Beliefs And Judgements

Today I’m going to be talking about beliefs and judgements, how they can be useful to us, and how they can be really not very useful to us, how to know the difference, and how to make the not useful ones, useful.

So why is it that beliefs and judgments can be important to understand?

A lot of our beliefs, and judgements are self reinforcing. Whatever you believe, you get to be right. It gets to be true. However you judge yourself, or judge other people, you get to be right. It gets to be true. Because we are psychologically set up, neurologically set up to sort for what we already know.

So there’s a little piece of our brain called your RAS, your Reticular Activating System, and it’s like a radar, and it’s permanently going woop, woop, woop, woop. It’s looking for evidence to support your beliefs and your judgements.

So if you believe that you’re not good enough, for example, your little RAS will go out and it will look for evidence that you’re not good enough. And it’ll conveniently ignore all the bits of evidence that prove that you are good enough.

If you believe that all white men of a certain age are bigots, your RAS will do the same thing. It’ll go out, and look for evidence that all white men of a certain age of bigots and it’ll find that evidence and it’ll ignore the rest.

And the problem with that is that, while sometimes some of your judgements may be true, a lot of the time, because we ignore evidence to the contrary of what we believe, then we lose sight of other realities, other possibilities, other people’s model of the world.

We lose opportunities for our own growth and learning

And that seems to me rather sad. That seems to me rather unfortunate. So what can we do about this?

Well, I found it really interesting that the reason that I came up with this post was that I saw a post in a women’s group that I’m in on Facebook.

This woman had posted something that was really quite controversial.

The post had a picture of her and she had this most amazing piece of jewellery around her neck and I love jewellery. Those of you who know me well, will know that I like funky jewellery.

So I noticed the jewellery, saw the face, noticed the jewellery, read the top of the post. First few lines of the post were really in your face, quite controversial. If I can find them, I’ll just read them to you… Yeah, here we go.

“Visionary, sexy five figure coaching versus responsive, dull, four figure coaching, and the energetic pulse behind charging five figures. No matter what kind of coach you are. If you’re labouring under a belief that, because you’re a love coach, or mother coach, or whatever-the-f*ck coach, you’re not able to charge five figures for your package because business coaching is the only way to do that. I’m here to challenge you into your higher belief, because, no!”

And then she goes on and talks about what she wants to talk about. And the first few lines had me thinking, ‘Hang on lady, this is a bit in your face’ and I wasn’t going to read on but I decided I would.

And reading on, she was making some really interesting points.

Points about spirituality, points about our attitudes, and points about disruption and the importance of a coach being disruptive. And I thought, wow, this is good stuff.

At the end of the post, she remarked that the photo of her was of her topless on a Greek island and that’s why she’d taken it. The responses to this. It got people going. It triggered people. It triggered a lot of women in the group.

It was a topless photo with the jewellery and little hearts over the nipples, because Facebook doesn’t like nudity. The picture wound the people up. The fact that she was talking about five figure packages wound people up.

Now me, I hadn’t even noticed she was topless and the reason I hadn’t even noticed that she was topless, was because I was entranced with the jewellery. I was sorting for what interested me. I was sorting for the jewellery. I just thought, great jewellery.

Because I was willing to overlook my judgements about her initial statements, I was able to read on and I was able to learn something and engage mentally in a discussion that was interesting about the power of disruption and coaching. Which, had I stuck with my initial judgment, I wouldn’t have been able to do. And that was what really prompted this post because so much of the time that’s what we do.

We get completely fixated on the bit that interests us, the bit that seems relevant and we ignore the rest.

There’s a story told about Gandhi, that when he came to the UK one time, he was basically wandering around the streets of London in a loin cloth.

Now, if you’d been there at that time and you hadn’t known that was Gandhi and you had a judgement about a poor old man in a loincloth and why aren’t his carers doing something about it? You would have completely missed the fact that you were witnessing one of the greatest international political figures walking down the street in front of you, just because of your judgements.

A client of mine, she’s got a great thing going down in Frome, the I Know Campaign. And what she’s doing is encouraging parents to support other parents.

You know, you go in the supermarket, you’re in a hurry, there’s a woman in there, her kid’s kicked off, it’s all over the place. She’s at the till. She can’t find her purse. She can’t find her credit card. You’re in the queue behind her and the instinctive thing is to just go, ‘Oh, for f*ck’s sake!’

And what my client is doing, she’s encouraging people to go, ‘No, I know. I get it. I understand. I’ll suspend judgement about the way the child is behaving, because I’m not a parent, but I know just about every parent I know has had those experiences where public place, child kicks off, embarrassment, shame, stress.’

So when we suspend our judgements, very often we become much kinder, we become much more loving towards others, and we become much more loving towards ourselves.

And, because if you believe you’re not good enough, you’re going to support that. You’re going to sort for evidence you’re not good enough, it makes us kinder of towards ourselves. It makes us more loving towards ourselves.

How can you be kinder towards yourself?

How can you check your judgments and use them in a more healthy way? Check your beliefs and use them in a more healthy way. If you have a belief about yourself that you’re not good enough, do a release process.

I teach Hawai’ian Huna. One of the processes I teach is higher self therapy. Ho’oku’u. It’s a great fast release process for releasing those beliefs that we have ourselves that probably aren’t true anymore. They may have been true when we first believed them but they probably aren’t true anymore.

The belief that I’m not loveable, I’m not pretty enough, or I’m not clever enough, or I don’t have enough qualifications. That was one for me. I’ve got five, or possibly six degrees, I kind of lose count, but  I always used to tell myself that I didn’t have enough qualifications, so I kept going on and getting them. It didn’t change much I just learned a lot, but still I thought I didn’t have enough qualifications.

So whatever those beliefs are, you can release them pretty quickly.

If you’ve got judgments about people, you can use that to check in with yourself.

Because one of the problems about judgements is, when you make a judgement about another person, on an unconscious level, what you’re doing is telling yourself that this kind of person is wrong, that this person is not the kind of person that you want to be.

For example, you see an extraordinarily fat person wandering down the street. They’re sweating profusely. They’re breathing with great difficulty. And you look at them, and you go… So fat. Really, why don’t they do something about it? That’s just awful. It’s awful to be so fat.

At an unconscious level, what you’re saying to yourself is, it’s awful to be fat. Now, if you happen to be having weight problems and you are unconsciously running this judgement, it’s awful to be fat, you’re going to judge that for yourself as well as for the people that you see out there.

So when you find yourself making a judgement about somebody that you see out there, then just check in with yourself.

When I make that judgement about that person, they’re too fat, they’re too ugly, they’re too stupid. Where am I making that judgement about me? Where do I believe that about me? And then you can let go of it.

Because all this is about awareness. It’s about using the world as our barometer.

Whatever you see out there in the world is a barometer for what’s going on inside you.

If you have a belief that the world is a great place and everything will be well, that’s the experience you’ll tend to manifest for yourself.

But if you believe that the world is a sh*t place and it’s too difficult, it’s too hard and you’re not lucky and you’re never going to have luck, that’s the kind of experience you’re going to have, that you’re going to attract to yourself.

So when you change your beliefs, when you change your judgements, when you change your willingness to stop and listen, then you potentially change everything for yourself.

So, I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to this little Facebook Live. If you’ve got any comments do put them in the comment box. I’d love to see them. And let’s have a discussion about it.

Join me in my Facebook group Secret Art of Huna Live, and I’m starting a new thing, the Secret Art of Huna Pioneers Club, where I’ll actually be supporting people going through the release processes like Ho’oku’u and other things I look forward to seeing you in one of those. Bye for now.