The Unhelpfulness of Belief - Why Accepting Uncertainty is a Better Choice

When you really examine your own, or somebody else’s motivation for believing something, you will eventually come to a fear that is driving the belief. Fear is what is holding us back in life, and belief is just one way in which fear rears its ugly head.

How does a belief come from a fear?

The dictionary definition of belief, is “An acceptance that something exists or is true, especially without proof.” So somebody decides, or needs, or wants something to be true that is not currently proven to be true, and it is this “need” or “desire” that comes from a fear of not being able to accept the possibility that something is not true. For example, many people believe that:

• There is a god and an afterlife because they cannot accept the possibility that there isn’t
• That there are such things as soulmates because they believe in the concept of living happily ever after
• That it is impossible for them to change career because they can’t handle the uncertainty of change

Why is believing something not helpful?

Because it places an unnecessary restriction on our choices in life or blocks out a whole load of things that could actually be true. If you have already decided that something is true and then some new evidence comes along that strongly suggests otherwise, you may have wasted lots of time and energy pursuing and devoting your life to the thing you “believed”. All because of a fear of not being able to accept that it may not be true in the first place.

For example, if you believe that the typical Standard American Diet (SAD) is a perfectly healthy diet and all other diet options are no better or worse, then this belief has initially come from a fear (perhaps of not wanting to stop eating certain SAD foods) and has then restricted your choices down in life, to eating only one particular way, closing off any possibility that another diet may have more beneficial effects for your health and enjoyment.

How to stop believing?

This is the tricky part, but if you’ve read any of my other blog posts, it once again comes back to us facing our fears. In this case, the fear that is sitting behind the belief and is driving it. You need to be able to look the fear in the eye and all the emotions that go with that, and accept the possibility that it is true. So accept that there may be no afterlife, or soulmates may not be a real thing, or that if you change careers that it may not work out perfectly for you and may take a little time to work out. As soon is the fear has been accepted, it has lost its “teeth” and you therefore no longer have the need to “believe” the thing that is not proven to be true.

Without this fear and belief restricting what you do in life, you are free to explore all sorts of interesting things that you would like to have done before, but that your beliefs were holding you back from. It’s all about being able to become okay with uncertainty. You don’t have to like the uncertainty, just be able to accept that currently, you or “we” as humans, don’t have enough information to make a valid judgement on certain things.

Once you are able to do this, it makes finding the truth a lot easier, as you can explore all options, and not just the ones you “believed” were possible before.

I find open-minded skepticism (to borrow a phrase from Tom Campbell) to be the best way to approach life. Be open-minded to all options, but skeptical, and critical at the same time. Allowing your own experience and analysis to be the defining factor in finding out whether something is true or not.

To go back to our diet example, supposing the person had no belief about diet initially, but was open to all information and looked into and researched matters him/herself and experimented with their own diet. Trying different food combinations and groups and cutting out certain ones and seeing how these changes made them feel. They may have then found that a different diet to their initial SAD diet actually seemed to make them feel better and give them more energy. This would then be an improvement in life that wouldn't have been possible with the previous belief in place.

So I invite you to look at your own life and see if you can spot any beliefs that may be restricting your horizons and see if you can find and face those fears behind the beliefs to bring positive change to your situation.

Best Wishes

Jack