core belief's and evidenced based belief

OK so that sounds quite a heavy title for a post but hopefully it won’t be as heavy as all that!

Over the past couple of weeks in counselling we have chatted around issues of ‘core beliefs’ some of my core beliefs being that I am useless, stupid, ugly, no one likes me, unable to do anything, the list could go on! Pretty much all my core belief’s are negative. As if you needed to know that!

She said that core beliefs are really set during childhood, we develop our core beliefs through what our parents & other influential adults tell us and then they are set and it becomes difficult to change them.

So what about the evidence based belief part of this? Well my counsellor was saying that when we have core beliefs we always look for evidence that supports those core beliefs and dismiss evidence that doesn’t support them, so for example, I see myself as stupid, I build this belief up by looking for all the evidence to support it, when I don’t know the answers to the things people ask or I cant solve a problem etc and dismiss all the clever things I manage to do, when I manage to solve problems or sort things out for myself or for others. Yep that about sums me up!

How else can someone who as a Transport Manager was head hunted on more than one occasion because they thought I was good at the job manage to decide that he is stupid? Quite simply, I dismiss others belief that I am pretty good at it by saying they don’t really know me, etc.

Anyhow, you can see how this whole issue swims round and round in circles, for me I am working very hard on trying to correct some of my core beliefs because I know that others do not share the same view of me that I share of myself, as has been evidenced by some of the things they say and the way that they have spoken about me, I must dig out that list of positive things people spoke about/over me a few months back.

Having gone through my childhood believing that I was useless, ugly, stupid etc I have carried those beliefs into adult life and perfected the belief in my own mind so it takes a lot to over come those beliefs and I need to constantly look for and validate the evidence that supports the opposite views to those that I have thus far believed. After all, as my wife regularly says, do I want to believe the things that my parents said about me when I was a child (and my mother continues to say to this day) or will I believe the things that those who are nearest to me and who love me most say about me? Well there is no contention really when you put it like that BUT life is never quite as easy, its not a matter of flicking a switch and hey presto your mind set has changed.

OK now for the other part of this post, hadn’t intended to write most of the above! What I really wanted to say was, it occurred to me earlier today that the vast majority of people, even those who are highly educated and respected leaders in the field of science, can and do fall into the trap of developing core beliefs then looking for evidence to support their belief rather than looking at all the evidence before forming a belief, indeed it would be pretty impossible to do the latter as the evidence sometimes changes over time.

So, for example, many years ago people believed that the world was flat and the whole of their world view was based in the belief that the world was flat, they never challenged this because all the evidence (that the found) pointed to the world being flat, it took a lateral thinker to challenge this assumption and re-define the whole way we saw the world when he discovered that the world was actually a globe, can you imagine what it would be like if we still thought the world was flat?

There are still those who don’t believe that smoking causes any health problems, these people will point to the evidence of great uncle bob or granddad who at the age of 90+ is still going strong and has smoked 40 a day fro most of their life, indeed if you look only at this evidence you can see why people come to the conclusion that smoking cant be that bad for you, but that is to dismiss the huge number of deaths each week from the effects of smoke, lung cancer etc.

Another example might be the pro & anti Europe camps in this country, those who are anti Europe will look for all the beurocratic decisions all the stupid rules, the costs to us as a nation of being a part of the community whereas those who believe we should be in Europe will look at all the benefits, the grants we receive the good laws that come out of Europe (at which point the euro sceptics say what good laws?) the investment and security the EU offers us, oh and before you ask, I am pretty neutral on the issue of Europe!

When is comes to faith, religious beliefs, we all have a faith, whether we acknowledge it or not, and our faith usually provides the basis of our world view, for some their faith is a belief on God, in some form or another, for others it is a belief that there is no God, whichever camp you fall into I can guarantee that you look for the evidence to support that belief rather than looking at the evidence that exists to see what it tells you, your thought patterns are affected by your belief system.

As a Christian I freely admit that I look for, and see, evidence of God’s creative work in every day life, I can see the way that he has created and written DNA into every living thing, the way that he made the planet to be such a beautiful place, the way that he made everything good.

