The Critical Difference Between Belief and Faith and Why it Matters
The difference between belief and faith is minor, but the mindset shift this difference causes is major. Moreover, your mindset dictates how you live your life. So, choosing to live by belief instead of faith or vice versa will have a major impact on your behavior. Consequently, a big part of developing self-awareness is understanding if you are a person who orients their mind towards belief or faith most often.
First, let’s start with defining belief. Belief is a matter of knowing, not assuming. In sports as in science, seeing is the prerequisite for believing. Whether it’s something you see in yourself, something you see in others, or something you have seen happen historically. Therefore, to believe is to know you have proof. When there is no proof, there is no belief.
On the other hand, faith does not require proof. The only requirement for faith is commitment. Commitment to a cause, process, person, family, community, country, culture, or team. Failure, disappointment, adversity, lacking confidence, ambiguity are all things that happen to those who have faith. Yet, these things don’t deter those who have faith. Faith provides the fuel to keep going when one doesn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. One could be blind and still have faith that the lights are on.
Shifting between these two different mindsets will determine how resilient you are in adverse circumstances. If you are in a situation where belief is dominant, you will give up quickly when you don’t see a way forward. But when faith is dominant, you will persist. Correspondingly, failure is the end when belief is the dominant mindset and it’s only the beginning when faith is the dominant mindset. Similarly, belief weakens under pressure while faith strengthens under pressure.
Finally, it must be said that one is not always better than the other. To put faith in someone or something that’s a scam or too good to be true would be a big mistake. To only believe when failure, adversity, or ambiguity is part of the process to grow or achieve is also a mistake. Discerning the difference and being self-aware is ultimately what’s at stake when these two mindsets are at odds.