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Your beliefs can propel you ahead. But they also can hinder you. Understanding and taking control of your beliefs may be the secret for your career success.
“Beliefs aren’t simply thoughts or feelings. They’re tools – working models we use to navigate reality when the truth isn’t fully knowable,” consultant and serial entrepreneur Nir Eyal writes in Beyond Belief, with journalist Julie Li.
He argues like a carpenter choosing between a hammer or a saw, you can select beliefs based on how they serve your goals. You can select based on usefulness rather than provability. But the beliefs should hold up to real world feedback, remain open to revision and not require ignoring evidence to sustain them.
We have been told that “seeing is believing.” But his look at scientific research found the opposite is true. Believing is seeing. We can redirect attention and gain greater control of our lives, notably with rumination.
Too often, we see problems that don’t exist. He points to a software engineer who kept ruminating about a critical comment by her boss after a presentation she made. Maria had made many excellent presentations. But now she was creating a reality in which she was lousy at speaking in formal presentations and meetings.
“When you ruminate, you selectively direct your attention toward evidence that confirms your negative belief while filtering out contradictory information,” Mr. Eyal notes.
To counter it you must redirect your attention and thinking by proving yourself wrong. As Maria did, create a reality log documenting every interaction related to the issue of concern, widening your understanding of the situation. Build in some distance from the issue by referring to yourself in the third person when thinking about the problem, a little trick psychologists call illeism.
So instead of Maria thinking “I made a fool of myself when I couldn’t answer that question,” it became “Maria got caught off guard by an unexpected question.” Push back on your rumination by asking, “Is thinking about this for the 15th time today helping me?”
Mr. Eyal stresses that attention is a spotlight illuminating just a tiny fraction of all the available information. You can choose whether to let that spotlight be guided by the belief that you must analyze why you keep failing or you can choose to embrace the belief that gaining a broader perspective and balance will help you more. “We don’t passively see reality – we assemble it. And what we assemble depends on what we believe,” he says.
Beliefs can act as emotional forecasts, shaping your energy, moods and performance. Told you are sipping a $20 bottle of wine or a $200 bottle can prime your expectations and influence what you experience. In a study, golfers told they were using a professional player’s putter performed better than those told the club they had been handed was an ordinary one.
He recommends selective skepticism to beliefs and assumptions. If a belief is serving you by adding delight, motivation, focus or connection to your life, there’s no need to shatter it even if it sits on a shaky foundation so that the joy you experience is mostly coming from believing.
But if a belief is draining you – for example, you must maintain your social media image or you should avoid new opportunities because you can’t handle change – it’s best to question that assumption. “Your negative anticipation is sabotaging your actual experience,” he warns.
Belief can be powerful when it fuels agency – taking control of your life, even when that seems impossible. His recommendation: Believe you have control, even when you don’t.
That doesn’t mean clinging to unrealistic positive thinking. It involves finding direct evidence – small wins on doable challenges – that prove your actions matter. “Each time you take on a challenge just beyond your comfort zone and succeed, you give your brain undeniable proof that your actions shape outcomes,” he says.
And those beliefs shape future successes. So pick them – generate them – wisely.
Quick hits
- While studying neuroscience, Anne-Laure Le Cunff decided to help reinforce her new knowledge by writing 100 short blog posts in 100 weekdays based on her studies, trying to turn a concept from neuroscience into something practical people could apply in everyday life. But she stumbled badly, finding each time she sat down to write what she thought she knew her understanding was not nearly as clear as she believed. She learned we confuse familiarity with understanding and urges you to challenge yourself by picking some concepts about your work you think you understand and trying to explain it step by step without looking anything up, learning from where you got stuck.
- Ottawa thought leader Shane Parrish argues “90 per cent of success is not getting distracted.”
- Life and work are not a race, says author James Clear: “You are not ahead. You are not behind. You are here. Enjoy it and make the most of it.”
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.