All human beings are born as blank slates. Whatever beliefs we acquire, are a result of the situations we find ourselves in as we go through life. These situations shape our minds by influencing our thinking patterns, perceptions, reactions and behaviors. These situations, including factors like the relationship with our parents and peers and the relationships of people around us with one another, help us define our core beliefs.
These beliefs, then define the way we look at life and become an integral part of our individual identities. Some of these beliefs may include, “If I work hard, I will succeed”, and “I am a talented person because people like what I do”. These are examples of positive beliefs and help us progress in life, open us up to situations and scenarios that make us happy, and encourage a sense of positivity in our lives.
In the same way, our minds also develop negative beliefs, also known as “limiting beliefs”, owing to the nature of the impact they have on our lives. These negative beliefs are acquired from repetitive negative scenarios; for example, witnessing an abusive relationship between parents might lead to negative beliefs around love, relationships and marriage, which, in turn, affect how we see life and react to it.
These positive and negative beliefs make up our fundamental belief system—which helps us see the world as we do and impacts our responses to it. Let’s look at this impact in a little more detail.
The Positives And Negatives Of Our Belief Systems
Positive beliefs encourage a sense of self-reliance, confidence, success and growth in us. They urge us to try harder, keep us from giving up and instill a sense of healthy competition in us. These positive beliefs also help us maintain healthy relationships and have an overall positive outlook on life.
For example, a person who grew up in a loving family, witnessing a healthy relationship between parents, is likely to grow up into a person who values relationships, commitment and has a wholesome attitude toward their partner. These people are also likely to be considerate and empathetic.
On the other hand, a person who grew up with parents who shared an abusive relationship will find it harder to commit to someone, trust people and is likely to have unhealthy attachment issues. This person is also likely to be equally as abusive as their parents and has a high chance of being involved with an abusive partner as well.
All of this happens because of how our fundamental belief system has defined our world view and can have both, positive and negative impacts on our lives, depending on what we believe more strongly.
How Negative Beliefs Impact Us
The impact of negative beliefs can vary from mild to severe self-sabotage and sometimes, even be dangerous for the people around us.
For example, the belief “I am not capable enough”, can lead us to accept failure in the first stages of trying something and sometimes even before attempting it. This can be destructive in many ways, including emotionally, physically and can even get to the point where it starts affecting our relationships.
Another way these beliefs hold us back is by making us constantly dwell on our failures. This often makes us look at future challenges by way of our past experiences, eroding us of confidence and self-reliance.
A popular negative belief is “good things come to those who wait”. While it may sound like there is nothing wrong with this one, it often makes us settle for less than we deserve.
Apart from the negative psychological impact of these beliefs on us, there are also deeper, mental setbacks that these can put forward. An example is learning disabilities. Let’s take a look at how these beliefs affect our learning.
Negative Beliefs And Learning Abilities—And How They Are Connected To Needs
This often starts at a young age and progresses steadily into adulthood—often because of our basic human needs aren’t met. Everyone is born with a set of needs that needto be met to help them develop into healthy, stable adults. One of these needs is to feel validated and encouraged.
When a child is encouraged, they feel a sense of achievement and a boost in their confidence, pushing them to do more, instilling a belief in them that they are talented and gifted and enhancing their mental capacities by keeping their mind receptive and motivated. Every time they’re encouraged and validated, this belief is reinforced, and the mental patterns are enhanced until it becomes a part of their personality. This makes them feel safe with depending and relying only on themselves.
So, in a way, encouragement makes a person more intelligent.
The opposite, however, is also true.
When this basic need for encouragement and motivation is not met, it instills a negative belief of not being good enough that can manifest into reduced learning capacity by closing their minds off to the idea of success and progress.
This can also happen for someone who doesn’t come from a highly successful family background, which makes them set the bar too low with the belief, “people from my family don’t get successful.”
NIKU—And How It Can Help Fix These Beliefs
Since most negative beliefs arise from not having our basic needs being met, the most logical way to go about fixing them, is to tackle these beliefs head-on and start the healing process by satisfying those needs.
Fortunately, these needs can be fixed. Using reframing, your unfulfilled needs can be given an entirely new context, making it easier to meet them, even in adulthood.
To try out reframing, you can easily download NIKU, an app available on both, the Apple App Store and Google PlayStore. This app works on ‘reframing of needs’ principal and functions as an online psychological counselor or a life coach, helping you look at life with a fresh, new perspective.
