133. Is your relationship behavior based on what you know or what you believe?

When we believe anything that belief becomes our master, and we become its slave. In dating let’s say you’re a man who believes that women cry to get their way. The woman you’re dating may cry out of real hurt or frustration but if you believe her tears are always manipulation your actions will be colored by that. You’re a slave to that belief.

Or maybe you’re a woman who believes that all men are just after sex. You may treat a man who genuinely cares about you and shows warm affection as though he was some sort of degenerate because you ‘believe’ he only wants to use you. Beliefs like that may be almost unconscious but whatever you think is true will have to be true for you, and color your every word and action.

Not only do our beliefs become the foundation for our actions and reactions, we nearly always project something onto someone else based on our self-belief. For instance, if I think I’m unworthy I’ll be easily hurt by anything anyone says that feels like a put-down to me. Someone might say, “Isn’t she pretty?” and an unworthy-feeling person will immediately say, “Oh, so you think I’m not, huh!” Our beliefs become our self-reference point and all our thoughts then spring from that.

Just what is a belief? One dictionary defines it as “a vague idea in which some confidence is placed”. Yet most of us cling to our beliefs as though they were real and solid, not the made-up wisp of thought they really are. We give them center stage and build our lives around them.

Knowing, on the other hand, is a great deal different from a belief. Knowing is factual. Knowing is just what is, period. It’s what’s happening right now, without our story because ‘story’ is back to belief again. Let’s say your new date tells you he’ll call. Three days go by and you haven’t heard. Now you’re angry because you ‘know’ if he hasn’t called by now he’s a deceitful liar. That’s your belief, and it could be right. But maybe you find he had an emergency and didn’t have a chance to call. On the other hand if you just notice he isn’t calling, and don’t add your interpretations and beliefs you can be at ease.

Most of us live in a false world much of the time. It’s a world of our own creation, usually based on beliefs about life that aren’t true. We don’t see life as it is. We see our belief about it and then live from that. Usually that results in a lot of painful judgments. Instead, we can stop and ask ourselves if our beliefs and thoughts are actually true? How does the world really work? Do things happen the way we think they should happen or do they happen the way they do? Is it actually true men just want to use women for sex? Do we really know all women manipulate men with tears?

When we argue with ‘what is’ we never win – ever! When we build our lives on beliefs that have no more stability than shifting sand we’re always going to be confused and stressed. When we simply go with the knowing of life as it is our stress and pain can disappear.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer