Metaphors

Elastic Beliefs

I was recently asked to explain how Beliefs affect our behaviour and I used a metaphor to help me. Here it is.

Imagine yourself floating in space with bungee cord anchored to you, and the other end of the bungee connected to a particular point in space, we shall call an “Anchor-Point”. You are free to move around this Anchor-Point, in all sorts of directions. Let’s say you wanted to move up; you would be able to move freely, until you feel a gentle “tug”. This would slow you down, but not stop you. However, if you carried on in this direction, you would then start to feel a stronger pull towards the Anchor-Point. This would carry on until the pull would overcome your efforts, and you would then be forced to go back to the Anchor-Point.

So, you then decide to do the same thing, only travel to a lower level, in the opposite direction. The same sequence would occur. You would feel the gentle tug, and then it would get stronger, and stronger, until the force would take you back to where you started.

The above scenario is otherwise known as equilibrium or homeostasis. This is the situation where there are actually, a number of forces (or vectors) that act upon a system to make sure it stays as it is. This is natural and essential and it is what gives us a stable life. Without this phenomenon, we would have very erratic lives, with very little predictability.

To relate the above to Beliefs, we could use the example of a person that has a particular weight. They have formed the belief (Anchor-Point) that they ARE that weight, and that is that. So, they start to eat more than they consume, and the inevitable happens, they begin to weigh more. This carries on, until they feel that they have gone beyond a threshold and this is no longer “them”. Then they will start to take action (conscious or unconscious) to lose weight. This will bring them back to the Anchor-Point, the weight they “believe” they should be at. Then the opposite happens. They start to lose weight, and begin to weigh less and be fitter than they were. Eventually, the “bungee” will start to act, and they begin to sabotage their efforts, and start to gain weight.

The obvious question here is “how do we move the Anchor-Point to a place of our own conscious choosing?”, and keep it there in a sustainable way. Well, what you do first is choose a new Anchor-Point that is not too far away from the original one, and start moving “one strand” at a time from the bungee cord. This equates to finding evidence, and allowing it to filter through, of you having this new belief (Anchor-Point), and if you are good, you can find evidence contrary to your old belief. Eventually, you will start to build a “new” bungee cord that is at a “new” Anchor-Point. When the new bungee cord is stronger than the old one … Boing!… you will be transported to the new place where you are free to roam and float in new uncharted space. Bon voyage, enjoy the ride!