Time to update your beliefs
I have been writing articles for five years.
One of the themes I consistently write about isthe way you see your world.
The beliefs you hold are what cause you to see the world the way you do.
Beliefs are what cause you to show up in the world the way you do.
Beliefs shape how you approach others, how you see possibility, and how you approach a problem.
They can even explain why you may have the skills and qualifications needed for a job, but know in your gut that it won’t be a fit.
A new book by Nir Eyal, Beyond Belief, references the science behind beliefs.
One fascinating point Eyal makes is that every second, the brain is taking in 11 million bits of information.
This is happening unconsciously through your five senses.
He makes the comparison that it’s like reading War and Peace twice every second.
However, the brain can only consciously process 50 bits of information.
That’s about one sentence per second.
Your conscious mind is only processing .0000045% of the information coming into it.
Your brain is using a process called predictive processing.
This means your brain doesn’t see reality as it is.
It creates a simulation of reality.
It’s constantly one step ahead based on what it thinks is going to happen.
And it forms those predictions based on what happened in the past, or your “priors.”
Your prior beliefs, prior understanding, and prior experiences.
Eyal says your brain is creating a simulation of reality filtered by beliefs.
He illustrates that your beliefs and prior experience shape your sense of reality with the Coffer illusion.
Dependening on where in the world you were born, either an industrialized country or pre--industrialized country, you see different shapes.
If you clicked on the link, you likely saw rectangles.
But apparently, if you were born in Namibia, you see circles.
This is because your prior experience primes your brain to see the image a certain way.
We are conditioned to seeing straight lines in architecture, whereas others in more natural environments see more circles.
Photo by Jeffry Surianto on Pexels
In a coaching conversation, I help my clients examine the beliefs they had never even articulated before.
Because they’re invisible, they’re hard to name.
But I draw out their beliefs so they can examine, “is this belief serving me?”
The thing about beliefs is that you can change them.
And when you change the way you see your world, your entire world changes.
What beliefs are keeping you stuck?
And what beliefs do you need to choose in order to create the life you want?
Love,
Audrey
