I will never forget the day I heard the words, “A belief is just something you’ve thought about over and over.” “Whaaaat?”, I heard myself ask. I was listening to an audio while getting ready for work and the person speaking said, “You know, a belief is just something you’ve thought about over and over. It is a practiced thought. It is true because you believe it and you believe it because you have practiced the thought.” I was stunned. I had never thought about it that way. I assumed, childishly perhaps, that my beliefs were true because well, they were true. They had to be true because well, I believed them right? I hit pause on the recording, went over to my desk, took out a piece of paper and pen, and wrote the words – a belief is just something I’ve thought about over and over. That one sentence rocked my world and sent me on a quest that has changed the trajectory of my life.
Here is what it says in my dictionary app.
be-lief, n.
1. a principle, proposition. idea, etc. accepted as true
2. opinion, conviction
Do you see what I see? Nowhere does it say a belief is true. It says “accepted as true”. It may be a conviction that is so strong, so deeply ingrained that it feels “true”. But, a conviction does not make something true. Or does it?
How this one sentence changed my life is that, from that moment on, I began questioning and challenging my beliefs. I started asking myself what I believed about all sorts of things on every subject. I wondered what I had been believing my whole life just because it had been taught to me. There were quite a few things that I had accepted as truth without doing my own research. There was a period of time when I felt unstable because I no longer knew what to believe, or what I believed. Out of the questions and chaos came a feeling of power and stability. For the first time in my life, I realized that I get to choose what I believe and accept as truth. I get to hold my beliefs accountable to my values and my convictions. It is easy to go along accepting something is the way it is because it has always been that way. Sometimes we need something to come along to challenge the belief we have been holding as true to take us to something better.
Here is a story from my own experience that brings this home. This story is almost embarrassing because it seems so obvious now…
I owned a cake shop in Anaheim for 13 years. I started out making cakes from home, had never worked in a bakery, and had never even ordered a cake from a bakery. I used quarter and half-sheet pans that I had purchased at a local store that was geared toward the home baker. When I opened my actual shop, I bought more of the same-size quarter-sheet and half-sheet pans that I was already using. I never questioned it. Somewhere along the line, I learned that our cakes were a bit bigger than the industry standard because I remember our menu said “oversized” quarter and half-sheet, still I never thought to question my choice. It was just the way I had been doing it and the way it was. There wasn’t anything wrong with our cakes being bigger but somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought it would be nice to have them be the same size as all the other shops. Well… one day, after having been open for SEVERAL years, a salesman came in selling some beautiful cake boards. They were scalloped and had a waxy texture to the top that would make it easy to wipe off. I looked at those cake boards longingly. I could picture our cakes on those beautiful boards and I remember thinking that our cakes deserved to be on them. But, I explained to the salesman, I could not have them because they didn’t have the sizes I needed. You see, I told him, our cakes were oversized and his boards were too small for our cakes. He shook his head, left his card, and on his way, he went.
A few days later I was in my van, listening to an audio series about business when I heard the speaker ask, “If you could start your business over knowing everything you know today, what would you do differently?” Immediately I answered myself, “I would have industry standard quarter and half-sheet cakes.” At that moment, for the first time, it dawned on me that maybe I could. I excitedly called Kelly, my baker, and asked her to count how many quarter and half-sheet pans we had. She called me back a few minutes later with the number. When I returned to the shop I got out the price list from our distributor and added up what it would take to replace them with industry-standard size pans. It was, in the big scheme of things, a nominal amount as in maybe a few hundred dollars. I ordered the pans, AND the boards, revised our menus, and since we were printing new menus raised our prices a bit. I still shake my head and laugh at the absurdity. I could have had industry-standard cakes all along. It wasn’t until the salesman came by with something I wanted that gave me a reason to even give what I was doing a second thought. Was it true that I couldn’t have those boards? Well, it was true as long as it was true to me. It was true as long as I chose to believe it was true and just think, I could have continued choosing that. It took a compelling reason to help me take a second look and challenge that belief.
I love stories like this because they are good reminders of how limited our beliefs can be. I am thankful that we can challenge our own beliefs at any time if they are no longer serving us.
How about you? Can you think of any beliefs you are holding onto that you would like to challenge? Is there something you want but a belief that you can’t have it is in the way? I encourage you to ask some of your beliefs if you should still be believing them or not. Maybe, just maybe there is something that you’ve been wanting that you can have after all. The choice is yours and you alone have the power to choose what you believe.
With much love,
Suzi