Chapter 6
The Role and Power of Beliefs and Experiences
Every human being carries around with them a remarkably singular package of beliefs and experiences. This makes each one of us remarkably unique. Indeed, no two people are exactly alike—not even identical twins! Consequently, no two persons see the world and respond to life's variety of vicissitudes and opportunities in exactly the same way.
Given this reality, we can postulate the following formula:
Beliefs + Experiences = Actions
B + E = A
To illustrate this formula in action, consider the following example:
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| The desolate Atacama Desert in Northern Chile, South America |
Now... imagine a young person from this rural region who has never seen, or heard lightning, thunder, or rain, but has only learned about such forces of nature from others. Now imagine further that this particular person harbors a belief that a Higher Power punishes human beings for evil acts through natural disasters (e.g. earthquake, tsunamis, tornadoes, typhoons, etc.).
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| The difference RAIN makes! |
The Brazilian cab driver's experiences and beliefs are very different from the beliefs and experiences of the young Chilean. He sees and hears lightning, thunder, and rain all the time and believes that it is just what happens on a regular basis throughout the moist regions of the Amazon. 
It is amazing to contemplate the reality that, with the exception of involuntary reflexes, external stimuli do not cause human behavior. Your behavior (and mine) are extensions of what we believe (and don't believe) and what we have experienced (and haven't experienced).
You Tell on Yourself
Everyone has a measure of willpower—some people extraordinarily so. But willpower alone doesn't provide enough fuel required to take you to the highest levels of Existential Growth; nor is it alone capable of helping you maximize your potential personally or professionally.
Your past experiences also play a significant role in shaping your present and future actions. This is why failure often breeds more failure and success tends to generate more success. It is vital, therefore, that teachers, coaches, mentors, and leaders residing at higher levels of Existential Growth provide students, mentees, and others at lower levels the opportunities they need to learn, try, fail (safely), try again, and ultimately succeed.
As a self-action leader, it's incumbent upon YOU to examine and analyze how your past experiences and present beliefs have shaped and/or limited your perspective. If you lack experience, this can prove challenging, but not impossible. It will require that you draw creative insights from reading, studying, interpersonal associations, critical thinking and synthesis, and prayer or meditation. You can then concurrently exercise persistence and patience in proactively seeking out additional experience.
John Maynard Keynes—a famous British economist and philosopher once noted that: the difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
For example: most people who smoke know it's bad for their health, and many genuinely believe in this knowledge. However, this knowledge and belief doesn't always motivate them to change. This is because they usually have other, more emotionally compelling beliefs that outweigh their knowledge of the health risks involved.
If we are honest with ourselves, all three of these beliefs provide potentially compelling motivations to continue smoking. Thus, to motivate action to stop, you must believe that acting now is indispensable to obtaining your long-term goal. Once you've altered your beliefs in this manner, your actions will often follow automatically—or at least more quickly and easily than otherwise. The challenge, of course, is to align your beliefs with both truth and reality; it does no good to believe in, or act upon, incorrect information.
A key step in changing a belief system involves gaining insights into your own potential. Those who achieve little in life typically fail to comprehend what they are capable of doing and being.
In the New Testament, Jesus taught: If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." (6)
In a similar vein, the great American philosopher—Ralph Waldo Emerson—once wrote:
The most successful people are usually those who have failed most often and made the most mistakes—and then moved forward to learn from their mistakes and improve day-by-day. This is not to be confused with the people who have committed the most sins; there is, of course, a profound difference between the two.
The importance of our personal experiences cannot be underestimated. This is because the communication of conscience takes place within the realms of our own, quiet, internal, personal experiences.
Some truths can be scientifically proven; other truths—particularly those in the metaphysical realm—cannot. In dealing with seemingly unprovable truths, you essentially have two options. The first is to take the route of the postmodernist and essentially formulate "Your own truth" based on whatever you want it to be—consequences be damned!
Regardless which route you take, natural CONSEQUENCES will ultimately play out over time according to the irrevocable and omnipotent edicts of Universal Law. The question then begs: which route will provide me with the most helpful and positive long-term consequences? At Freedom Focused, we recommend the second, conscience-imbued pathway in the most earnest, enthusiastic, and strongest possible terms.
Are the things you are reading in this Life Leadership textbook TRUE, or false?
But remember that your choice in the matter doesn't change the TRUTH of the matter. As Sir Winston Churchill so eloquently reminds us: The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, and ignorance may deride it; but in the end, there it is.
As the cab drives down the freeway, imagine a powerful lightning strike lights up the sky in front of them, followed by a deafening crack of thunder. This is then followed by a massive monsoon deluge of rain, interspersed with continual lightning strikes and their concomitant thunder claps.