Of course those who are evolutionists will point to the glaciers and carbon dating and various other aspects of the world to show how clear it is that the world was formed out of a big bang and we are all evolved from microscopic beings, or whatever is their particular conviction of how we came to be.

The evidence on any side can and will be overwhelming to the people who hold to that particular belief.

So, who can claim to have THE answers and know the truth? Well I believe that the truth can only be known separate from the ‘evidence’ and comes out of an inner evidence, as a Christian I have had a personal encounter with God and know from my inner evidence that he exists and that there is truth to be discovered, however I can not provide you the reader with evidence that will sway you because you will filter all the evidence based on your pre-conceived views and beliefs.

Many people who have grown up with an abusive father have struggled with the concept of God as Father, until recently, well the past couple of years, I would have denied this was me, I could relate to the concept of God as father, but the truth is that I still had a wrong perception, I have always believed that I pretty much sneaked into the kingdom, I wasn’t actually chosen, at the meeting where I went forward to give my life to God I was just one of a number of people and I have always felt that when I stood there God looked at me and just said ‘oh you came forward too did you? OK I will let you in’ this view was really due to the relationship I had with my parents in growing up, always feeling as if I was just tolerated rather than loved, not wanted but there, not being kicked out but still not really being welcomed as a valued part of the family. This mind set has been really clear in the way I have felt about going through the depths of depression over the past couple of years.

Are there issues where you filter evidence through your own belief system rather than filter your belief system through all the evidence open to you? I know that there are still definitely areas that I need to work on, areas where I still believe things and stack the evidence in support of that belief. Mainly for me in relation to my perception of myself, but bit by bit I am dismantling my belief system in an effort to rebuild it on the security of all the evidence available.

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The following is the text of an e-mail I have received in response to this blog post, Mike (the author) is a photographer who's blog I have been following with some interest over the past few months, He lives in the same area as me and I am hoping to get out with him so that he can teach me camera techniques and help me improve my photography skills. As he says, his response is too long a comment to have left directly on my blog so he chose to e-mail it to me, I am copying it into the end of the original post because it adds soem very thought provoking ideas to my original post, if you wish to find out more about Mike he can be found on his own website here.

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Hi David

Well, as you'll have now discovered, I've stumbled across your blog.

That's what you get for posting a link to it on Twitter! Heh heh.

Anyway, I wrote this *huge* comment to one of your posts only to find that blogspot wouldn't accept it cos it had "too many characters". A bit reluctant to then just consign it to the recycle bin, thought I'd email it to you. Do with it what you will.

Here 't is...

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Well, I've now returned the favour and bookmarked your blog ;)

Discovered through one of your tweets, and rather pleased about it I am too for this is a fascinating post. Most thought-provoking. And one with which I can only too easily identify. That's to say, the opening paragraphs.

I don't think I've ever phrased it to myself in quite such terms but for as long as I can remember I've always had an awareness that my perception of myself is very frequently at odds with the perception of me that others appear to hold. And generally the latter tends to be rather more positive than the former.

Which in effect, if I've understood you correctly, is pretty much the same as you're saying.

Perhaps I should qualify that for I'm not entirely happy with the terms "positive" and "negative", in the sense that "positive" could be taken to imply "good" or "nice" or whatever, and that's not quite what I meant.

More accurate perhaps would be to say that others' perceptions of my abilities and competencies frequently appear kindlier than my own.

What I'd not connected this disparity with however was the influence my early years viz parents etc may have had in the forming of my self-perception.

Its a fascinating and persuasive notion, and one to which I can see myself giving considerable thought.

But leaving that aside, you then go on to talk of people falling "into the trap of developing core beliefs then looking for evidence to support their belief rather than looking at all the evidence before forming a belief" and, as you rightly observe, in some circumstances it would be almost impossible to do otherwise.

This too set me to thinking. About the statement itself, and about the assumption implicit in the statement, which becomes much clearer with your closing remark. An assumption, moreover, that I suspect we all tend to make... that "evidence" is in some fashion more valid than "belief".

Particularly if we're equating validity with "closeness to the truth".

