Belief systems...

I needed a place to start with this journal entry. I know I have beliefs and I know that some of the beliefs I have need to be challenged but I wasn't really sure where to start. I thought I should start with defining beliefs so that I would then be able to come up with some....

I found this information about beliefs in a business article but it applies to all beliefs:

Beliefs are where it all starts—they determine everything. Beliefs about what’s possible guide the goals you’ll set. Beliefs about human nature guide whom you hire, how you pay them, and how you promote them. Beliefs about the future have an impact on your strategy. In short, your beliefs become policies that become results. As much as we love to think we’re logical, beliefs don’t come from logic. Beliefs aren’t about what’s true; they’re about what we happen to absorb from family, friends, and culture.

So-called conventional wisdom is just beliefs. Everyone knows this is true, and no one questions it. Growth is good. Sure it is. 

Do you believe being rich means someone is smarter, or that their opinions are worth listening to? That’s just a belief. It could be wrong.

Beliefs are sticky. Once you have a belief, you’ll interpret the world to match the belief. You’ll throw away or discount evidence against the belief. Just listen to any political debate. When data supports a point of view, the proponents leap. When data doesn’t, they try to discredit the data. It’s the belief driving, not reality.

Old beliefs get in the way

Even if you identify great new beliefs, your existing beliefs will fight back. You might decide to believe that organic, self-funded growth is the healthiest. Yet your dot-com-fueled fantasies of Google’s IPO keep insisting at the back of your mind that high-growth, high-profile is the path to a great company. Your old beliefs put up a formidable roadblock to the new.
When you start fighting yourself or saying, “Yes, but . . . ,” congratulate yourself! You’ve found a limiting belief. If you preface it by saying, “Of course, it’s human nature that . . .” or “Everybody knows . . . ,” then you know you’ve found a really powerful one.
So kill it. Mull your conventional wisdom over in your mind, and start taunting it. “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah. You’re a limiting belief. Get lost!” If you have fun with your belief, you actually weaken its hold. Slowly start playing “what if” and make them wilder and wilder. You’ll find yourself slipping outside the box of your own thinking.

So with that in mind I still needed a place to start... here are some beliefs I found on line followed by a start of my own beliefs:

I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. 

The more you study, the more you learn

Longer study periods covering greater quantities of material may, in fact, be detrimental to your ability to recall the information. Your attention span isn't unlimited. Everyone reaches a saturation point where information seems to flow into one brain cell and then proceed directly out of another. It's as if your brain is saying "give me a break!" In fact, that may be just what is happening. Recent research suggests that the human brain requires time for new information or skills to become "hard wired," and that introducing a second skill or batch of information right on the heels of the first interferes with that process. Essentially, the brain needs time to process what it has just received.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. 

I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. 

I believe I am too old to start anything new...