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Don't settle for just faith

Porus P. Munshi

Faith, they say, can move mountains. That's fine, but faith by itself can do little more than wait for someone else to come along and move them for you. Without the capability, without actual action, faith (or belief) by itself is a limp fis h.

I often hear people saying that they have faith in themselves, that they will come up somehow, and I wonder if that belief is based on anything. If it is based on prior experiences and capabilities, I believe them. If it is not, I someti mes have reservations.

Beliefs by themselves are never enough. They operate as part of a system. The following figure illustrates this system and it is a modification of Robert Dilts' Unified field of NLP.

Interactive belief system

As the diagram indicates, beliefs lie on the midpoint of this interactive system. Beliefs can be acquired in two ways: one is through experience and the other way is through our values, identities and social interactions.

In the first way, the environment shapes our behaviour. We act in certain ways or develop certain behaviours in response to environmental demands. These behaviours, if persisted in, lead to a certain degree of expertise or capability. This lea ds to a belief in our ability to cope with environmental demands. This further leads to an identity we acquire or project, and this in turn leads to our core actualisation potential; the more clear we are about our identities, the easier it is to achieve actualisation.

In the second method, we pick up beliefs from identities given to us by parents, society, and role models. The expectations of people around us can shape our beliefs as both the Pygmalion effect and the need for placebos in drug research ill ustrates. Further, we also acquire beliefs based on some ideas or convictions we have and that have not been tested.

Beliefs are road maps that shape behaviour. If a person believes that there is a heaven for the virtuous and a hell for sinners, this belief will guide his behaviour. Beliefs don't necessarily have to be rooted in reality; the question of heaven and hell is probably one that will never be answered conclusively. Yet the belief in it can shape an entire life.

Hans Vaihinger, in his book, The philosophy of As If, calls such beliefs fictional finalisms. According to him, we live by fictional ideas that cannot be conclusively tested, but we act as if they were true because they help us to deal effectiv ely with the world. For instance, ``honesty is the best policy'' is a concept. If someone believes it and lives by it, his life is shaped by that belief. If another believes in the survival of the fittest, his behaviour will again be shaped by this belief. Almost all aphorisms are examples of fictional finalisms: ``it's a dog-eat-dog world, kill or be killed, do unto others as you would have them do unto you,'' are all fictions that can become guiding beliefs. We all know peopl e who behave in each of the above ways. They act as if these beliefs were the best way to deal with the world.

Check out what fictions you believe in. Do you believe that it's a dog-eat-dog world? Or that nothing ever turns out right for you? Both these are fictions that shape your behaviour. Fictions have little grounding in reality. One fiction is as good as another. Why not choose more empowering fictions? Or let go of them altogether? It's only neurotics who cannot let go of fictions. Most normal people constantly change fictions as they grow and develop or recognise them for what th ey are, and let go of them.

Beliefs developed in the first manner are often dependable because they are rooted in both reality and experience. But to develop beliefs only through experience would limit us as human beings. A lot of beliefs first have to be conjured f rom airy nothing and then made concrete through taking action (behaviour) and developing capability.

The process of concretising beliefs can sometimes cause problems. Let's say that you believe you'll make a good businessman but have had no direct experience in business -- the belief has no grounding in either behaviour or capability. However, y ou leave your job and start a business following your belief. If the end brings you out all right, everything's okay. Your belief has now been backed by both behaviour and capability. But in many cases, the environment kicks in here, creates difficu lties and causes a block to that ambition of becoming a businessman. Different behaviours are now emitted in order to surmount that block; but if nothing works, no capability develops. This can now affect the belief and it can change to ``I'm no good as a businessman,'' or worse, ``I'm no good, I'm a failure.'' This in turn affects the individual's identity and his core values and convictions.

Beliefs thus can be changed by experiences. That's why it is so important to have initial successes at anything we do. Setting achievable sub-goals can increase the chances of initial successes. No matter how large the overall goal, if it i s broken down into small do-able wins, it reinforces positive beliefs and both creates the behaviour as well as develops the capability required to achieve it.

Further, the beauty of human nature is that any successful experience can change beliefs not directly related to the core experience. For instance, if you believe you can't climb a mountain, but go ahead and do it anyway, not only w ill your belief about mountain-climbing be changed, but also a whole host of other limiting ``I can't'' beliefs. Remember that most ``I can'ts'' are acquired beliefs and are not based on actual experience. They are acquired through the seco nd method and have very little grounding in either prior behaviour or capability. Just as belief in one's business ability can be changed through contact with the environment, in the same way, ``I can't'' beliefs can also be changed. It's ca lled reality testing.

(The author is a Chennai-based HR consultant. He can be reached at porusmun@hotmail.com)