You are what you believe in!

All of us at some point in our lives are faced by failures, rejections and some unexpected events that we never planned of. We think of those instants as ‘the end’ or find them ‘totally unbearable’. In such occurrences, it is not the rejection, the failure or the heartbreak that makes us hopeless and disappointed, the only thing that leaves us unsatisfied is the belief that we hold inside — the belief that we are worthless or unwanted and that we are never going to be able to achieve or accomplish anything. We start generalizing that particular moment over our whole life and see ourselves as a ‘failure’ or an ‘idiot’ or an ‘unlucky person’ or a ‘loser’.

Your beliefs are contained by the mindset you own. Carol S. Dweck, a famous psychologist from Stanford University, writes in her book ‘Mindset’ about the power a mindset can hold. She talks about how a simple view that a person holds for oneself can lead one’s life as it defines what a person can become and what one can achieve through the things one values in one’s life. In this book, she also gives the idea of two diverse kinds of mindsets that govern whether a person will be a life-time learner or someone who has a need to prove oneself repeatedly. She called the former mindset as a ‘Growth Mindset’and the latter one as a ‘Fixed Mindset’. Note that having either of the mindsets is different from being an optimist or a pessimist.

But the worst part is that people are not usually conscious of the beliefs they hold. One of the basis of how one of the most effective psychological therapy i.e. the cognitive therapy came into being was because it became necessary to aware people of their beliefs that intermingle with their thought processes and consequently, the interpretation of a situation that happens to them.

For example, sometimes we judge our own selves for our actions. If something is not working the way our mind believed it would, we judge that we are incompetent or ‘this would never work’. Each one of us keep an account of what happens to and around us, what meaning it holds and what should be done. Our mind is constantly interpreting situations to stay on track of all the happenings around us. But some of us associate exaggerated feelings to the interpretations we make out of situations and show them in the form of amplified anxiety, anger and depression.

Cognitive therapy helps people to make their assumptions and interpretations of the situation more reasonable.

So, when, for example, you fail in a relationship or lose a valuable entity or do bad on a test, rather than thinking that ‘I’m stupid’ or ‘I’m worthless’ or ‘I’m incompetent’, yearn for facts. Ask yourself of evidences for and against the interpretations you made from the situations you faced such as ‘How am I doing with my parents? Or my friends?’, ‘I have so many other things in life that are valuable, why this particular entity holds so much importance? Is it even worth it?’ or ‘How about my performance on other subjects?’. By asking such questions you are looking for real evidences in your life, to support the interpretations you made from the situations you faced and hence, will be able to have more realistic and optimistic view of your life.

“Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.” — M K Gandhi

The reason of your unhappiness is your false belief system.

Hundreds of psychologists and researchers have looked for reasons of happiness through their research and all of them at some point have universally agreed upon the fact that happiness lies in self-awareness and that it comes from a person’s internal world of beliefs and thoughts. In order to live a life that is fulfilling and to reach Maslow’s self-actualization stage which is a desire to be everything and anything one can possibly become, a stage where there is a realization of peak experiences, self-fulfillment, personal growth and personal potential, follow three simple steps:

1. Observe your beliefs and record your thoughts: Work on your point of view regarding whatever happens to you. Observe how negative or positive you think when you face a failure, a rejection and a set-back.

2. Recover your will-power: This step commemorates the consequences of reactions and focusing on our will power to refrain from them. Sitting back, reflecting and thinking over a negative incident is the best example of utilizing one’s will-power for a good purpose.

3. Change your beliefs: Deconstructing and dismantling a false self-belief will alleviate any negative emotional reaction to a situation such as fear, rejection or sadness. Changing a false belief into a realistic one will create happiness in our relationships and our lives.

“Endless possibilities exist just beyond our belief systems”

A man has power to do the impossible. The thought that you are incompetent or that you do not have a power of doing a certain task is a false belief that you hold within yourself. Your false beliefs are like barriers that hold us within our comfort zones and never let us step out and think outside the box. God has created us with a power of thinking and changing ourselves unlike animals, the reason why we differ from animals lies in our brains in the form of our belief systems, our thoughts that define our actions and consequently our destiny.

Allah in the Quran says:

“And surely we have honoured the children of Adam, and carried them on the land and at the sea, and provided them with good things, and we have made them to excel by an appropriate excellence over many of those we created.” (17:70)

Hence, we hold in our hands a world of possibilities and potentials. Hopelessness, rejection, sadness, fear or incompetence is just a feeling, a yield product of a belief system. Once we work out our belief systems like we take care of our physical bodies, you will see happiness will come without any effort.