Everybody operates from a belief system. It is what makes as alive and pushes us forward. Our daily choices are all due to our belief system. It is the reason one acts either deliberately or unintentionally. Belief system is explained in the Collins Dictionary as.”A person’s or society’s belief system is the set of ideas they hold about what is right and wrong and what is true and false”.
Seeing society as essentially free is intriguing. Some of the population serves time behind bars for legal infractions. There are also those who live in political systems that disregard their people’s freedom. Still, the great majority of people on the earth lead rather free lives.
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They are free to choose their place of residence, job, and spouse as well as their career path. Most civilisations let their people to travel unhindered and freely. As long as one follows the law, a person has a great degree of personal choice in behaviour.
The physical liberties that governments grant are those which all of their law-abiding citizens enjoy. Still, many work in an environment akin to a prison regardless of their assignments. The material plane is not where this prison exists. It is rather a development of the mind instead. It is produced out of a personal belief system. These ideas start to become people’s jailers.
Most will let you know they are capable of independent thought. It is an overwhelming reaction to the contrary when one suggests that they are unable of generating their own ideas. All their intelligence, experiences, and success lends a sense of independence. They wrongly think that their belief systems are created by them. For them sadly, it is not.
Developing the life you want starts with developing a belief system fit for you. Against popular belief, the influences around us shape our beliefs systems. Teachers, parents, friends, colleagues, and organisations all contribute to the values we follow. Have you ever noticed how often children’s opinions match those of their parents? Because they fairly reflect the attitude of the adults, political organisations poll schoolchildren during Presidential elections quite often.
Masters in forming the belief system of their people are the governments of the world. Propaganda helps public opinion to be changed depending on the needs of those in charge. Many times, this is carried out under the cover of nationalism. One establishes a group of people as a threat to the civilisation. Events are shown to support this point of view and generate the emotional contempt for that group. Thus, the government is free to act as it see fit with complete support of its people. Sadly, most people lack firsthand knowledge to create a strong ending. Of course, they will defend their conviction even though their source is not clear-cut.
For the sake of control, people and companies often shape others’s opinions. One example is the government. Certain religions have behaved in this kind historically. To subjugate the masses, they employed threat of an enraged Deity and perpetual damnation. The Church of England was the most potent institution in Europe on many times. Maintaining influence is much easier when one has under control a following. Obviously, there are plenty of denominations where this isn’t the case. Likewise are the many people whose life is improved by their religious affiliation. Sadly, this is not true in every case.
A belief system’s secret is developing one that fits you. An adult has the freedom to believe anything you want. Spending time challenging where some of your ideas originated is good. Finding whether they still apply to you is also quite important. They are valuable if they help you into being joyful, contented, and free. Still, maybe it’s time to rethink them if they cause suffering.
Ironically, the people who love us the most seem to be the ones whose ideas lead to the most disturbance in their life. The effects of their parents lead many people to suffer with psychological problems. Our background shapes everything including low self-esteem, abandonment, and sexual problems. Usually, someone experiencing any one of these felt ashamed and guilty. Their value became clear from their performance, which never was sufficient. Errors were not pardonable; rather, they were weapons used to exacerbate the other’s misery. One was acting in control by doing all this.
Twenty years forward and you discover that someone raised in this environment often still carries these ideas. The person still hears the words of the parent even though recent events will show the opposite. It influences contacts with friends, lovers, colleagues, and oneself. Usually lacking some assistance, the person is unable of appropriate social interaction. Every action one does carries some degree of illness. So the person looks to other things—drugs, alcohol, sex, food—to cover that void that exists. On the other hand, the person might be prone to change the belief system if it was considered as crazy. Just changing some of the fundamental ideas one holds about oneself transforms life.
Our chances of gaining freedom are higher the more we can accept that what we believe came from other sources. Many things that others growing up taught us would be quite helpful now. This is particularly true in case we grew up in a loving family. Still, given society’s egocentric nature, there is much that gets in our path of happiness. Examining our belief system helps us to understand our motivating factor. A system full of anxiety will cause one to act out of that anxiety quite frequently. Indeed, the reverse is also true. Creating ‘our’ life starts with developing ‘our’ own belief system.
