Habits and Belief
[Chapter — 3 : (Belief and Environment)]
In previous chapter we understood the meaning of belief. we faced an argument that belief comes of environment. Before that, we had aquatinted ourselves with the idea that feedback loop of habit is actually kicked off by cue that is, indeed a product of environment. And another argument we have raised that if belief comes from environment, then we should simply change our environment instead of our beliefs, as beliefs would automatically be changed with environment. These arguments seems true in the first place but in broader prospective they may not be always true. Let’s handle them one by one.
Argument — 1 : Belief comes from environment.
No doubt, belief actually comes from environment in which one lives.
- An American — who lives in the country, entire economy of which, is based on the concept of capitalism, would always believe in principles like Capital Accumulation and competitive market.
- For a color blind person, his belief about colors depends on what he sees. What color he see, he would believe it.
- A man born in Jain family may develop belief in vegetarianism, simply because his religion prohibits from consuming meat.
- “If you are in companionship with the people who are dieting, there are higher chances of you also develop belief in dieting and start avoiding over-eating.”, a study says.
- If your father is religious, there are very little chances of you be an atheist in future.
All the above examples shows that environment plays an important role in building one’s belief in something. Positive environment leads to positive beliefs and negative environment leads to negative beliefs. But connection between belief and environment is reversible. If You live in a positive environment, you build a positive belief and if your belief is positive then you make the environment positive or vice versa . This reminds me of a famous dialogue from a movie named ‘KGF- Kollar Gold Field’, that is:
“History tells us that powerful people come from powerful places and Powerful people make places powerful.”
It is also true that ‘what you believe in’ also set forth ‘what you will do’, ‘where you will live’ and ‘how you will do’ in future. Link in belief and environment is a two way road. Like, if you believe that you are confident, you would make through any interview no matter how tough it is. The key is belief in your confidence. This interview will decide your career, status and success, making through it will lead you to all these positive things. These positive things will develop some more confidence in you to achieve something more in life. What you simply did is “You believed in positive thing and that positive belief led you towards the positive environments and again these positive things led you towards positive belief. Suffice it say, belief to environment is two way road and it can be used both way to change our habits and action.
Now let’s move to the second argument that we raised in the last chapter.
Argument — 2 : What is the need of altering the belief, in order to altering the habit, if we can simply alter the environment.
We acquaint ourselves with the idea that link between belief and environment is like a two way road. In mathematical terms the idea can be represented in the function of belief {f(B )} and function of environment{f(E)};
f(B) ∝ f(E)
It is true that altering the environment can alter our habits (or in general, Actions). But what if this does not work or you are not in the position of altering your environment? For example, if a girl is born in a very poor family and neither of her parents had been to school. They are anxious about her future. They want to provide best education facility to their daughter so that she don’t have to face those problems that they had faced being illiterates. Their condition does not support the idea of just altering the environment. What they can do is develop a positive belief. By doing this they will attract the positive things that they want. ‘The Law Of Attraction’ will begin doing its work. A simple shift in their belief will provide the positive attitude to work for the thing they want.
The two way nature of the link in environment can be advantageous for us and we can use it in the benefit of use. This nature of belief and environment gives us 3 means to modify our actions-
- By altering both belief and environment.
- By altering environment.
- By altering belief.
On the degree of effectiveness, the most effective method will be the first one, followed by second one and the least effective will be the last one.
When the former two method is not applicable for you for any reason, the 3rd one is always there for you. Change your belief or build new belief. But changing or building belief will not be as easy as it sounds.
- “How do we build any belief?”
- “How to use the built-belief in order to make new habits?”
- “How to use the built-belief in order to renunciate old bad habits”
Such questions may arise. They will be answered in the upcoming chapters.
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