Do Beliefs Emerge or Erupt?

Ponder this: If you label a behavior, does it become a belief?

Five-year-old Zachary remembers daydreaming for what seemed like an eternity while waiting for his Grandma to get ready for a shopping trip. She said, “Thanks for waiting. Such patience you have Zachary.” Zachary claims that his Grandma’s remark shaped him into a patient person. Since then he prides himself in always entertaining himself while waiting.

In the movie Field of Dreams, an Iowa corn farmer hears voices and interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his cornfield. He does, and the 1919 Chicago White…

We all experience defining moments in our lives. What events shaped your beliefs about yourself? What are your formative moments?

Random events transform us. Beliefs about our abilities, confidence, and self-esteem often arise from unpredictable events. They may appear trivial to others while significant to us.

Are you clever? How did that belief develop? Are you creative? How did that mindset materialize? How and when did your defining features emerge? For example, Samantha felt her shyness was a weakness until her swim coach surprised her by naming her captain. He told the team, “She may be quiet, but when this…

To see how our brains construct our interpersonal reality, let’s start with a simple illustration of how our brains continuously predict events in the concrete world.

Concrete Events

Imagine you’re blindfolded in your home and placed sitting at the foot of your bed. I give you a task: Make your way to the living room to turn on the TV. Also, imagine that the people you live with haven’t cluttered your house with potential obstacles and hazards. You might impress yourself by doing this relatively quickly and easily. Relative to what you might ask. How about relative to achieving that…

Avoid empty praise and move toward prescriptive encouragement.

Before you read further, choose from the four options below. What’s the relationship between self-esteem and school success? I define self-esteem as a person’s overall sense of personal value, self-worth.

Option 1: The correlation is positive. When one increases, so does the other. If Dawn feels better about herself, her school success climbs. Or, if her school success improves, her self-esteem rises.

Option 2: The correlation is negative. As one increases, the other decreases. If Dawn’s school success improves, she values herself less, and vice versa.

Option 3: No correlation exists. One…

Many on the left keep hoping that Republican members of Congress will call out President Trump. They shouldn’t, even if they disagree with him. To do so is disingenuous.

If you hold elected office, you swore to uphold those you represent. If your constituents don’t reflect your views/beliefs, resign. Republicans attacking Trump make themselves hypocrites. It’s an act of deceit.

Pundits say that conservatives find themselves between a rock and a hard place. No, no, no. No rock. No hard place. It just is.

Trump received more votes than any Republican hopeful in history. He’s arguably the most popular president in the annals of that party. Liberals expecting conservatives to see the light show their arrogance. This “light” of illumination translates to seeing things my way.

That said, I’m guilty too, and I wish everybody saw the world the way I do.

Watch for Surprises

When you turn on your Meaning-Making-Moment radar, you become the architect of your belief system.

While working on her poem at the kitchen table, Lauren’s father entered the room and commented, “You work too hard at your schoolwork.” The comment surprised her.

She explained to her father, “This is the first schoolwork I’ve done all day. You just haven’t seen me before now.” Although the reply to her father emerged in a flash, her conscious meaning-making reflection took considerably longer.

Lauren has meaning-making radar; she tunes into what happens during a surprise moment. Here’s what she told me when she…

It’s socialized, not socialism.

I get it. When you look at some failed socialist states, it stirs fear. Caution though, socialized concepts are not socialism any more than playing catch means you’re playing baseball.

Let’s play catch.

If you watch sports, game shows, American Idol, Survivor, you want the players to match up evenly. Level competition makes watching entertaining. Competitors must try their best. Any lax effort by one creates an opportunity for another. Competitors must always stay “on their game.”

Indy racers use identical cars, engines, and even tires. Everything is uniform except the drivers, mechanics, the pit crew…

Beliefs Trigger Self-Serving Agendas

When my wife and I drive home from the same location, we take different routes. She claims her route has less traffic. I tell her my method is faster. She prefers less congestion, and if we encounter heavy traffic, she notes it as an anomaly: “There must be some event here today.” I prefer expedience, and if my method bogs down, I explain it as an irregularity or stress some other self-serving interpretation. Neither of us is likely to change routes.

Why is it that seventy percent of us believe we are better-than-average drivers, more trustworthy, better at spotting deception…