Episode 12: How to Develop a Core Belief System So You Can Be Trusted
In this morning’s chat, we’re going to talk about how to develop a core belief system. Having core beliefs is key to establishing a home, and really, everything in your life. Your business and your career revolve around your home.
The strength of your home influences those things that revolve around it. As a result, your business’s success depends upon your home’s strength, and your home’s strength is dependent on your core belief system.
Your core belief system is your foundation and your center. It helps you make quicker decisions because you know what you believe regardless of who you’re with or where you are.
Today’s inspirational quote is, “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” We don’t really know who originally said this, but it’s a quote that many of us are familiar with.
This quote really has truth to it. I used to be very apathetic toward politics and religion. I just avoided having a belief system. I thought that having too many opinions would create conflict, so I sat on the fence about core beliefs.
But having a belief system is what gives you integrity. It makes you the same through and through, no matter what setting you’re in. Belief systems influence how you interact with the world around you.
When you have a belief system, it’ll also be easier to make hard choices because you aren’t going to do anything that compromises your beliefs. This narrows down your options and makes it easier to choose your path to success.
Writing down your core beliefs helps you solidify them. It’s easier for people to trust you then, which positively affects both your personal life, and your business. Your core beliefs are vital to your work-from-home entrepreneur career because people need someone they know they can trust.
If you don’t make your core beliefs known, you will struggle to find more clients, and to network with people who will help pull resources to your career and business. No one wants to trust someone with their money or time if that person is constantly shifting their beliefs.
What we’re talking about today absolutely affects your ability to build a successful home-based business. Moreover, it aligns right with the theme of this show, which is that the home should be the center of your life.
Even if your clients or potential clients don’t know what your core beliefs are, they know whether you have them or not because it comes out in your confidence. It comes out in your organization and your communication.
In short, if you lack core beliefs, it shines through. Sure, your client or potential client isn’t necessarily sitting there saying, “wow, this person has no core belief system, so I don’t want to work with them.” Rather, they may feel uncomfortable at the thought of working with you.
They may not know why they feel that way, but the reason often has to do with your lack of core beliefs, making you harder to trust.
Now, let’s define the type of person someone is when they don’t have a well thought out core belief system. This is important because it makes you realize the difference between having a core belief system and not having one.
As I go through this list, you may recognize some of these qualities as ones that you have yourself. That’s okay. You just have to be honest with that and know that now’s a good time to start improving and developing your belief system.
There’s no judgement here if you struggle with these qualities, because I did too at first.
The first quality is being “too agreeable.” Someone expresses an opinion, and the other person agrees with it. Someone else expresses an opposing opinion, and the other person also agrees with it.
You keep shifting opinions and agreeing with everyone, contradicting yourself. These kinds of contradictions are part of someone who doesn’t have a core belief system. They’re usually easily persuaded by others or by what’s popular. They idolize people and their belief systems.
This can mean that they fall prey to the idea that just because something is popular, that means it’s right. Being weak-minded is not part of having a core belief system. When you have a weak mind, you’re more easily persuaded when you’re weak-minded, which means it’s much easier for people to take advantage of you.
These people do not ask enough questions. They just trust everyone and everything, including the media, and it’s easy for them to give into peer pressure.
Moreover, weak-minded people have a hard time explaining what they believe about something. They stumble on their words when they try to explain it, and they can’t manage their time. And what you believe in DOES prioritize how you spend your time, because you know what’s most important to you.
But people without a core belief system do not know where they’re heading. They feel like they lack purpose and they’re too spontaneous. I understand there are differences in personality when it comes to spontaneity, but I’m talking about those who are erratic and all over the place.
Further, those who are weak-minded also lack critical thinking skills. What comes out of their mouth often sounds like sound bits from the news or friends or colleagues. They’re constantly expressing other people’s opinions.
While our beliefs can be inspired by other people’s teachings, that’s not the same as copying and pasting someone else’s perspective without any thinking on our own part. Even if a good chunk of our core beliefs are similar to someone else’s, finding your own voice is the important part, which we will talk about a bit later.
Those who lack a core belief system are inconsistent. And we all struggle with this trait, along with all the others that we’ve talked about here today, to some degree. I know I certainly did, all the way up until my mid twenties.
I only recently solidified my core belief system as I got married and started having kids. This really motivated me to figure out what I believed. Now I want to be a teacher to my children, but how can I teach them if I don’t even know what I believe?
And the whole goal is to teach them to think for themselves, not just copy and paste what I believe, but their beliefs will ultimately start with mine. So how I believe still factors in here. Overall, one of my core beliefs is that we should all have a choice in developing our own core beliefs.
That’s something that I will teach my children. I want them to know that their perspective will be different than mine. I’ll teach them how to work to figure out what those perspectives are, and how to maintain their voice.
Now let’s really define what core beliefs are. You’re probably wondering, what is a core belief? What’s a good example of it, and how can you write your own if you don’t really know what they are?
The answer is that core beliefs are fundamental truths and perspectives that we cling onto that really help guide us through our life. They aren’t surface-level opinions on popular topics. Instead, they’re lots of things that people tend to debate over. It’s all about those deeper core beliefs.
When people dig down into their core beliefs, they often find that they actually agree with each other more than they think. That is one of the signals that something is a core belief. Even if people differ on their surface-level options, they find that their core belief is quite similar.
This is why it’s important that we become aware of our own core beliefs and that we know how to help others become aware of them. As a result, we won’t get as drawn into contentious fights over surface-level topics.
You can really dig down deep and realize you agree with more people than you realize, making it easier to come together and discuss various strategies.
Core beliefs are how we see ourselves. They are how we see the world around us and our future. They’re what we believe regarding how things work, and they’re our understanding of the truth.
Some people will say that truth is relative. I think that’s a miswording, because the very definition of truth contradicts that. The truth is about how things really are, therefore, it’s unchanging. The earth is round, gravity exists. As human beings, we have limited perspectives based on our life experiences, but we should seek to keep expanding our perspectives so that we don’t only see partial truths.
Perspective is different from person to person, and each person has a different slice of perspective, but the truth is constant.
It’s important that we come together and talk to each other about what we believe, and that we come from a place of respect that we have these perspectives for a reason. But perspective needs to be separated from the truth.
We are all trying to understand the truth, we’re just each seeing different pieces of it.
Moving on, a core belief cannot contradict another core belief. When you create a core belief system, each of your core beliefs have to fit together. You can’t have one contradicting another. If you end up with that, then you need to dig down deeper and find out that core belief really is.
The best way to define core beliefs is by explaining what my core beliefs are. Hopefully, this will give you a better idea of what a core belief is so that you can start thinking about your own. I encourage you to take some notes and start writing down what resonates with you here.
I divide my core beliefs up into categories to help me better organize them and understand them. You can organize yours however, but I like to keep it simple. I have political, social, economic, religious, and health beliefs separated into their own categories. There are of course sub-topics like family, business, life, purpose, and money that connect to the overarching categories.
But for this episode, I’m only going to focus on the overarching categories because most people can divide their core beliefs into these same categories. I’m going to start with political and economic categories and go between the two. These sorts of things are often combined, so it works best this way.
I believe that the primary responsibility for resolving problems rests with the individual, then their family, then their community or local neighborhood, then region, and nation. Never the other way around.
If a problem arises, the individual is the first one who should fix that problem. If they can’t, then they ask for familial support, and if that doesn’t work, they go to their community, and so on.
In over words, the federal government only gets involved as a last resort. It is a core belief of mine to not support the two-party political system. I don’t identify with any political party.
I am very much in line with George Washington’s core belief in his closing address, where he warned against the formation of political parties, saying it would negatively cause contention, also causing people to support more than they actually support.
Basically, very few people actually support every single policy that their political party supports. There’s a lot of uneasiness about supporting most of what a political party beliefs, even if you disagree with other core parts of their belief system.
