The Hardest Things we'll do
It’s hard to walk away, to give up on people, communities, ideas that once held us together. It’s so difficult to take out an old belief and hold it in your hands, twisting and turning so that it can be seen from all sides. That’s what we do when we have conflicting information, or at least it’s what we’re supposed to do.
The rational culture that we say we belong to seems far off and far away. We say we like logic, people who think, facts, but what we really like are beliefs.
Beliefs are the risks we take when we interpret an experience and try to find meaning in it. We do this all the time as we filter information and experiences through our brains. Most of the time we’re sifting through things for confirmation (confirmation bias is the official name for this, it means we only trust information that matches our own beliefs, schemas, or ideas).
The thing is, we’re really not even sifting, that would take too much time. The more likely truth is we’re sorting based on our beliefs, and the shortcuts those beliefs tell us about the world around us. And, the hardest thing to do is change a belief.
Generally speaking, the main ways a belief changes is a significant life experience or a helluva lot of practice. Otherwise, they stick around and pop up at inopportune times.
The brain is a belief making machine. Well, that, and a shortcut maker. It’s labor intensive to be thoughtful all the time and beliefs help us take shortcuts throughout our days. Our bodies can’t take all the thinking we’d like to do (too energy intensive).
Instead the brain takes risks. It makes connections that aren’t always helpful. Have a bad experience with a dog, then all dogs suddenly become bad (until we have enough alternative experiences to change the shortcut and/or belief). No matter how much an owner tells us that the dog is harmless, we’re wary until we have enough experiences to change the belief about dogs.
Have trauma in church, church becomes bad, or at least religion becomes bad. Sometimes we can limit it to a particular place and time. Most of the time we generalize because we don’t want to spend the time nuancing our approach. It’s much easier to just believe it’s all bad and want to burn it down rather than take a complex approach to a situation. (this is not a call to return to church)
Really, it’s only when we’re at our best that we can deliberate (take a look at last weeks story for me trying to do this). And, how often are we truly at our best?
So, what can we do?
First, we can give ourselves a break when old beliefs surface. They’re a part of who we are, until we’re ready to be something different. Sometimes we convince ourselves we’re ready before the critical moments of change happen. This can be frustrating, so give yourself a break.
I used to have this habit of referring to myself by my last name when I screwed something up. Normally, this was “in my head” talk, but one time I blurted it out and a friend called me out on it. He actually laughed and wondered why I did that. I couldn’t explain, it was how I utilized self-talk to reprimand a faulty action. I still call myself out way too much when I screw up, but I’m a little better about how I personalize the self-talk and a little more constructive in my feedback loop.
Also, facts change beliefs slowly, emotions change them quickly. Emotional experiences carve our beliefs in stone, generally it takes time to wear down these carvings. Emotions also shatter the stone of our beliefs. It’s okay to feel things strongly, emotions help us sort through experiences to figure out which ones are worth sifting later. I talked a bit about the three things emotions do to beliefs last week, you can look there for more information.
Finally, we can get curious. This is about our current, past, and potential beliefs. Take a moment and write down something you believe or believed. Then spend some time chewing on it. Share it with someone you trust and have a conversation about it. Get their impression of how that belief fits their understanding of you. Sometimes, it’s relationships that provide the emotional catalyst for change in our lives.