Faithful followers amaze me, probably because I’m an atheist. Even though I spend years at church, I was still never sold.

It all comes down to blind trust, doesn’t it? My dad’s side of the family are mostly Christians, my uncle is a pastor, they all have a personal relationship with God, who they’ve never seen or heard.

Such conviction should be learned from, believing before seeing. But how do we convince ourselves to believe in something when there’s no evidence? It’s hard.

Our minds have layers on layers, years, and years of conditioning, that giant oak tree can’t be pulled out easily. But then again, if there are people believing in Heaven and hell, angels in the sky, walking on water, then maybe it’s not too crazy to get a little unrealistic.

My goals are delusional, something along the lines of “I’m going to have a best-seller one day” even though I hardly read. I think I’ll do big things one day and it actually isn’t delusional for me anymore because I’ve brainwashed myself quite a bit.

Because I’ve come to realize that, we don’t always need facts to be convinced, sometimes we believe in ridiculous things without any questioning. Why else would people follow governments, cults, leaders, even online gurus, where are the results they promised?

There’s isn’t sufficient data backing up The Big Bang Theory(not the TV show), or most psychology theories. It’s all assumptions based on little to no evidence and a lot of personal opinions. Most of what we know in life hasn’t been proven, we could be living in a field of lies for all we know.

Believing starts with wanting

To believe in something, first, desire it.

There was a study done by Anthony Bastardi, Eric Uhlmann, and Lee Ross published in the June 2011 issue of Psychological Science. Participants in the experiment read studies about both daycare and home care.

People who favored daycare prior to the experiment thought studies that supported daycare were more convincing. People who originally favored home care thought studies that supported home care were more convincing.

It proved this.

Participants interpreted evidence that’s consistent with their desires, people believed what they wanted to believe.

If this’s the case, we can also be more selective about what we believe. While some people tell us our future is bright, others say it’s hopeless, no one knows for sure. It’s really up to us. What do we want? What would we rather believe? Just decide, that’s the first step.

Next step is to validate

Once we know what we want, we can take action to align with it.

We say we will be a millionaire in 5 years, then let’s see some improvements as we progress. Let’s figure out the 5-year plan and execute it, let’s see how far we get after year one. Maybe we get promoted or come up with a great business idea. Maybe the investments are looking good or savings are going up. Whatever trending the million-dollar direction is a step closer, and more importantly, an affirmation of our new belief. The more affirmations, the more embedded in our brain.

Morpheus in The Matrix jumped over a building while Neo questioned himself. It’s no surprise, Neo’s never seen anything like it before, give him a few more tries, and he will be flying. If we see more validations, we will find a way to our vision.

Stay the course

There will be stepbacks along the way, the will be days where we say “who am I kidding?” Most doubts aren’t true, even if there is validity to them, it serves us no purpose to hold on to them. Just let go, the point is to not second-guess.

It’s like driving in thick fog, we can’t see a goddamn thing ahead and we’re scared, but we keep bashing on hoping we’ll be okay. When we sustain this level of courage coupled with our faith, we don’t need the million dollars in our hands to know it’s possible.

We are so convicted in something the truth doesn’t even matter. To me, there are no aliens, if ET stood in front of me right now, I’ll assume it’s a mascot or maybe a robot. I’ll find a way to justify my own belief.

Actual proof may not be as influencing as we think. Maybe all we need is just one little mustard seed of faith in our garden.