In this scenario, who is destined to have the calmer response to these external stimuli?
The answer, or course, is the Brazilian cab driver. The young Chilean, on the other hand, will probably react with great animation and fear to the exact same stimuli.
Obviously, the Brazilian adult's beliefs and experiences are more in line with reality than our Chilean child. In this case—as with all other instances in life—what you believe and have experienced really matters and translates into pretty predictable actions.
We learn further from this example that it was not the stimulus (lightning, thunder, and rain) that caused the unsettled response from the Chilean child. It was the child's experiences and beliefs about the stimulus that caused their response.
That is the power of BELIEFS and EXPERIENCES!
From this example, we can discern that circumstances and events alone are not the primary drivers of our attitudes and behaviors, although they will usually exert a powerful secondary or tertiary influence thereon. The primary drivers of our attitudes and behaviors are our past experiences and present beliefs.
Thus, by adding a degree of timing nuance to our previous formula, we get the following:
Present Beliefs + Past Experiences = Future Actions
PaB + PrE = FA
If we know someone's past experiences and present beliefs, we can, with a high degree of accuracy, predict their present and future actions. More importantly, we can use this formula to better predict our own present and future actions. Most importantly, we can use this understanding to alter (enhance/improve) our future actions by altering our present beliefs and experiences.
Understanding this simple (in theory), yet sometimes complex (in actuality), formula is one of the most important principles and formulas you can ever learn.
Why?
Because once you really understand, internalize, and apply its meaning, you are no longer a victim of circumstances or other people's actions. YOU are LIBERATED to begin working on your own beliefs and experiences, which is the only authentic way to improve your present and change your future!
While you can't always immediately change your external environment and other situations in which you find yourself, you are always at liberty to decide your attitudes, beliefs, and perspectives about them. If you wish to change your behavior and/or circumstances over time, you must first go to work on your attitudes and beliefs.
When your attitudes and beliefs are aligned with reality and truth, your actions will lead you to happiness, progress, success, wealth, and higher levels of Existential Growth over time. When your attitudes and beliefs are not in line with reality, your actions will lead you to become cynical, desperate, overwhelmed, unhappy, unsuccessful, and even financially poor. In time, erroneous beliefs will lead to existential atrophy and mediocrity.
To further illustrate this formulaic principle in play in real life, consider the following BELIEFS and the kind of actions (or inactions) they are likely to motivate and produce.
Examples of Human Beliefs about Themselves, Others, and the World-at-Large
- I am a victim of my genetic predispositions and childhood upbringing.
- I am a victim of bad relationships.
- I am unlucky.
- Other people and circumstances are in control of my life and there isn't anything I can do about it.
- I can't help it; this is just the way I am.
- I am destined to fail.
- Nobody loves me; I am unlovable.
- I am entitled to so-and-so or such-and-such whether I am willing to work for it or not.
- My problems are the fault of:
- Ancestry/race
- Heritage/ethnicity/culture
- Parentage
- Siblings
- Employer/boss
- Lack of an employer/boss
- Inclinations and predispositions I cannot control
- Spouse/significant other
- Lack of a spouse/significant other
- Friends
- Lack of friends
- Too much government involvement in my life
- Too little government involvement in my life
- Society/media/pop culture
- Luck (e.g. I never win door prizes, drawings, or the lottery)
- I have the wrong astrological sign
Now, consider an alternative set of beliefs and consider the actions that these perspectives might motivate and produce:
- I will find a way to succeed regardless of any limitations I inherited or currently face.
- I create my own luck through dependability, hard work, integrity, persistence, and patience.
- I am sovereign over my own life, career, and relationships, and the only person that can take that freedom and power away from me is me.
- I have the liberty, power, and access to Serendipity necessary to transcend natural inclinations and predispositions that influence me to behave in undesirable and hurtful ways, even though some of those proclivities are very powerful, seductive, and entrenched.
- It is my responsibility to be the kind of person others will admire, like, love, respect, etc.
- Through hard work and determination, I can earn success and obtain fulfillment, joy, and satisfaction.
- All of my problems are ultimately my own and many of them are of my own making. Even though some of them aren't my fault, they are still my problems, and I must take COMPLETE RESPONSIBILITY for everything in my life and do the best I can where I'm at with what I've got. (1)
- I don't always like what happens to me; but I can always control how I respond to what happens to me.
- It is up to me to earn what I want in life. With the aid of Serendipity, I am capable of getting and becoming what I am willing to pay the price for over time.
- I have unlimited potential for personal achievement and Existential Growth.