("Closeness to the facts"? Hmm. Even a statement as apparently simple as this raises profound questions.)

But I wonder if such an assumption is justified?

Here's a few random thoughts...

Can "evidence" be said to exist "in isolation" as it were? Or does it not, rather, derive its status from the interpretation we put upon it?

Even to the extent of deciding which factors are relevant and therefore constitute "evidence" and which factors should be discarded as irrelevant?

Is it not possible that the whole notion of "evidence" is little other than a product of our own perception of "reality"? And if so, would that not actually render it, paradoxically, a product of belief?

It seems to me that the attraction of restructuring (or attempting to

restructure) one's life upon "the evidence" in preference to core beliefs resides in the assumption that in some way "the evidence" is more accurate, more truthful, or more representative of "reality" (or however you wish to express it) than belief may be.

Yet, as you so rightly observe, "evidence sometimes changes over time".

Thus, how would we know, were we to structure our lives upon the evidence available today, that such evidence wouldn't change (or, more pertinently, even be proven wrong by the discovery of more complete evidence for example) tomorrow?

And if there is an "absolute reality" and the evidence available to us at any given time can only ever be reflective of our circumscribed knowledge and/or understanding of that absolute reality and therefore (and inevitably) incomplete, how wise can it be to structure our lives upon such an incomplete (and possibly completely mistaken) basis?

(Bringing this principle right back down to "our own doorstep", how can others' perceptions of us constitute any form of reliable evidence when their knowledge of us is far less complete than our own?)

Is it even possible to attempt such an undertaking? How would we know, for example, that we have all the available evidence at our disposal?

Could it not be that actions based on partial evidence may be more erroneous than actions based purely on belief?

And in fact would those actions themselves not be based upon belief...

the belief that we have all the available evidence at our disposal?

Dilemmas indeed!

I think the thing I find most worrying about this is the sense that an "evidence-based life" (for want of a better term) hints of a very mechanistic (one might almost say materialistic) approach, and seems to allow little room for "movements of the Spirit".

And that, so it seems to me, goes against the available evidence of what humans actually are, or how they live their lives in reality.

There's another paradox for you!

I doubt if any reasonable person would argue with the notion that certain things are susceptible of being decided upon the basis of the evidence. One example you've used is that of the harmful effects of smoking.

I can't imagine any reasonable person (even smokers) disputing that smoking can be (and generally is) seriously injurious of health. And such a conclusion is based purely upon the available evidence alone.

However, such examples don't (so it seems to me) necessarily or even logically lead to the inference that everything should be (or needs to

be) evidence-based.

Let's return to the matter of perceptions of self... one's own and those of others.

In my own particular case, were I to "buy into" the evidence offered by other peoples' perceptions of my abilities in certain areas then its distinctly conceivable that my efforts to improve in those areas would be significantly less than efforts based upon my own perception of such abilities.

In other words, its entirely conceivable that one's own lesser perceptions of oneself can be the motivation to strive to improve. And surely that is a good thing. Isn't it?

My own "spiritual path" (which, as you may have realised by now, goes by a somewhat different name to yours... though I tend not to place too much significance upon mere labels) demands of me a constant striving, which effort can only ever be based upon my own perception of myself and my shortcomings. Were I to allow it to be otherwise then its entirely conceivable that such striving wouldn't be anywhere near as rigorous.

Or so I believe ;)

And (returning to an earlier point) should validity even be equated to "closeness to the truth"? How can we ever know what such "truth" is (in any absolute sense) when it must forever be filtered through (or coloured by... whichever you prefer) our exclusively human perceptions? Would it not then make more sense to equate validity to relevancy?

And if relevancy be that which has the greatest potential for impacting our lives, or actually does impact and motivate us to the greater extent, then it seems to me that belief is far more valid than evidence.

Hmm. I've just re-read everything I've written and it strikes me as sounding somewhat challenging. Its not intended in that way. Its all just speculation reflective of my own virtually constant uncertainty about... oh... almost everything. Apart from my core beliefs of course

;)

fotdmike

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all the best

mike

A busy weekend

Saturday morning, in our house, started way too early, did you know its daylight at 5.30 this time of year? Well I have know that for some time but could have done without having confirmation of it this weekend!

