Beliefs are defined as either “trust or confidence in someone or something” or “an acceptance that something is true or that something exists” (web dictionary). The easiest of the definitions is in believeing that something exists. Religion falls into this segmentation. It’s very hard to argue against God and faith (and that’s OK).
Beliefs seem to be both innocent and good to have. It’s good to have trust or confidence in someone. It is also good to accept the fact that some things are true. It makes life simpler.
There is a difficulty to beliefs in that they can feel so good yet be so inaccurate to the point that they lead us to bad decisions and outcomes. Beliefs are very hard to judge objectively when we own them.
We may not know enough about a person to determine if they can be trusted. We may have not seen them enough with trusted information to see what they do with it. Do they easily tell others? We never know if they do until later.
Even harder is what if our belief that something is true is wrong? How do we find out that we are wrong? This never occurs unless we have new/different information. Information that initially makes us uncomfortable. We must actively question ourselves instead of blindly saying that what is being presented is wrong.
This is very hard to do. Especially with our ego wanting us to feel good about ourselves all of the time. Trying to protect us from feeling bad or hurt. Our ego essentially blinds us, many times, to the reality that we desperately need to see in order to be more effective and make better decisions.
Our beliefs, as you see, can make our lives messy. Because a lot of our actions and words come from the deep part of our soul that embraces our beliefs. And as we now see, they are not always perfect nor right nor true.
Becoming aware of our beliefs potential for being imperfect is a huge first step to becoming more curious in your life about things that we normally take for granted. This can then lead to a deeper self-awareness of who we are, as we begin to understand the gaps in our thinking that keep us from becoming the person we would like to be.