- I can overcome my past and present to create a better future for myself and my loved ones.
- I am sovereign over what I think about, say, believe, and do; and in that sovereignty lies my destiny.
Never underestimate the incredible power of all sincerely held attitudes and beliefs about yourself, others, and the world-at-large. Always remember that your beliefs (or lack thereof) absolutely drive your behavior. If you closely examine your behavior in any given instance, your authentic beliefs will always be exposed. To paraphrase a famous poem: You Tell on Yourself!
"You tell on yourself."
—Anonymous (2)
You tell on yourself by the friends you seek,
By the very manner in which you speak,
By the way you employ your leisure time,
By the use you make of dollar and dime,
You tell what you are by the things you wear,
By the spirit in which your burdens you bear,
By the kinds of things at which you laugh,
By the records you play on the phonograph,
You show what you are by the way you walk,
By the things of which you delight to talk,
By the manner in which you bear defeat,
By so simple a thing as how you eat,
By the books you choose from the well-filled shelf:
In these ways and more, you tell on yourself.
So, there really is no particle of sense,
In an effort to keep up false pretense.
—Anonymous (2)
If you are sincerely interested in changing your behavior, the wisest course of action is to work on changing your beliefs so that your paradigms of self, others, and the world around you align more closely with truth and reality.
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| Even the strongest willed persons have a limit to how long they can "white-knuckle" it. |
You may be able to "White-Knuckle" your way for a while, but you will eventually run out of gas, burn out, and become disenchanted with the process if you fail to first alter erroneous beliefs that are driving unwanted behaviors.
For example: consider a smoker who is trying to stop smoking. If a smoker ultimately believes the calming, relaxing, and other enjoyable properties of nicotine use are worth the health risks, they will almost certainly fail in their efforts to quit—no matter how strong their willpower is or how effective their quitting techniques may be.
If, on the other hand, a smoker believes that no amount of momentary catharsis is worth sacrificing one's long-term health, quitting will not only be possible, but may even prove to be surprisingly easy. In other words, those relatively rare individuals who are able to quit "Cold Turkey" are not necessarily the ones with the strongest willpower, but the ones who are most effective at changing their beliefs and perspectives on smoking. Serendipity also plays a role in these kinds of efforts, the contributions of which can seem mysterious in both their reach and efficacy.
Thus, the difficulty and feasibility of any given task is not primarily determined by the required behavior changes involved, but by your belief about how valuable (or not) the required behavior changes are to your long-term freedom, growth, and inner peace. As the philosopher Friedrich Nietzche once wrote: "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." (3)
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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| Everyone needs an ADVOCATE or two along the way. |
Just as it is impossible to become self-actualized according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs without first having access to food, drink, shelter, and safety, it is similarly impossible to rise to the highest levels of Existential Growth without authentic and caring ADVOCATES who can teach, coach, mentor, discipline, reprove, encourage, and cheer you on along the way.
While it is true that many people fail to rise to their potential because they choose not to listen to their teachers, coaches, mentors, and consciences, it is also true that others fail to rise because they lack access them in the first place. Hence the importance of obtaining access to quality leaders, educators, and mentors is a variable of primal importance in everyone's life—and a variable of which I have been unusually blessed in my own life and career.
Learning from the experiences of others is tremendously valuable, but ultimately insufficient to acquire all the wisdom you'll need to successfully navigate your own life's journey. There are some lessons that can only be learned thoroughly through real life experience. You cannot reach the highest levels of Existential Growth by study, observation, association, and critical thinking alone. The treacherous and sometimes solitary trail of individual experience must also be traversed.
But that's okay because that is why we are here—to gain experience from which we can learn and grow.
In the beautiful verse of the poet, Ella Wheeler Wilcox:
"There is room in the halls of pleasureFor a large and lordly train,But one by one we must all file onThrough the narrow aisles of pain." (4)
How to Change Your Beliefs
"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas
as in escaping from old ones."
—John Maynard Keynes
It's usually not enough to just decide to change your beliefs and then expect your actions to naturally follow suit. Quite to the contrary, a great deal of time, effort, practice, and repetition is required to make the change real.
To illustrate this phenomenon, consider the following BELIEFS that could potentially eclipse the knowledge that smoking is unhealthy and may prematurely terminate your mortal life.
- The positive benefits (pleasure, stress relief, self-reward, etc.) of smoking ultimately outweigh the potential negative consequences.
- I can always quit down the road and reverse some of the negative effects of my present smoking.
- My granddad smoked a pack a day his whole life and lived to be 92; I've got good genes for beating lung cancer.