So yes it could have been worse, if Steven had a seizures (or seizures) as bad as he did Saturday morning, if he had one that bad whilst we were away that would have been so much more difficult and stressful altogether.

Yes Steven had several Fits Saturday morning, the first, rather short one at 5.30, followed a few minutes later by another one, this went on for a total of 25 minutes, including having been administered Bucal midazolam after 5 minutes, so we had to call the ambulance 10 minutes into the seizure, he had just about stopped by them time they arrived.

So Joy went with him to A&E whilst I stayed back and got myself and Nat organised, it was the In-laws to the rescue again, I rang them and arranged to drop Nat round there, which I did about 8.30, about the same time as Steven had another fit in A&E, this one also went over the 5 minute mark so they ended up administering some medication to stop the fit.

Anyhow, after dropping Nat off I joined Joy & Steven at the hospital.

Because of the second fit and the second dose of medication he had to stay in for ‘observation’ so was sent, after a long delay, up to the children’s ward, they couldn’t take him straight away as they were allegedly short staffed!

Granted once we got onto the ward there were very few nurses on duty BUT it also has to be said there were also next to no patients there either! So we are a little puzzled why they had such a problems, especially as we are the ones who do most of the observing.

Anyhow, Steven did pick up during the morning and we got out just before 3pm, not before I enjoyed the delights of the restaurant a couple of times.

So we headed off home, I dropped Joy & Steven off then went and picked Nat up, she had a great time having been out with Grandma and Arnie and then at the kite festival with Grandma & Grandpa.

Anyhow, it was time to fulfil my commitment to her, the Friday evening I had promised to take her shopping for a new lampshade, the old one had gone with the light fitting over the re-wiring works, she had remembered this promise when I got her up in the morning and was a little upset about not being able to do that, although she was more upset and concerned about Steven it has to be said! So anyhow, I took her to Homebase and we bought a new lampshade and matching bedside lamp, Disney Princess set, along with the Disney princess picture that Hanny pants and CJ had bought her for her birthday we now have a theme going on in her room, just need to get some new curtains and bedding to match and paint the walls, they need a coat of paint anyhow, pink to fit in, pink is her favourite colour anyhow! In-fact I did look at sample colours for decorating the living rooms and Nat insisted that we pick up a sample of some pink paint! I guess she has her room in mind.

So having done this we were pretty shattered.

Sunday morning started normally enough, we got up and went to church, Nat spent quite a bit of the time with Richard & Ursula, her adopted grandparents!!! After the service we hung about a fair bit then went to head off home, only to find the car wouldn’t start!!! So we unloaded again back into the church, we had some church keys with us so at least we could stay there and lock up afterwards, it was way too hot for staying in the car for too long.

I call the RAC and was really impressed with the service, the guy was with us inside of half an hour from calling them, it took about half an hour to get the car going and then we were on our way, it was a problem with earthing on the engine apparently! Whatever that means.

So that was the weekend pretty well interrupted, Sunday afternoon was good though went out and had a good time with the kids. I have to say the kids have been really good this weekend.

OK so today was good, the kids packed off to school, we then meet a friend for lunch, this is a friend who we have got to know through Facebook, this is now the third person who we have meet in real life following initial contact only via Facebook! Any children reading this don't try it yourself, we only do so after very careful assessment of the risks and knowing the person on line for a fair bit before meeting them also we always meet in a public and neutral venue for first meeting, well almost true when I meet my good friend Graham he came to the office to pick me up! But hey I wouldn’t do that with everyone.

So we meet this lady today, I wont name her here I shall refer to her as Tilly, she is someone who I have got to know through a support group on Facebook, and is a fantastic young woman, she has overcome so much to be the person she is today and I admire her so much, she lives not too far from where we live so we arranged, myself and Joy, to meet up with her today, I think we shall be seeing more of each other in the future.

Tilly, you know who you really are, you’re a great friend and we both consider it a privilege to have you as our friend, hope everything works out for you and hope to see you again soon.

Anyhow, that’s enough from me for now, will write more some time soon.