How Do Beliefs Affect Our Levels of Confidence?

Em, quite a lot, loads.

In fact, our beliefs just about shape us, they determine who we (think) we are, our behaviours, actions and results.

Let’s dive in, oh this is a longer post than usual, so get a cuppa of your favourite brew, I’ll hang on, I’ve already got mine.

Righty-o…

How much thought have you given recently to your beliefs? No, I don’t mean in the ‘navel gazing’ way!

Let me say this, your beliefs will either work for you or against you.

Nope ‘gonna say it twice it’s that important…your beliefs will either work for you or against you.

Quick clarification, so we’re on the same path, ‘beliefs are your truths, you’re convictions, you’re opinions on the way things are’.

Beliefs: Where do they come from?

Most of your beliefs are pretty well formed before you even think of yourself as independent little individuals, and they are handed down to you by your parents/carers, peers, teachers, society, media, basically anything or anyone one you experience in those first years alive.

And because we don’t know any different, we pretty much are like big sponges, we soak up everything in the world around us, and because we’re too young to evaluate the information (question it), we accept that the people around us (the people we trust, listen to, and look up to) aren’t BS us, and what they’re saying is right.

We soon learn that they are so very wrong, queue counselling and therapy!

Beliefs aren’t fixed, they can be changed.

When you adopt a belief as your own or personal ‘truth’, you unconsciously add further evidence to support the belief.

When your beliefs are challenged, or when someone questions your ‘truth’, your perceptions and interpretation of the world, you will defend the belief or you may begin to validate if the belief was right after all.

Beliefs become stronger (or wired) when you continually ‘search’ for and find evidence to support them, and even more so when you attach a feeling or emotional response to it.

Now, this is where it can become a little woowoo, but take a sip and read the following scenario and think about your life, and see if you can see how it fits for you.

A relationship example

Lets say for example, you’re in a relationship, you’re head over heels in love and dottyment of a fellow human being, and it doesn’t work out.

You get hurt. Stung. Dumped. Looked over. Passed up for another model. Painful, huh?

(*sigh*, back in a minute, away for a tissue)

Back, sorry!

And because of the intensity of that experience, you may think about it, a lot, a heck of a lot.

You go through the grieving process (all endings have a grieving period) and as you do (to make you feel better) you start to question all the good and bad of the relationship.

You attach emotions to all the events that happened within it. And it may have been a perfectly healthy, happy, exciting relationship, it just wasn’t going to be long term. But you’re hurting remember and you’ll be sure to protect yourself.

You then talk to your friends and say ‘they did this and that’ and ‘they were horrible when’, they made me feel………..’ fill in the blank.

Beliefs Can Be Distorted

 

You keep going until not only have you distorted the truth about what the relationships, but you have also created enough momentum and belief evidence that ‘never again, all men/women are like that’.

Phew! That is what we call…drum roll… a sweeping generalisation.

Now, do this same process in other areas of your life you’ve basically got a workable little recipe to disaster.

Okay, some generalisations of the world around us are useful.

You enter a dark room and go to switch on the light.  You are pretty confident that it will go on. Why? Because you have experienced it so many times before and it has almost worked every time.  Apart from blown bulbs and power cuts. If we walk in front of a bus, we’ll get knocked over, see some beliefs are useful!

However, the problems start when you make generalisations about all areas of your life.  These generalisations when adopted by you as the ‘truth’ become your beliefs.

Now, some of these beliefs can be so limiting they put a ceiling on what you can possibly achieve, including your confidence levels, success, goals and potential.

Let’s Take a Confidence Building Example

So, let’s say the end result you’re seeking is ‘confidence to be in any group’.

Let’s assume an event happened when you were little.

While at school one day ‘you froze’ when your teacher asked you a question.  The room went quiet, you blushed, everyone looked at you. You shuffled your books, lost eye contact with the teacher; they proceeded to tut and sigh.  What seemed like hours passed and then they hit you with the verbal ‘you SHOULD know this’. Which left you feeling horrible, stupid, useless, embarrassed in front of your peers. Snigger, snigger, snigger.

With work you can trace the route of a belief that is damaging to you

It got worse, you felt your breathing change, sweating, lost your memory, you physically were experiencing panic.

You had nowhere to go, run or hide.

You squeaked out a teeny ‘I don’t know’.

Then came a verbal belittling showdown from your sadist…oops I meant to say teacher.  The emotional pain associated with that event, you decide never to talk in class again!

You remember today that event in such detail because you attached such strong emotion to it…fear, shame, embarrassment and fright.

Bam! You had one event (a horrible one), attached painful emotion to it, that your belief is ‘I’m not confident in groups’.

One event can create a belief, is it enough evidence, however?

Years later you think ‘I must do something about this’.  You hate speaking in groups, are shy in new company, get frightened when you have to make small talk. So you sign up for a class on ‘confidence’. (Oh, if it was with me, the following wouldn’t happen, I’d have asked you what you feared most. *Rubbing halo*)

On day one (remember you have done no work on changing the belief yet) and from that one event in the classroom years ago, you automatically are searching for more confirmation that groups and classrooms are ‘not for you’, even though you want to end the misery.

More chance you’ll feel what you felt than remember the event

The tutor asks you a question and instantly all the feelings, not the event from school, are back with you, you are back in the moment, experiencing what you felt all those years ago.

The tutor has no idea how you’re feeling or what happened in the past. Yet that one question is enough for you to add to your belief ‘all teachers are the same’, ‘teachers make you feel ashamed’ and they ‘put you on the spot’.

Here you are, in a group as an adult, yet you still hold the same feelings you had that day in class 2B!

Now, that’s two events that have happened, you get where I am going with this don’t you?

You decide that you are not strong enough or that you are confident to be in a group, that your belief was right.

The result, you create a stronger belief that groups are awful places to be and that you will avoid them at all costs, never to be in one again!

If we take this a bit further let’s think about where groups exist: we have teams, meetings, employment, social places, people that share the same hobbies.  This list is never ending.  The problem with this scenario is, if the feelings are so strong, you will apply the generalisations everywhere where groups exist and the beliefs will start to grow and limit you in all areas of your life.

In the What is Confidence post, I asked you ‘where in your life are you not confident’.

Ask yourself: what events in my life led me to believe this so called ‘truth’, where is my evidence, do I have enough evidence, is the belief I hold 100% the truth. As certain as I breathe?

Photo Credit (thank you) Jonny Goldstein Public Speaking Image