To accomplish this, you might cultivate the following, alternative beliefs about smoking:
- There are other, better, and much more positive and productive ways and means of relaxing, dealing with stress, and rewarding myself for jobs well done (e.g. exercise, yoga, meditation, prayer, healthy hobbies, etc.)
- No matter how good my genes are, smoking will still inhibit my physical energy, strength, and vigor.
- I don't want to perpetuate my granddad's lifetime legacy of smoking.
- My spouse/significant other hates that I smoke; the quality of my relationship deteriorates when I smoke.
- Smoking makes me a social pariah among most in the current culture (a non-smoking majority).
- It is embarrassing to me that I am a slave to nicotine.
- It is a dirty, gross, and expensive habit that makes everything it touches smell bad.
- Etc.
In his theological classic—The Screwtape Letters—C.S. Lewis implies that keeping people in ignorance of their potential is one of the devil's greatest and most effective traps. In this work of Lewis's, the fictional senior devil (Screwtape) writes to his junior devil trainee (Wormwood) and explains: "It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out." (5)
"It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds.
In reality our best work is done by keeping things out."
—The Devil
If Deities and devils really do exist—and I'd wager my life and career's work and fortune that they do—there is no doubt in my mind that the devils want you to remain in ignorance of your true potential in this life (and beyond); and the Deities desire that you liberally attain as much self-knowledge and enlightenment of your potential as possible.
A second key step in changing your belief systems involves acting in faith on those beliefs you have good reason to assume are correct—even if you aren't entirely sure yet, don't feel like acting, or haven't yet experienced the fruits of your actions.
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| ACTION is essential to SAL and just about everything else. |
In speaking these words, it is essential to note that the Christ did not say: "if you know you will do." He said: "if you do you will know."
The order here is essential!
ACTION is absolutely paramount to your success!
If you know how everything in your life and/or career will ever turn out, you don't have to live by faith. But the reality is that most of us have to live by faith most of the time because we don't know exactly how things are going to turn out. Thus, we must make faith-infused decisions every day of our lives based on the various beliefs we hold about truth, consequences, other people, the world around us, ourselves, and the future.
Thus our chosen actions are just as important as our beliefs, and from a practical standpoint, even more important! Thus, if you really want to know if a principle is true, you must put that principle into practice, not the other way around.
A third key step to changing your beliefs involves stepping out of your comfort zone. Whenever you undertake a new endeavor, you tend to learn and grow. This is especially true when an endeavor is challenging and intimidating. In the words of Viktor Frankl: Exceptionally difficult external situation[s] give ... [us] the opportunity to grow beyond [ourselves]. (7)
"Exceptionally difficult external circumstances give us the opportunity to grow beyond ourselves."
—Viktor Frankl
Three Steps to Changing Beliefs and Behavior
1. Gain insight into your own potential.
2. Act in faith on sound beliefs.
3. Exercise the courage to step out of your comfort zone.
This three-step process of self-discovery and growth can naturally change your beliefs and behavior over time to better align with truth and reality. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—one of Germany's most historically heralded philosophers—explained that: self-knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but by action.
"Self-knowledge is best learned, not by contemplation, but by action."
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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| Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882 |
"Do not be too squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments the better. What if they are a little coarse and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice? Up again, and you shall never be so afraid of a tumble [in the future]." (8)
These words of Emerson have inspired me to courageous action on many occasions in my life, and I commend them enthusiastically to you, albeit with a clear caveat, as follows: Don't use this advice as an excuse to do stupid, harmful, or foolish things. Instead, allow its counsel to inspire you to embrace life's wondrous opportunities to take calculated risks on the altar of personal and professional growth—even, and perhaps especially, when you are afraid.
Generally speaking, most human beings are too often paralyzed by the fear of making a mistake. If you allow it, this fear-of-failure induced paralysis can prevent you from taking action, and the failure to act is sometimes the biggest mistake of all!
Remember that courage doesn't mean the absence of fear.
Courage is acting in the face of fear
In the splendid words of John Wayne, a famous 20th Century movie actor in the Western genre: Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway. And in an enlightening echo of Emerson: He who is not every day conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
"Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway."
—John Wayne
"He who is not every day conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
As you contemplate the kind of courage spoken of by Wayne and Emerson in the quotes above, it is important to understand that there is a difference between a sin and a mistake. Sins are actions you know are wrong, but you choose to commit them anyway. Mistakes, on the other hand, are inadvertent errors that inevitably occur while learning new things, acquiring new skills, developing new capacities, and taking calculated risks aimed at achievement, contribution, and growth.
