these memories can evolve into habits and become unrecognizable. Therefore, it can be challenging to change them.

This story reflects my experience and perspectives about beliefs. My points might resonate with some readers and might not with others, as beliefs are accepted or rejected without evidence.

Some people are addicted to their beliefs. I used to be one of them. But I have no problem changing my beliefs anymore.

My goal is not to say my perspectives are correct or my method applies to everyone. Instead, I share my belief management experience that might be useful to some to look at beliefs from a different angle and proactively manage them. Learning from the experiences of others can be valuable.

Some beliefs helped me a lot, but some caused grief. For example, I had severe health issues until I challenged and changed my beliefs about weight loss, muscle gain, stress, inflammation, and sleep. Therefore, I made belief management a vital life hack for my survival and thriving.

A high level, asking the powerful question, “how do I know what I believe?” helped me to challenge and change some of my deeply ingrained beliefs even though the process was painful, as I documented in a story related to my early nightmares.

1 — The Importance of Beliefs in Our Lives

Belief is accepting something as accurate without having evidence. It can be based on various factors such as psychological, emotional, social, cultural, spiritual, or religious.

Some beliefs start in childhood and are ingrained in our upbringing, education, and social engagements.

Belief is a useful psychological construct to make sense of the world. However, beliefs might cause severe health and well-being issues if not challenged and managed effectively.

I studied beliefs by examining their impact on cognitive processes affecting our perception, attention, memory, language, and reasoning abilities. So they affect our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors.

Studies indicate that beliefs can create neural activity and strengthen neural connections, becoming habits and affecting our behaviors. Thus, beliefs can be either helpful or harmful depending on how we use and deal with them.

From benefits aspects, beliefs give us a sense of purpose and direction in life. They help us bond with others. They provide us with comfort, security, and perceptual safety. Some beliefs also motivate us and encourage us to take action for our growth.

However, some beliefs can also limit us and make us inflexible. Some beliefs might lead to irrational behaviors, creating intolerance, conflict, and division with erroneous conclusions and misguided actions due to inaccurate information.

Beliefs can be conscious and unconscious. Changing conscious beliefs with revision can be easier based on updated information and our experiences. However, changing deeply ingrained beliefs in our subconscious can be difficult and require significant introspection, analysis, and professional help.

One key point is that sometimes people use belief and opinions interchangeably. However, they are two different concepts. People can change their opinions (views) easier than their beliefs.

A belief is an acceptance or a conviction that something is true or accurate, with no evidence, such as spiritual or religious norms accepted by many collectively.

An opinion is a personal view or judgment about a particular topic. Opinions are subjective to individuals. They can vary among people within the same belief groups or communities.

In the next section, I focus on limiting beliefs that can adversely affect physical and mental health.

2 — Implications of Faulty Beliefs for Our Health and Wellbeing

When I had severe health issues, I thought something was wrong with me genetically and considered myself unlucky. However, when I started investigating the situation, I noticed most of the problems were caused by my beliefs.

The biggest problem was creating convictions from misinformation and accepting them as truth. I documented my experience in a story titled Lessons from 7 Mental Mistakes that Made My Life Miserable.

In summary, I was hungry for information and learned to consume a vast amount of useless information, like drinking from a fire hose. Misinformation, particularly in health and wellness domains, created havoc. I suffered from metabolic syndrome and other conditions.

Misinformation about sugar, cholesterol, the danger of saturated fats, vegetables, and fruits being essential for health, and meat causing cancer are just a few pieces of misinformation I had to unlearn and relearn.

I made substantial progress in my health and fitness journey when I identified faults in these problematic information pieces and relearned them from trusted sources.

Some people still believe that carbohydrates are essential and cholesterol is the cause of heart attacks. Yes, carbs can be helpful as an energy source for some people, but they are not essential for everyone, like proteins and some healthy fats like omega-3 or crucial minerals like sodium and magnesium.

As I explained in a previous article, LDL cholesterol is associated with heart attacks but not their root cause. Elevated cholesterol only becomes an issue after a person’s heart health is compromised by chronic inflammation, plaque building in arteries, and other damage to endothelial cells.

There are many more controversial topics in health and well-being. The problem arises from some people believing certain things and conditions are accurate and others believing they are not.

