Freedom of Thought: How to Choose Beliefs to Succeed

How Beliefs Work

Psychologist Carol Dweck at Stanford University studies how people’s beliefs affect their lives. In the studies, she spoke about experiments conducted in schools. A group of children were told that the ability to learn can be developed. Thus, they were convinced that they were able to overcome difficulties and could learn better. As a result, they performed better than the control group.

In another experiment, Carol Dweck found out how students’ beliefs affect their willpower. In the first test, students were surveyed to find out their beliefs: a difficult task exhausts them or makes them harder and stronger. The students then went through a series of experiments. Those who believed that a difficult task took too much effort did worse on the second and third tasks. Those who believed that their willpower was not threatened by one difficult task coped with the second and third in the same way as with the first.

In the second test, students were asked leading questions. One: «Doing a difficult task make you feel tired and take a short break to recover?» Second: «Sometimes doing a difficult task gives you energy, and you easily take on new difficult tasks?» The results were similar. The very wording of the question influenced the students’ beliefs, which was reflected in the performance of tasks.

The researchers decided to study the real achievements of students. Those who were convinced that a difficult task exhausted them and reduced their self-control were less successful in achieving their goals and procrastinated. Beliefs determined behavior. The correlation was so strong that it could not be called a coincidence. What does it mean? What we believe in helps us move forward, become successful and achieve goals, or feeds self-doubt.

Two systems

Two systems are involved in decision-making: conscious and unconscious, controlled and automatic, analytical and intuitive. Psychologists have given them various names. In the last decade, the terminology of Daniel Kahneman, who received the Nobel Prize for achievements in economics, has been popular. He is a psychologist and used psychological methods to study human behavior. He also wrote a book about his theory, Think Slow, Decide Fast.

He names two systems of decision making. System 1 works automatically and very quickly. It requires little or no effort. System 2 is responsible for conscious mental effort. System 2 can be identified with the rational «I», and System 1 controls the processes that do not require our focus and consciousness, and it is our unconscious «I».

It seems to us that System 2, our conscious self, makes most of the decisions, in fact, this system is quite lazy, writes Kahneman. It is connected to decision-making only when System 1 fails and sounds the alarm. In other cases, System 1 relies on ideas acquired from experience or from other people about the world and about oneself.

Beliefs not only save time in making decisions, but also protect us from disappointment, mistakes, stress, and death. Through our ability to learn and our memory, we avoid situations we find dangerous and seek out those that once did us good. Behind the words «I am not able to achieve meaningful goals» lies a certain negative experience or someone else’s perceived assessment. A person needs these words so as not to experience disappointment again when something goes wrong in the process of moving towards the goal.

How Experience Determines Choice

Experience is important in making a decision. An example of this is the installation effect or the barrier of past experience. The installation effect was demonstrated by the American psychologist Abraham Luchins, who offered the subjects a task with water vessels. Having solved the problem in the first round, they applied the same solution method in the second round, although in the second round there was a simpler solution method.

People tend to solve every new problem in a way that has already been proven effective, even if there is an easier and more convenient way to solve it. This effect explains why we don’t try to find a solution once we’ve learned that there doesn’t seem to be one.

Distorted truth

More than 170 cognitive distortions are known to cause irrational decisions. They have been demonstrated in various scientific experiments. However, there is still no consensus on how these distortions arise and how to classify them. Thinking errors also form ideas about oneself and about the world.

Imagine a person who is convinced that acting does not make money. He meets up with friends and hears two different stories from them. In one, friends tell him about the success of a classmate who has become a highly paid actor. Another is about how their former colleague quit her job and went bust on her decision to try acting. Whose story will he believe? More likely the second one. Thus, one of the cognitive distortions will work — the tendency to confirm one’s point of view. Or the tendency to seek information that is consistent with a known point of view, belief, or hypothesis.

Now imagine that he was introduced to that successful classmate who made a career in acting. Will he change his mind or show the effect of perseverance?

Beliefs are formed through experience and information received from outside, they are due to numerous distortions of thinking. They often have nothing to do with reality. And instead of making our lives easier and protecting us from frustration and pain, they make us less efficient.

The neuroscience of belief

The more often a person repeats a certain action, the stronger becomes the neural connection between brain cells that are jointly activated to carry out this action. The more often a neural connection is activated, the higher the likelihood of these neurons activating in the future. And that means a higher probability of doing the same as usual.

The opposite statement is also true: “Between neurons that are not synchronized, a neural connection is not formed. If you have never tried to look at yourself or at the situation from the other side, most likely it will be difficult for you to do this.

Why are changes possible?

Communication between neurons can change. The use of neural connections that represent a certain skill and way of thinking leads to their strengthening. If the action or belief is not repeated, the neural connections weaken. This is how a skill is acquired, whether it be the ability to act or the ability to think in a certain way. Remember how you learned something new, repeated the learned lesson over and over again until you achieved success in learning. Changes are possible. Beliefs are changeable.

What do we remember about ourselves?

Another mechanism involved in belief change is called memory reconsolidation. All beliefs are connected with the work of memory. We gain experience, hear words or perceive actions in relation to us, draw conclusions and remember them.

The process of memorization goes through three stages: learning — storage — reproduction. During playback, we start the second chain of memory. Every time we recall what we remember, we have the opportunity to rethink the experience and the preconceived notions. And then the already updated version of beliefs will be stored in memory. If change is possible, how do you replace bad beliefs with ones that will help you succeed?

Healing with knowledge

Carol Dweck told schoolchildren that all people are teachable and everyone can develop their abilities. In this way, she helped children acquire a new type of thinking — the growth mindset.

In another experiment, subjects found more solutions when the facilitator warned them not to be fooled. Knowing that you choose your own way of thinking helps you change your mindset.

Rethinking Attitudes

The rule of neuropsychologist Donald Hebb, who studied the importance of neurons for the learning process, is that what we pay attention to is amplified. To change a belief, you need to learn how to change the point of view on the experience gained.

If you think that you are always unlucky, remember the situations when this was not confirmed. Describe them, count them, sort them out. Can you really be called a person who is unlucky?

Recall situations in which you were unlucky. Think it could be worse? What could happen in the most unfortunate scenario? Do you still consider yourself unlucky now?

Any situation, action or experience can be viewed from different perspectives. It is almost the same as looking at the mountains from the height of an airplane, from the top of a mountain or at its foot. Every time the picture will be different.

Who believes in you?

When I was eight, I spent two shifts in a row in a pioneer camp. I finished the first shift with an unflattering description of the pioneer leaders. The shift ended, the counselors changed, but I stayed. The leader of the second shift unexpectedly saw potential in me and appointed me as the commander of the detachment, the one who is responsible for discipline in the detachment and every morning reports on the line about how the day went. I organically got used to this role and took home a diploma for excellent behavior on the second shift.

This story was my introduction to the Pygmalion or Rosenthal effect, a psychological phenomenon that can be briefly described as follows: people tend to live up to expectations.

Scientific research studies the Pygmalion effect in different planes: education (how the perception of the teacher affects the abilities of students), management (how the trust and encouragement of talents by the leader affects their disclosure), sports (how the coach contributes to the manifestation of the strengths of athletes) and others.

In all cases, a positive relationship is experimentally confirmed. This means that if someone believes in us, we are capable of more.

Ideas about yourself and the world can help you cope with complex tasks, be productive and successful, and achieve goals. To do this, learn to choose the right beliefs or change them. For starters, at least believe in it.