Do You Care Who and What Influences Your Belief System?
There are a number of expanding beliefs and limiting beliefs that shape each of our lives. These beliefs don’t just pop in our heads out of nowhere. We weren’t born with a belief system.
The reality is that the world around us constantly influences each of our belief systems. In fact, in practically every moment of our lives something is influencing each of our belief systems.
Why does this matter? Three critical reasons:
- Every negative and positive thought we have is due to our belief system
- Our potential is expanded or limited due to our belief system
- Motivation and lack there of is due to our belief system
With so much of our life dependent on our belief system, it’s a huge mistake to haphazardly allow other people to influence us. However, this is just what most of us do. We allow people we never met and who could care less about our success or failure influence our beliefs every day.
This is why I believe the first step to eliminating negative and limiting beliefs is to control who and what influences our beliefs. Specifically, I believe we must significantly limit the amount of live TV and radio we consume. In addition, we must be much more discerning of the pre-recorded content we consume.
Call the Fun Police to Monitor Who and What Influences Our Belief System
I know what I’m suggesting may sound extreme to most people. Who doesn’t have a guilty pleasure on Netfilx or HBO. This suggestion sounds like the fun police in full force. I must admit, it is.
I’m currently watching a show on HBO called Insecure. On the surface it’s a harmless show about African-American women and their struggles with their careers and relationships. However, the belief systems that the writers of this show encourage are particularly harmful. If I am subconsciously influenced by the behavior suggested on this show, it would be detrimental.
I justify watching the show by telling myself I want to stay current with pop-culture. This is a show many of my peers are watching and talking about. I believe if I don’t stay current with the zeitgeist, I won’t be able to relate to the world around me. This in itself is a limiting belief I must work on.
Unfortunately, Hollywood is a total disaster for people who care about personal growth and development. I realize that if I were to eliminate all the programming that encourages negatives beliefs, there wouldn’t be much left to enjoy. So the decision we all must make is whether or not we care about shaping who and what influences our belief system.
We are left with three choices:
- Continue to allow Hollywood (and the rest of the media) to make money at the expense of our personal growth and development
- Convince ourselves that we can consume negative content and it not impact our belief system
- Treat our minds like we treat our homes and only let people in who we know and trust