Mistakes are an absolutely indispensable part of any significant learning and growing process. You simply cannot reach the pinnacle of your potential without making a lot of mistakes along the way.
So, avoid sins—yes!
But welcome necessary mistakes.
After all, you will inevitably make a lot of them along your journey to the highest levels of Existential Growth. Thus, the quicker you accept that there is a learning curve to all meaningful growth and achievement, the faster you can move forward on your upward trajectory to an ever-brighter future.
Consider here the inspiring words of Michael Jordan, who is, in my opinion, the greatest basketball player of all time—the legit GOAT.
"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost more than 300 games.
Twenty-six (26) times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot—and missed.
I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
—Michael Jordan
The Vital Role of Experience
At Freedom Focused, we believe all human beings are here on this planet to gain experience and learn from it so we can grow existentially to become all we are capable of becoming—and then teach others to do the same. That is why taking calculated risks and trying your very best are both important elements of SAL-in-action.
In his book, Existentialism: For and Against, British philosopher Paul Roubiczek elucidates the limitations of human reason and emphasizes that in any quest to understand truth, "experience must be admitted as evidence." (9) While he doesn't reject the need for reason to understand life, existence, and truth, he likewise asserts that reason alone is insufficient to conceptualize a broad and holistic range of reality.
"We shall not understand man without understanding his humanity (reason) but neither shall we understand humanity without paying attention to single [persons] and to our own inner experience. ... We rarely pay enough attention to the deeper meaning of our personal experience and of our feelings; we disregard inner knowledge." (10)
TRUTH is therefore located at the intersection or nexus where empiricism (science), historicism (experience), and visceralism (conscience) meet, as follows:
Venn diagram of TRUTH
Some truths can be scientifically proven; other truths—particularly those in the metaphysical realm—cannot. In dealing with seemingly unprovable truths, you essentially have two options. The first is to take the route of the postmodernist and essentially formulate "Your own truth" based on whatever you want it to be—consequences be damned!
The second route is to rely on viscerally-guided and conscience-imbued faith that is appropriately balanced by scientific and historical analyses of discernible data, experiences, and realities.
The SAL Theory and Model is designed to help you grow as a holistic unit—which includes the three (3) primary elements of your nature; namely: MIND (empiricism), BODY (historicism), and SOUL (visceralism)—in an upward spiral towards the highest levels of Existential Growth.
The first route is a narcissistic and nihilistic highway to nowhere—a path full of preventable potholes, chaos, and pain that leads to an existential dead end marked by despair, hopelessness, and misery.
The second route is a selfless and scintillating trail to triumph—a road rife with knowledge, development, achievement, contribution, and service that leads to the pinnacles of your potential.
That is a choice that you will ultimately have to make.
"The truth is incontrovertible.
Malice may attack it, and ignorance may deride it;
but in the end, there it is."
—Winston Churchill
In the next chapter, we will take the principle contained in the Venn diagram above to the next level by adding a fourth component and then turn it into a metaphysical board of directors you can utilize to make the best possible decisions in your life and career.
At Freedom Focused, we call this metaphysical board of directors your SAL Command Center.
If you are ready to begin engaging yours to its fullest capacity, read on!
In Your Journal
- Do you currently harbor any unhelpful beliefs in your life or career? If so, what are they, and what different beliefs might you cultivate in their place that would lead to better results and more peace in the future?
- What past experiences have you had that have led you to cower and fear before people and life?
- What past experiences have you had that have led you to courageously act, even in the face of fear and social pressures?
- What positive and productive actions or activities have you been avoiding in your life or career because of fear?
- In what ways might your life and/or career be improved if you face your fears and act?
- What might you lose if fear prevails and inaction persists indefinitely?
—Dr. JJ
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, USA
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Chapter 6 Notes
1. Paraphrased from a similar statement from Dr. Nathaniel J. Williams: "Do the best you can where you are at with what you've got."
2. This poem is sometimes attributed to Marie Losavio. Otherwise, it is listed as Anonymous. Given it used the word, "phonograph," to refer to a record player, it is assumed old enough to be in the public domain.
3. Frankl, V. (2006). Man's Search for Meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Page 76.
4. Wilcox, E. W. (1912). Poems of Passion and Pleasure. London, UK: Gay and
Hancock. Page 115.
5. Lewis, C. S. (1995). The Screwtape Letters. New York, NY: Bantam Books. Page
11 (italics added).
6. John 7:17
7. Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Page 72.
8. From Emerson’s Journal entry, dated: 11 November 1842.
9. Roubiczek, P. (1964). Existentialism: For and Against. Cambridge. UK: Cambridge University Press. Page 11.
10. Ibid. Pages 11-12.
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