Thinklet

Understanding Your Core Beliefs core

Why Use It

Becoming aware of our beliefs and how they impact our thinking can be a giant step in improving personal thinking. For many of us, our thinking is programmed to a remarkable degree by our life’s experiences. Throughout our lives we acquire beliefs, inclinations, opinions and biases that greatly influence how we view the world and make decisions. If not understood clearly, our beliefs and biases can unconsciously limit our thought process.

However, if we recognize this potential for weakness in our thinking we can decide to alter beliefs in order to strengthen our thinking.

How to Use It

Use the following template to help you determine core beliefs. Note: Core beliefs do evolve and you can change them. They are not fixed for life but are generally more difficult to change.

Finding Core Beliefs

Step	Action	Response
1	List five emotions that you experience most frequently in your life. (Emotion examples: angry, happy, surprised, sad, disgusted, laughing, afraid,. bored, in love, fear, confused, embarrassed, impatient, nervous, stubborn, jealous, hope, anxiety, guilt.)
2	Think of a time in the last week when you experienced one of these emotions. Write down what you were doing at the time.
3	Ask yourself the questions: “Why did this situation give me this feeling?” Or you can use the phrase “In that situation, what was I (fill in your emotion) about?”
4.	From your response to step 3, ask yourself, “Why does it matter?” “Why is this important to me?”
5	From you response to step 4, again ask yourself, “Why does it matter or is important to me?” Note: Repeat this process 2-3 more times or until you find yourself repeating the same response or an answer like ‘it just is’.
6	The response to step 5 is likely to be one of your core beliefs
7	To find other core beliefs, do this for the remaining four emotions listed in step 1.

Assessing Core Beliefs

Now that you have identified some core beliefs, the next step is to determine; “Is this belief my own, or, someone else’s?” Note: Making beliefs your own is a very important, particularly for becoming self aware.

My beliefs are my own: These are beliefs that an individual finds to be personally true. They come about when an individual has evaluated the belief and have found from experience that it is true for themselves or has evaluated others who hold this belief and accept it as true. Note: the key here is a conscious evaluation that this is “Truth for me!”

My beliefs come from others: These are beliefs that have been adopted and assumed to be true. Generally they develop over time and are beliefs developed throughout childhood. You may have accepted them without evaluation or given to you with great insistence or even force.

How to Use

For each of your core beliefs, apply the following questions to discover your own truth.

Assessing Core Beliefs Template

List a core belief.
Facilitator Trigger Question	My Response
Is this belief generally true for most people?
Is it true for me?
Does it work when I apply it?
How certain am I about it?
Is this my own belief?
Is this a belief I adopted? From whom? Why?
Do you want to change your core belief?