For example, it is not possible to reach a consensus on the causes of obesity and addiction, the benefits of vaccinations, the risks of genetically modified organisms, the use of animal testing, the necessity of euthanasia for some, the value of gut health, and medication for mental health.

One of the reasons people are so divided is that current scientific studies cannot produce exact results that could convince everyone. Some studies find pros to a topic, and others find cons.

For example, some studies find ketogenic diets healthy and others unhealthy. I respect the efforts and perspectives of scientists looking at the process from different angles and conditions. I intuitively know that keto diets are not for everyone but can be beneficial for some.

For example, I follow a ketogenic diet because it works for me based on my years of experience, intuition, and observations of others. However, if I see a harmful or side effect of my diet, I’d immediately change it and find a better one admitting my mistake. So I don’t see diet as a matter of belief.

Let me briefly share my approach to belief management in the next section to give you a perspective.

3 — My Perspectives and Approach for Dealing with Beliefs Effectively

Dealing with my beliefs in my younger years was difficult as I believed beliefs were real and reflected the truth. This nativity caused me a lot of trouble and disappointment.

Later, when I looked at beliefs scientifically and methodically, I learned to categorize my beliefs as cultural, intellectual, and intuitive. Looking at my beliefs from these categories helps me manage them better.

Some of my beliefs started in my childhood with family influence, interaction with others, and early education. I call them cultural beliefs.

I challenged and changed most of my cultural beliefs as I gained more information after accumulating knowledge and building new skills.

Some beliefs happened through intellectual pursuits such as learning from books, tertiary education, research, and interactions with others. These types of beliefs also change as I learn more and gain new experiences. I keep my curiosity with an open mind and optimism.

The third type of belief comes from my intuition and instincts. I find them most valuable and sustainable for me as they are most helpful. I hardly change intuitive beliefs as little information or body of knowledge about them exists. They come from my nature and consciousness.

I pay attention to the intersection of intuition and intellect as they sometimes conflict. For example, my intuition encourages me to have freedom on a personal topic, but my intellect sees risks for others. So I try to find the balance with further introspection, empathy, and compassion.

One of the areas I used intuition and intellectual jointly is for metabolic health especially losing visceral fat and gaining lean muscles, as I explain the process in an article titled Seven Mistakes to Avoid When Losing Fat.

I challenge my cultural and intellectual beliefs for personal and professional growth. This process helps me overcome my biases, improve my curiosity and understanding, improve decision-making, and enhance my empathy and compassion for others.

When investigating a topic, I look at the issue from diverse perspectives considering multiple viewpoints, whether they resonate with me or not.

Wearing my scientist hat, I start with several hypotheses and create multiple assumptions. However, I constantly challenge my assumptions with newer evidence and update my hypotheses.

When dealing with a controversial topic, I always consider the context. A situation might be right in one context but wrong in another.

In my younger years, I only sought information supporting my existing beliefs. However, later I noticed that it was dangerous as the effort was causing an imbalance and strengthening my faulty beliefs.

Therefore, I changed my biased approach to curiosity to search for contrary ideas to beliefs which gave me new choices.

In my new approach, I look for evidence and reasoning for the pros and cons of my beliefs. I respect and give a chance to alternative and opposing viewpoints, accept the convincing ones, and change my opinions humbly. In short, I am not addicted to my beliefs anymore.

So what do my experience and perspectives mean to you?

I can offer five takeaway points based on decades of experience in challenging and managing my beliefs.

Takeaways

1 — Stay open-minded, consider alternative perspectives, and challenge your beliefs with curiosity and self-compassion.

2 — Seek out information that simultaneously challenges and supports your beliefs, then analyze them critically and intuitively.

3 — Create multiple assumptions about your beliefs, then question each, searching for more evidence for negatives and positives.

4 — When your beliefs become disturbing, accept them and embrace uncertainty with self-reflection and mindfulness.

5 — When you find enough evidence, be willing to discard your old beliefs with mindfulness activities and embrace new ones until you find better beliefs.

I hope this story inspires and motivates you to take ownership of your beliefs. You might also check my story about cognitive distortions.

Here’s How You Can Enjoy Your Life More in Better Zones.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

As a new reader, you might check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of sensible experiments optimizing my hormones and neurotransmitters. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.

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Disclaimer: My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.

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