Instead, I believe in the founding father’s original intention, which was to have a problem-solving wing of government that focuses on solving problems that arise that the individual, the family, or the region could not solve.
THEN the government needs to get involved. The wings are meant to work together, not contradict each other. You have a problem-solving wing, and a conservation wing this way. This is ideal, but unfortunately, we’re stuck fighting back and forth because of the two-party system.
Another core belief that I have is that humans are endowed with inalienable rights that predate the government. These rights are not granted by the government, but it’s up to the government to protect these rights.
These rights include the right to life, liberty, to own property, and to have the pursuit of happiness. In other words, you should get to pursue whatever type of life you want, and you get to pursue being able to build up a business from home as a freelancer. It’s about the freedom to choose what kind of career you want and so forth.
Liberty ends when it interferes with someone else being able to have those basic inalienable rights. If your liberty is causing someone else to lose their life or get hurt, that’s where it ends. Rights have limits.
This is why murder is illegal and bad. This is why stealing or damaging property is not protected, right?
Another core belief that I have is that the far left political spectrum is where you find the largest government. To keep it simple, I think things have gotten too complicated about how the political spectrum is being taught.
When I say that the far left is where you find the largest government, I’m talking about communism and tyranny. This means a fascist dictatorship where people have no rights or freedoms and the government has total control.
The far right, on the other hand, is anarchy, where everyone is out for themselves and there’s no law whatsoever.
I believe that the perfect place on that spectrum is right in the center, which is what our founding fathers referred to as the “people’s law.” This is not to be confused with current popular political spectrums where the middle is just a compromise of Democrat and Republican parties.
Instead, I’m talking about the truth in the middle between anarchy and tyranny. The constitution was created as a document to represent that middle area. I believe that the highest level of prosperity occurs for the most people in a free-market economy, under capitalism, with minimum government interference.
I’m not going to dive in too deep to capitalism and the free-market economy here, so definitely go back and listen to previous episodes for more about this. Basically, here I’ll say that capitalism is not perfect, and there will be corruption in it.
However, I believe that corruption is contained to a small group and it usually doesn’t infect an entire society.
Another core belief of mine is that I believe in the freedom of speech. People should be able to express their opinions about something, in public squares, or on social media, just like I am right now. That’s a fundamental right that we have, even if our opinions aren’t “true.”
Regardless of how “dumb” an idea is, people have the right to express it. It’s up to the individual themselves to decide whether or not they believe these ideas. Freedom of religion goes along with this.
Religion isn’t just about joining a religion, it’s about being able to create a set of beliefs and live by those beliefs. A lot of times, some of what were thought to be the craziest beliefs turned out to be the truth.
A good example of this is the belief that the earth is flat. People used to receive death threats for believing the earth was round, and yet, that’s true. My point is that it’s a very dangerous thing to not allow others to express their opinions, even if you don’t agree with them.
Now I want to talk about my core beliefs regarding religion. Again, this is not an exhaustive list. I just want to give you an idea of what a core belief is.
I believe in a God. I believe in a heavy father and mother. In other words, I believe that I have spiritual parents who created my spirit after their image, and that they designed our physical bodies. I believe that God is a father and a mother, man and woman, and they have physical bodies that look like we do.
I also believe in Jesus Christ, and that he was the only real person who was perfect and ever will be perfect. He showed us how to truly love other people, and he taught many truths that are the basis of my core beliefs.
Moreover, I believe that many of his teachings help us determine what is right and what is wrong. Many of His teachings are part of the freedoms we enjoy in America, and they influence our constitutions.
I believe that the Bible is an inspired document, and that Jesus Christ is someone who demonstrated unconditional love and showed us that our spirits are eternal. So, those are a few of my fundamental beliefs regarding religion. Again, I’m just giving you some samples here.
Here are my social beliefs. I believe that we all have equal value, and that we’re all created equal regardless of race, sex, size, or anything else. We all deserve equal opportunity to create the life we want to create. We’re not given the things we want or the success that we want, but we all have the equal opportunity to pursue it.
