Core Beliefs – the lens of our lives

“Whether your sunglasses are on or off, you only see the world you make.” – Bonnie Raitt

Core beliefs are our most central ideas about ourselves, others, and the world. These beliefs act like a lens through which every situation and life experience is seen. Core beliefs can be harmful or helpful. Even if a core belief is inaccurate, it still shapes how a person sees the world. Harmful core beliefs lead to negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, whereas empowering core beliefs lead to more positive outcomes and balanced reactions.

Once you have a core belief, it will cause you to only be able to see things from one perspective – lens of perspective – that agrees with or perpetuates the belief. This lens also serves as a selective filter, through which you collect evidence that matches up with what you already believe is true. Thankfully, core beliefs can be reviewed, revised, and replaced where necessary.

A simple way to identify your core beliefs is to use a basic tool of CBT known as a Thought Record. Start by creating 3 columns labeled as A, B, and C on a sheet of paper or in an excel file and track the events that trigger negative emotions.

In column A, list the Activating event or the event you are aware of. Then skip over to column C and write down the emotional Consequence of A. For example, if in column A the event is, your boss gives you a bad work review, then in column C you would write down how that made you feel such as angry or depressed. Then go back to column B and write down what it is you Believe to be true about A that led to the emotion you listed in column C. 

A: My boss gave me a bad review B: I am being treated unfairly C: Angry 

If you do this exercise for 30 days listing at least 4-5 events per week on the thought record, what you will find is that there will be lots of different situations in column A but the thoughts in column B will have similar themes that emerge, such as The universe is against me. The themes that result reflect your core beliefs. 

Once you are aware of your core beliefs then you are in a position to work on getting rid of the ones that don’t serve you, and creating new beliefs that are more effective for what you want and who you want to be in the world. If you do this exercise and find you still have trouble seeing the core patterns in your thinking, it may be beneficial to work with a therapist that specializes in CBT to help you.

Once you’ve identified beliefs that are not serving you, you’ll want to replace them. In order to change your core beliefs, you must start with new ones that are believable to you and gradually build toward bigger and better ones. This usually requires evidence that the new belief you want is true and thereby makes the old one false.

A helpful suggestion from one of my peers who is an elementary school teacher, was a concept that he would often practice with his students, The Superpower of Yet. As inherent and innate as a core belief is, you simply can’t turn it off with the flick of a switch. It takes time and persistence. You can’t just jump from “I’m  a terrible person” to “I’m awesome” It must be gradual. Begin with “I’m getting better every day.” With time, as limiting beliefs arise, you can remind yourself that they are no longer true, and that your new belief is.

We are born courageous. Picture a baby first trying to stand up. I’ve yet to see one succeed on the very first try. Then, picture a toddler and his/her first attempt to walk. Again, I’ve yet to see a successful first attempt. Did they give up? No! The instances of failure that they encounter does not stop or limit them. Instead, they courageously continue the active pursuit of accomplishing what they set out to do, going after what they want until their goal is reached. The same is true for shifting from limiting core beliefs to empowering core beliefs.

Another helpful tool for recording the core beliefs that you can identify is journaling. By reflecting on the beliefs, you can begin to expose how they manifest in your expectations of life. Expectations represent our presumptions and bias for how we interpret the world.

Therefore, if our formative expectations are that the world is a terrible place, our limiting beliefs will reflect that negativity and our experiences will confirm that bias.  Likewise, if our formative expectations are that life is beautiful, our beliefs will reflect that positivity and our experiences will affirm the presumption. 

“The mind is everything. What you think, you become.” - Buddha

Core beliefs have a compounding effect where one negative becomes ten, which becomes 100, and so on. Thankfully, the same is true for the positive compounds as well.  An exercise that we practiced nightly while in therapy during “Wind Down”, was to each answer 3 questions about our day:

1. What is one thing you want to leave behind today?

2. What was your therapeutic highlight of the day?

3. What is one thing that you are grateful for and why?

Negatives were always easy to recall, and I can only remember a handful of times when I or one of my peers had nothing to leave behind. People tend to focus on their negative experiences far more than their positive experiences. This is true in just about every aspect of life. A single fight with a friend will feel so much bigger than the hundreds of positive interactions that came before it.

Therapeutic highlights were a bridge to turn off the negative switch and begin to reflect on the positive. Reflecting on a positive, no matter how small, gets you in the habit of noticing positive experiences as they happen, and giving them more attention.

The last was the icing on the cake. Naming something you were grateful for, and why, was really the point of the Wind Down. To take time to reflect on the experiences of the day and remember at least one thing that you were grateful for.  Specifying “why?” promotes a deeper connection to the experience and causes the memory to become more rooted.  

I shared this with my kids when I returned from treatment as a helpful tool for us to practice together and was pleasantly surprised to learn that a schoolteacher had implemented a similar Mindfulness practice in class:  Rose, Bud, Thorn. The thorn was something you felt stuck with or needed help with; bud represented something that you were looking forward to; and rose signified something positive that had happened. It’s said to have begun in the Boy Scouts as a retrospective analytical practice. It is used across companies and teams to recognize positives, potential, and pain points. 

In NA and AA they recommend keeping a Gratitude Journal. Personally, that’s a bridge too far. But many of my peers found it to be very helpful. Given the severity of my depression and the decades of tenure held by my negative core beliefs, my mindfulness coach suggested I start small. As part of my nightly journaling, I was tasked with writing down 1 win for the day. At first, it was a struggle. I could barely recall anything winning about the day, apart from survival. Over time, it became difficult to narrow it down!

We only have one life to live. How we live it and what we achieve is our own personal decision and choice. The only limits are those which we place upon ourselves. As we think, we feel, and as we feel, we do. If you want to change what you do or change what you feel, you can explore, identify, challenge and change the limiting beliefs that are holding you back. If you allow limiting beliefs to have control over what you do or don’t do, you’ll never have the opportunity to discover what you can do.

I hope you will join me in removing the shades from your pursuit of the things you want to achieve and have in your life. Identifying and disputing negative core beliefs is critical to establishing personal wellbeing. Stay tuned for more!

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