Belief: Why It's Important

Belief is an acceptance that something is true. It could be confidence that a statement, doctrine, opinion or principle is true. It could be confidence in oneself. If you have little confidence in yourself, then you have little belief in your abilities.

Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Pagans, Witches, Wiccans and other religious or spiritual people have a belief in their Gods/Goddess/Great Creator.

Highly effective people also have a strong belief. Belief, faith, convictions, confidence, certainty and trust are all synonymous. I once expressed to my brother that when people lose hope, they soon die. That was in 1983. The reason I remember that date is they were discussing George Orwell's book, "1984". I believe we lose hope when our belief/faith wavers due to whatever is or has been happening in our life. I have at times almost lost hope in my darkest hours. When those times happen, I question my beliefs, at times almost endlessly. I suppose you could call it "the dark night of the soul." Once I have gone over all the facts I have, I usually decide that my belief is correct, or else I make corrections in my understanding.

When I am questioning my belief, I have little interest in most things. My attitude seems to be "Why bother?" at that time. Does this make me stronger? I think it does. Because, being stubborn, I still hold on to my belief even through all this.

When our belief in whatever it is that we believe in, wavers, our life suffers. Highly effective people have high confidence in their abilities to get the job done. Students may get all "A's", and yet when their belief in themselves falters, they begin to get lower grades. I am a student and I had a GPA of 4.0 and then I took College Mathematics I. My GPA dropped to 2.88. Ouch! I was devastated. I have always loved learning new subjects. Math has always been my weakest subject. My belief in myself plummeted and that was the result.

In other words, when we allow our belief to waver, we suffer. Most of our lives are spent believing or not believing in something. We spend an endless amount of time questioning many things. We need to question things. Sometimes what we believe in is a falsehood, a fictitious belief. From the time we are born, there are many influential factors in our lives. People around us, any material we read, movies we watch, music we listen too, teachers, parents, grandparents, politicians, priests, and preachers. The list goes on.

We are sometimes confused about what to believe. However, there is truth. Sometimes it is like in John 18:38, when Pilate asked Jesus "What is truth?" Jesus did not answer. I believe it is because of how we perceive things. We all perceive truth on different levels. The truth is inside of us, as well as around us.