Our beliefs have an undeniably deep association with our likes and dislikes, preferences, emotions, desires, ambition, contentment, fear, curiosity, style, and interests. In short, we rarely believe what conflicts with too much in that list. Of course, we can and sometimes do, but it isn't easy.
Our feelings, preferences, and desires come from our biological wiring, then from our environment through exposure, external feedback patterns, models we watch, and the amount and type of stimulus we experience.
Our beliefs are different because our feelings are different because our inputs are different. We couldn't control most of the inputs we received during the heaviest "belief-forming" portion of our lives (birth to 18) and had almost no ability to filter and decide accurate from inaccurate, effective from ineffective beliefs.
That means our beliefs are buried under nearly two decades of factors that we mostly didn't decide but are now part of us.
So when we experience things that look and feel like the beliefs we grew up understanding, it feels normal, familiar, comfortable, and predictable, even when we can't name or identify many of those foundational beliefs.
As we age, our early absorbed beliefs shape our worldviews beyond ourselves and our immediate environment, even though we didn't choose those beliefs or screen them for accuracy and value. Years of experiences, emotions, rewards, and punishments hold those early beliefs in place like bricks stacked on your foundation.
We may not have chosen the early beliefs we were exposed to or laid all the bricks of our life experiences, but we are nonetheless responsible for what we do with all of it now.
The time is now. Do the work.
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