The Power of a Strong Inner Belief System

Great men are born and not made. They are born the moment they start recognizing the power of their inner self-belief. This is where most of the leadership programs that are taught these days miss the mark.

Instead, they try to teach leadership and self-improvement as a way of recreating a certain set of values that are found in revered leaders and great men. It is not at all a bad approach, but to develop the confidence you need to understand yourself first. You need to have a strong inner belief system.

This is why the great psychiatrist Carl Jung rightly said, “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

It can be said that most of us are born with a belief system, but most of us die without ever making it as one of our greatest strengths. In today’s stifling culture, millennials really need to know who they are. They need to know how to self-manage themselves by showing the courage to trust their own intuitions and move forward. In a single phrase — we need to achieve a greater level of self-confidence.

But there is a catch. The inner belief system is not just restricted to knowing ourselves better. It is more about developing ourselves. A strong belief system has 4 components: Knowledge, Vision, Intuition and Attitude. Only when the strength of these components is combined, that one is able to achieve something great.

For example, knowledge is not restricted to the collection of facts. It is more about understanding deeply the viewpoint of another person. Intuition comes from experience and by developing a trust in your gut feeling. Now only when great knowledge, the right attitude, strong intuition and a clear vision combine that one is able to achieve something great.

Apart from this, there are other benefits of having a strong inner belief system.

It Helps Eliminate Repetitive Thought Patterns

According to the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at the University of Southern California, an average person has about 48 thoughts per minute. This amounts to 70K thoughts per day. Further, it suggests that almost ninety percent of them are same.

It means that our inner belief is a habit that we live with. It is a thought pattern that one can get hold of and then control. The process begins by looking for exaggerated or unfounded thoughts that strike us much frequently than the meaningful ones. We can then eliminate these thoughts by coming to grips with our false beliefs (rooted in childhood memories).

It also helps us truly understand the motive behind our individual acts. Some acts can betray a strong meaning like lanterns that provide a view into our own personalities.

It Helps Awakens Our Mind

The mind is where your every memory is stored. The memories stored in our mind guide us. Every memory has an interpretation (which can be right or wrong). And this interpretation guides us. The random or systematic thoughts you have in the brain is your conscious mind. Systematic thoughts are the result of an inner belief system to extract information from the subconscious mind. A strong inner belief system helps extract useful information more easily than a weaker one.

It is like a link between the conscious and the subconscious mind. A lens that lies between the two of them. You can mold this lens and utilize it to focus your incoming thoughts to achieve a purpose. This is why they say to always believe in yourself.

It Prevents Us From Being Misunderstood

Wrong judgments are a cause of misunderstandings. But most of the times, if you are misjudged, is because of your own actions. One reason for this could be your failure to understand the hidden driver of your actions and statements. It can blind you to look how others perceive you and weaken your relationships. To stop this we need to understand the situation in its entirety.

Our emotional response stems from our past experience and belief system. Someone who has not put in an effort to understand his or her operating narrative is always under the risk of being provoked by demanding situations. The consequence of which is the failure to be understood properly.

With time, those whom we work with impart their energy in controlling these provocative situations rather than understanding our point of view. To be seen as our true self we need to understand the inner beliefs that drive us and present a positive pattern of making a connection with others.

It Helps us Become a Naturally Happy Person

Many times the cause of unhappiness is our helplessness to overcome our failure. The Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman says in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, “Luck plays a major role in every story of success. It is easy to see how a small change in the story can result in a big difference.”

This means that sometimes success is not in our hands and there is no need to doubt ourselves. Having a strong inner belief system helps us see the real side of the story. It keeps our faith inclined and helps us overcome our failures.

Our happiness then stems from valuing the potential of our belief system rather than the ability of what we can buy with it at the moment. It becomes natural.

Remember, that having a strong belief system is to always believe that you can achieve great things. It helps us incline ourselves in the right direction when faced with difficult times. It is like a superpower that every human can reap great benefits from.

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Vartika Kashyap currently runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. She is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.