Belief in the Making

Bryan Carmichael
Dec 20, 2020
5 min read

Updated: Dec 22, 2020

Note: This is the third article of a new series I'm writing titled In the Making. If you enjoyed this article be sure to check out the previous two articles and stay tuned for all future articles.

Introduction

The power of belief. What a mysterious and somewhat mesmerizing subject. It allows people to do extraordinary things, to fight for everything and nothing. Extremist believers can sometimes go down the paths where their beliefs overpower them and possess them so that it becomes their entire lives, where everybody else is wrong and that this is the only way of life worth living. Enter nationalists, ideologists and the reckless religious.

However, belief can also come in the form of believing in oneself, self-discovery and powering through hardship. This mentally beneficial belief boosts and uplifts the moral of one’s personality rather than one’s desire to believe in elaborate stories. Without further ado, here is a deeper look into developing belief, in all its aspects.

What are the Benefits of Believing?

Contrary to popular thought, there are actually many benefits to believing. While there are some bad parts about believing in it as well, the positives outweigh the negatives by a considerable amount.

Firstly, self-belief allows for a more open mind, as well as relaxes negative emotions and provides a more optimistic view on life. Acknowledging that self-believing can lead to naïveness and in some cases lack of preparation for failure, but as a wise man once said,

“Worrying about your issues means you suffer twice if it happens, once if it doesn’t. Whereas believing in your issues means you suffer once if it happens, none if it doesn’t.”

Secondly, believing in religion allows for a false positive community to listen and empathise with your problems. It creates a placebo effect influencing the mind over matter - in other words, the more you believe in your religion, the more real it is to you. This is good in the sense that the more you believe in your ideology or religion, the more you can rely on it giving the feeling of security, which the more you believe in, the more real it is to you.

The flipside of this is obviously when you have conflicts based on your beliefs with other parties, but remembering that this is all a personal placebo effect, it isn’t a matter of right and wrong, but more a matter of regulation and control. In this type of situation, nobody is right and nobody is wrong. Everybody has a slightly different perception of their beliefs and they shouldn’t be ridiculed for it, they should be embraced for it. It is our differences that make us stronger, and our society shouldn’t be defined on what variant of the story we choose to believe in. Therefore, the winners of religion are those who are able to keep their religious egos and committed views open to the fact that they are the only ones who think like that to that degree, and as such, make peace with others and civilly compare their views to one another.

Foundations for Self-Belief

Self-belief is a very important aspect of personal success and achievement. Let’s talk about how to achieve it.

Firstly, we must reduce the negative thoughts. Think about the flipside of the coin to every negative idea.

For example:

“This food tastes gross.” turns to “Now I know not to order this next time.”
“I failed, my life is over.” turns to “I failed, how can I improve for next time?”
“My life sucks.” turns to “What are the good aspects of my life and how can I increase them?"

This positive mindset already allows the mind to operate in a state of flow, it will operate smoother and more efficiently this way.

Secondly, we need to assume that every obstacle just makes the victory sweeter. The harder we work for something, the more we enjoy/grieve the outcome (depending on if it’s successful or not), and since every obstacle requires more effort to be given, the more obstacles we overcome, the happier we should be (ideally). Bringing this back to belief, if we believe from the start that we can overcome anything, the likelihood of success is much greater due to the placebo effect this belief provides. Mind over matter is real.

This is applicable to everything from careers and projects to relationships and disputes. If at the start of a project, you believe that you have what it takes to do a good job and present the best results, even if you know nothing about the project, you’re bound to do miles better than if you hadn’t believed in yourself. This is backed up by the amount of success stories and breakthroughs that are caused by self-belief. Stories such as the founding of Nike, the breakthrough of Walt Disney and the story of the first Jamaican bobsled team all prove that belief can take you just that little step further than without.

Finally, every idea is an opportunity. I’ve used this before in previous writing but these words are truly empowering:

“If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.”

Stan Lee

The meaning behind those words is not hard to decipher at all, it’s simply that if you can allow someone to talk you out of your idea, then you don’t believe that it’ll succeed enough for you to keep going with it. One person’s words shouldn’t bring your idea down, not even a group of people’s words should, because no idea is perfect, there will always be a hole somewhere.

However, if we spent all of our time fixing every hole in every idea, then nothing would exist today. Our community is based on a system of flaws, and if we nitpick at the technicalities of it, then our society falls apart.

Religious Belief and its Concepts

This is arguably the more self-explanatory belief. There’s a story, an entire culture sprang out of that story, you believe the story was true. Simple. What’s tricky is convincing yourself to believe in the story, especially if there are a few plot holes. You might be thinking at this point, why would I want to believe in something that I know isn’t true? It makes no factual sense, the story is dodgy and most of it is useless filler? I have one answer: because you can. Believing in the story brings a sense of fantasy to your life, as well as security and comfort, as mentioned above. If you need more justification, read the above again. Now, how to believe in religion.

How do you convince yourself to believe in a certain religion, or switch from one religion to another? Depending on how in control you are of your mind, you could just will yourself to believe in it, that this is the new way and that your past is semi-irrelevant.

If you aren’t able to do that, the next option is to immerse yourself in the religion. Get personally involved with the religion, whether that’s helping out in the community or attending religious sessions until you become comfortable with the religion.

The final option I can offer is by external influence. Surround yourself with other people that believe in the religion you are trying to believe in. Their influence and passion for the religion will quickly rub off on you, and you more easily begin to believe in the religion.

Conclusion

The power of belief. What it can do to an individual. Absorb them, drive them, empower them, destroy them, the list goes on and on. I guess the only thing left to address is where that leaves you and me as individuals; and all I have to say is that I believe what I believe and you believe what you believe. The one thing to takeaway from this is how this belief should and will empower you to do better and be better as an individual in society. I leave you with the empowering quote of Stan Lee once again: