Our beliefs start to develop from a very young age and are informed by the behaviours of those around us. Throughout our lives, our beliefs may evolve and develop, but unless there is a significant monumental moment in our lives, we are unlikely to drastically change our beliefs from those that we developed as a child. That is unless we, as individuals, take time to understand and challenge our own beliefs internally.
A chip off the old block!
This phrase is not uncommon in conversations between parents and children or indeed between other close family and friends when comparing a parent and child. The phrase suggests that many of us have the thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours of those we share genetic DNA with. Particularly those with whom we have the closest connection to our parents.
This can make it seem like we are destined to forever repeat the behaviours of our parents and in turn, repeat their mistakes. For surely all parents have made some mistakes at one time or another. However, we are much more than that. To truly understand how we can control, challenge and change our beliefs, we need to first understand how our beliefs develop.
How do children start to develop beliefs?
The first 7 years of our lives are called the imprint years. This is the time when children are most receptive to information from their surroundings. During this time, children are like sponges: learning from all they see around them and by copying the behaviours of those they interact with.
Critical faculty is the ability to critically assess information to decide if the information is true or false and to understand why the information might be biased or misleading. This is a skill that is often taught in secondary schools as part of developing debating skills or critical analysis for academic application. But we all develop the skill to an extent naturally after the age of around 7.
Before the age of 7 and while we are in the imprint years, we have very little, if any, critical faculty. This means we accept things we see, hear and feel to be true. We accept what our parents and peers tell us to be the truth. This means we develop beliefs easily and quickly during this phase of our lives.
However, as we move beyond the imprint years we start to challenge and question the world around us as we begin to develop critical faculty. Some early beliefs are quickly proven untrue and are disregarded with relative ease, such as the tooth fairy or Santa.
But most of our beliefs are retained; around 80% of the beliefs we develop in the imprint years are retained into adulthood.
How do our beliefs impact our adult lives?
The beliefs that we build our world view on will have both positive and negative connotations. There will be some beliefs that help us to thrive and progress while other beliefs may cause us to retreat or limit us in some way. Our positive beliefs are those that motivate us and drive us towards our goals, whereas our negative beliefs are those that limit our success and hold us back, or in the case of more significant negative beliefs, can lead to doubt or self-sabotage.
Many of the beliefs we retain from our imprint years are so ingrained into our psyche that we are barely aware of them as quantifiable or, conscious beliefs. This can make it difficult to pinpoint what our beliefs are and how they are impacting our decision-making processes or behaviours.
But we don’t have to continue to accept the beliefs we have been given by those around us. We do not have to live our lives through the inherited beliefs of others. Our beliefs are not in our DNA. We can, if we choose, change them anytime we wish.
How can we change our beliefs?
Initially, we need to identify the thoughts we wish to change, even if we are not fully clear on the belief that is causing these thoughts. We can change our perception of the world and our own lived reality by choosing to change our thoughts and focusing on what we want to achieve. Let’s consider beliefs around money. Beliefs around money can be complex and are often significantly influenced by your imprint years based on the behaviours you saw your close family and friends taking around money.
If you have a belief that you have to work hard for money or that people like you will never be financially abundant, then you are focusing on what you don’t want or have. This means you are focusing on avoidance of loss rather than focusing on potential growth or progression. Whilst focusing on what you do not want to happen, you will not see what you do have and the opportunities in front of you will not be so apparent.
We want to reduce the impact of beliefs that have negative implications for our success. To do this, we need to understand where the belief came from and how we can change or challenge that belief moving forward.
If you have a belief that is holding you back, write it down as clearly as you can. Then identify where it came from with as much self-awareness as possible. Then decide what you want instead and consider how the belief could be rewritten in a more positive setting.
Once you have worked this out, rewrite the belief in the positive sense and accept that as your new reality. For example, in the case of the money belief we described above, “I never have enough money” – where did you hear that as a child? Now write what you want to be true, for example, “I always find ways to have what I want” or “I am grateful for all the things I have in my life”. By reframing the belief into positive statements, your mind will now start to look for the positive and in doing so you will start to see opportunities you hadn’t seen before.