Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
Our beliefs are the rules that we follow. They tell us what to expect and how to react. Many of our beliefs were picked up so early in life that we follow them without ever examining them.
‘True’ Beliefs Versus Useful Beliefs
Here are two opposing beliefs that you may have come across:
“Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
“Life is an adventure, people are basically good, and I can achieve anything I want.”
Which one is true? If you think about it, you can provide evidence from your own life to support either one. So both – or neither – are true. Beliefs are like maps that help us find our way around. The most important question about them is not “Are they true?” but “Are they useful?”
Consider two different maps of the same area – a street map and a weather map. Both of them are ‘right’ as far as they go, but they look very different and which one is more useful to you is going to depend on what you want to do.
Beliefs Create Their Own Evidence
Whichever belief you hold becomes a filter through which you interpret everything that happens. Evidence that supports your chosen belief will be highlighted, while evidence that contradicts it will be played down or not even noticed.
The “life’s a bitch” believer will act in a way that makes sense to them in the light of that belief, which will be very different to how someone acts if they believe that “life is an adventure”. The results they get will tend to bear out whichever belief they hold. The longer and more deeply held the belief is, the more ‘evidence’ it will accumulate – so your beliefs are like the ‘script’ for your life.
Some Examples From Psychological Research
There are many well-known examples of research studies supporting the idea that what you believe influences the real outcome of events in your life.
Three effects which are often cited are:
- The ‘Placebo Effect’, where some patients in the ‘control group’ in clinical drug trials get better, convinced they are receiving effective medicine, even though the ‘treatment’ they are given is really just a sugar pill.
- The ‘Halo Effect’ discovered by Edward Thorndike in 1920 – this established that if you strongly like one particular characteristic that you see in a person, you are more likely to rate the same person higher for a variety of other positive traits, whether or not you have evidence to support your rating.
- The ‘Pygmalion Effect’ described by Robert Rosenthal in 1968 – which showed that how effectively and successfully children perform academically is strongly influenced by what their teachers believe about how smart they are.
Since what you believe tends to become true for you, it’s important to think carefully about what you believe to make sure that it supports your success.
This is an extract from my new book, Achieve Your Goals, Second Edition: Strategies from NLP and Psychology to Transform Your Life. Get it now, in paperback or Kindle formats!
© 2026, Andy Smith. All rights reserved.