How do we form our beliefs

Dr. Purushothaman
October 9, 2013

How do we form our beliefs? Most people do not understand the power of our beliefs in daily life. That’s why some people change their beliefs as often as they feel they need to. In this way, they quickly become hypocrites without any face of their own. This very often happens in regimes when people want to find favor in the eyes of the ruling dictatorship regime. They can blackmail other people in order to please people who are in power. However, this very often happens in an average person's life as well. We often do not know what we believe, or why we believe the things we believe, to say nothing of how our beliefs are formed. In the article I want to mention a few points on how we form our beliefs and how we can change them.

The very basic principle of how belief formation starts is simply by listening to some information and accepting it. It is very simple. All our lives are either built on trust or mistrust. Either we believe what we hear or we don’t. What does it depend on? Firstly, it depends on the fact whether we want to believe it or not. Secondly, it depends on the fact how convincing the information that we hear sounds. If it does not sound convincing we will probably not believe it. However, if it sounds convincing, we will probably believe it.

Mass media plays a very important part in belief formation. Very often it plays a negative role as it fills our minds with information and images of terror, crime, scandals, and the like. We have to be very careful when we read newspapers, watch television and expose ourselves to other sources of mass media. You have to protect yourself from all the negativity that tries to flood your mind because if you are not careful it will quickly form a belief in you and your belief will later control your life, behavior, and choices.

How do we change our beliefs? What if we have formed some beliefs which are causing us a lot of damage? No problem, we can change them. We need to work on our attitude. It basically deals with working with our thoughts. We try to accept only positive thoughts in our minds and dwell on them. That involves a lot of work watching what kind of thoughts come and stay in our minds and many more things.

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