Introduction
Hearing the question "What is faith?", A person often imagines some supernatural beings who are usually worshiped in specially designated places, but we will look at the pressing question differently. The tale will not be about choosing a successful religion, but about how to create your own world with the help of faith and form beliefs suitable for a person.
Knowledge is not enough
To understand what faith is, one must understand the history of its appearance. The opposite concept called "knowledge" will help us here. Knowledge is unambiguous reliable information grounded logically, scientifically or otherwise.
Knowledge to some extent shapes our worldview, but getting up from the school desk and going out into the real world, we are still left with a bunch of questions: how to be happy? how to solve problems? how to find your favorite business? where do you need to move and why? what to do with your shortcomings? how to be confident in yourself? is it worth looking for answers to all these questions at all?
After thinking a little more, we realize that science does not allow us to solve almost a single "everyday" question, except for banal survival. For example, knowledge about gravity or electric current will not be superfluous, but they are not enough to gain happiness and achieve high goals.
It is in the head of every child that a natural question arises, which all teachers have heard: "Wonderful information, how will it help me in my life ?!"
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It's amazing how large a knowledge base humanity has, and how little they can give in the life of one particular person.
What is faith and why is it needed
Science does not answer many questions that must necessarily be resolved in order for a person's worldview to become integral, therefore faith was invented. It allows any assumption to be considered true without the presence of any evidence.
This means that those sketches about the world that science gives us, we can add any colors to our taste with the phrase: "Now I myself will decide what the world will be like and will begin to live in accordance with it."
This is how we independently come up with what is “good” or how to do the right thing. Then we begin to believe in the invented, which creates the completeness of the picture of the world, so any person believes in something.
Development
Each of us begins to move and grow from the very birth - this is how nature intended. But for movement you need to start from something, but with a bunch of questions in your head, this is impossible. Therefore, for each "unscientific" question, a person creates an answer for himself. Thus, we gain a certainty, thanks to which movement becomes possible.
Opportunities
What is faith? is a tool that empowers a person. Usually we decide for ourselves what we are capable of and what we are not, which is how we open the way for ourselves in a certain direction. Incidentally, this is a good example of thoughts materializing.
Any achievement is the result of hard efforts, patience and a huge number of failures, which becomes possible only when a person has a steely faith in his ideas.
Resource implementation
Each of us has something: desires, abilities, potential. Surely you once felt that you were thinking about the wrong job or the wrong company - this is a very unpleasant sensation with which our inner voice prompts: “You are not using your resources, this does not suit you, change something. try something else."
In the presence of faith, resources allow us to realize the emerging opportunities, thereby closing the circle within which our growth takes place.
How a person's beliefs are formed
We've talked about what faith is, now let's figure out how it happens. The process involves two stages: guess and reinforcement.
Assumption
Assumption is the object to which faith will be directed. For example, a person assumed that he could learn to sing. It is unrealistic to prove this assumption from the starting point, so you just have to believe in it.
An assumption is a product of consciousness, which means that a person perfectly understands that he himself created it, it is still poorly studied and tested so that one can seriously rely on it.
Reinforcement
Any faith needs reinforcement. We cannot just believe in anything without justifying it for ourselves. Therefore, having believed in the assumption, we strive to evaluate its truth in our life, to gain experience, to make observations in order to somehow verify our guess.
If an assumption manages to survive in our minds enough time, then we often confirm it in practice. The result of continuous faith is the formation of a person's beliefs - a solid and rarely changeable structure that settles in the subconscious, which no longer needs special reinforcement. Persuasion becomes the rule and begins to determine our life, the worldview is basically built on them.
How we believe
Despite the fact that any faith gives us something, it is important to understand the side effects. Consider two approaches to how people shape their beliefs.
Faith against
This includes any belief against what we desire. For example, a person wants to have a nice country house, but at the same time believes in his inability to find a high-paying job. Sometimes he even admits the possibility of getting such a job, but for this many factors must converge, such as good acquaintances, luck, social status or geographic location, and since they did not agree, the function of a good job remains, although possible, but inaccessible.
These are all different forms of belief against. This approach is the most popular among people, but where does the wild excitement come from, what does this belief give?
Safety
We are used to choosing the path of least resistance in everything. The bad is much easier to notice, it is vividly perceived and imprinted in the memory for a long time, which means it will be easy to come to a limiting assumption. It will also take little effort to create a conviction out of it. For example, to be convinced of the inability to sing, you just need to do nothing or, in extreme cases, remember a couple of indistinctly performed compositions.
The good thing about faith versus is that at the lowest cost we can form beliefs and quickly come to certainty.
For ease of understanding, we will present the worldview as the earth at the disposal of man. A worldview based on belief against has its own framework, which means that our domain is fenced in.
The presence of a fence allows you to focus on a specific piece of land, study it in detail and learn how to perfectly navigate the area. Speaking in Russian, such a world is easier to understand, it becomes clear to a person what can be expected in life, and this gives a feeling of security.
Lack of development
The only drawback that nullifies all the splendor of faith against is depriving ourselves of opportunities, since most of them remain hidden behind the fence from our sight.
Moving around a closed area, every time you come to where you have already been, you can call it movement, but you definitely cannot call such walking development. This means that resources will continue to gather dust in the warehouse inside us, and our desires will still remain unattainable.
Faith for
Every person, whoever he may be, longs for more in his soul, because nothing is enough for us - this feature ensures our development. But you can create more only by believing in more, which allows you to do faith for. It was about this faith that was discussed in the harsh story on the topic "How to start acting strongly."
If you want to live in a just world, believe in justice and then you can create it. Such faith, of course, gives a person opportunities, but at the same time a lot of funny difficulties appear.
Insecurity
It is much more difficult to believe for it, because you have to constantly reinforce your faith in practice. For example, in order to be convinced of your vocal abilities, you need to seriously sweat and learn a lot.
Any process of creating more than you have now means walking in an unexplored area with many obstacles in the way. You need to have a strong desire to continue to believe in this direction. People with this model of faith are rare, which means they rarely can gain support and understanding of the environment.
What do we usually say to a person who has shared with us a completely unrealizable idea: "This is an interesting thought, but be realistic!" If all people heeded this advice, we would probably still be throwing ugly children off a cliff. Significant achievements just happen when a person ceases to be a realist and begins to believe in more - that is what true faith is.
It doesn't smell like security. When you do not believe in your abilities, then another failure will not be news to you, it will be taken painlessly and will only confirm the assumptions. But if you believe in what you want and meet difficulties, they go against your ideas and seriously shake faith, testing you for strength.
The certainty here lies in the understanding of why difficulties and failures occur. We often tend to perceive such events as a hint of an unfavorable outcome. In fact, problems are a necessary good for the realization of the desired.
Nothing good is given to a person simply, therefore, when meeting difficulties, one can judge that something sensible will come out as a result. This understanding allows you to save energy on experiences and focus on movement.
Learning to Believe
There is no universal faith, it is individual for each individual life, but we have several thoughts that will contribute to the fruitful search for your specific faith.
Don't believe on the machine
A person's conviction is only an ingrained assumption that was not initially substantiated in any way, not a law, but only a hypothesis according to which we decide to exist.
Beliefs can be anything, but usually we do not control the process of choosing them, they are created automatically on the basis of upbringing, the influence of society and other conditions in which a person lives. When beliefs are formed in our mind, we rarely analyze their benefits and need, and this prevents us from noticing their irrelevance and negative impact.
Understand what you want
The algorithm for creating effective human beliefs looks like this:
- choose a guess;
- we begin to believe in it and at the same time we strive to determine to what extent the chosen assumption suits us;
- if the assumption turns out to be suitable, then we transform it into a belief that will benefit us on an ongoing basis;
- if the assumption turned out to be unsuitable, choose another one and start the algorithm from the beginning.
The effectiveness lies in the fact that such a belief allows a person to form worthwhile beliefs, which will subsequently play on him.
The impossibility of using this algorithm lies in the misunderstanding of one's own desires. If you have a poor idea of what you would like in life and how you strive to see the world, then you cannot consider any beliefs suitable, so we choose anyhow which ones.
Desire in a person does not appear by chance, it allows you to believe in something strong enough to make it workable. By ignoring desires, we lose momentum and direction.
A person's beliefs create his world
There is one defense mechanism that keeps our worldview in a holistic and complete state. The mechanism is as follows: a person all over the world seeks to see a reflection of his beliefs so that their truth is not in doubt. This explains why two people understand the same experience differently, draw dissimilar conclusions, and open up different possibilities.
The presence of such a safety system greatly helps a person who has decided to believe for, because in any even the most terrible situation he will see a new opportunity on the way to what he wants. But if we form beliefs thoughtlessly, and they do not correspond to our desires, then we will continue to see the world from the position of the impossibility of achieving what we want, and this will further strengthen our belief in our own mediocrity.
About self-confidence
One of the main reasons for the formation of beliefs for a person is the desire to be confident, because confidence allows you to move faster and achieve goals. Often we hope to build self-confidence by trying not to change beliefs. The more strongly certain ideas take root in us, the easier it is to rely on them.
But belief in oneself is achieved not because of the seeming inviolability of beliefs, but due to their positive influence on our lives. If you notice that beliefs help you get closer to your dreams, only then you begin to trust them and gain real confidence.
Summary
Let's summarize. What is faith? is a tool that makes anything achievable if desired. The quality of a person's life, his success and how the world will look in general depends on faith.
Faith does not put pink glasses on you and does not tear you away from the real world, but, on the contrary, allows you to concretize and understand it. Any person believes in something, but it is important to believe not just like that, but clearly understanding what and for what purpose you believe. The public opinion and the current state of affairs in this case can be neglected.
Choose your beliefs responsibly. It is impossible to form some principles once and for all, today they may be your size, and tomorrow they may be already cramped, because we have been growing all our lives. A person's beliefs must be flexible.
That's the end of the fairy tale, and who's a good fellow - goes to practice believing in yourself, people and the fantastic world around!
At the Top of Mind Team