We have this equal value because our value as human beings is infinite. Further, I believe in persuasion over coercion, and I have the utmost respect for people being able to make their own individual choices.
Family comes first before any other relationship, and if you’ve been following this podcast, you know that family is number one for me. I also believe in parental rights when it comes to education.
Now, let me explain some of my beliefs regarding healthcare. I believe that everyone should have a choice when it comes to medical care. No one should be forced to receive any medications, vaccinations, or treatments. I connect this to our right to life. We each have the right to decide what’s going to keep us alive and give us the highest quality of life.
We each have different bodies with different needs. We each respond to foods and medications differently. So it’s important that we have our individual freedom to choose what we want medically.
Moreover, I really do believe in the Hippocrates quote, “let food be thy medicine, and medicine, thy food.” My wife and I go by this when we approach health. I believe that physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health are all working together to build our overall well-being.
That’s a good list of my core beliefs. That’s definitely not all of them, but hopefully it gives you some examples to go by when you figure out your own beliefs.
Again, I used to be very apathetic toward opinions, and I avoided forming any strong views on anything. But I eventually realized that I couldn’t protect my family if I didn’t find my voice. And forming core beliefs is key to finding your voice, which is one of the ultimate objectives on this show.
I want to provide an example of a core belief and how it connects to a specific surface argument so that you can see the difference BETWEEN a surface argument versus a core belief that’s connected to one.
Here’s a surface argument example. I’m going to give you both sides. The government should tax rich people more in order to provide welfare for the poor so that we can equalize the distribution of wealth. This way, everyone essentially has more or less the same amount of income within a certain range.
Here, one side believes that the rich do not deserve extra money and they’re not going to use it or make it charitable, so they’re just wasting it or hoarding it, not benefiting the economy. The poor are struggling to climb out of their social class because the rich are oppressing them. That’s one viewpoint.
The opposing viewpoint states that taxing the rich reduces the incentive to build wealth, which overall kills the economy, and no one is motivated to become an entrepreneur or investor. Ultimately, you get punished for becoming successful. It would destroy the free-market economy. Further, the poor are capable of producing wealth if they get the right education and develop the right skills.
This opinion also states that it does depend on the country that the person lives in. If you’re in the United States, you have a much higher opportunity to succeed. It doesn’t mean you don’t need help at all, but the poor are capable of succeeding without being given a free ticket, according to this view.
So, what’s the core belief? My core belief on the surface-level topic is this: you must work for your survival. If you want to thrive and survive, you have to work. That’s because you appreciate everything a lot more if you’ve worked for what you have. You can study this yourself, but America’s history demonstrates this very well. But I’ll explain it here.
The Jamestown colonists became lazy from living off the Native American’s and the British King’s assistance. They became slothful, which ended up leading the unfortunate and tragic institution of slavery because they didn’t want to work for themselves anymore.
Then, Plymouth Massachusetts was the very opposite of Jamestown. Here, they believed you had to work for your own survival and that anyone who could physically work needed to.
Bringing that into our modern government context, Jamestown was practicing socialism, and Plymouth was very much practicing capitalism in its earliest forms. Jamestown was constantly starving and failing, while Plymouth was prosperous.
This historical context gives me more core beliefs on this subject that you must work for survival. Again, coming back to my core beliefs, Jesus taught people to help the needy and take care of the poor, but defined charity as voluntary.
Sometimes, you need a boost of money, sure, but it’s not always about giving people money. I actually needed help with money at one point, and that little bit we were given was just enough to help us get back on our feet.
But in the end, it was the education that I received and the skills I had developed that helped me climb out of that situation. Charity is supposed to cover the baseline that you need to help yourself pull out of a difficult situation.
It’s often the strategy by which we implement charity that people disagree on. But I think that everyone can agree that helping your neighbor is really important, and that when you have more money you need to look at how you can help others with that excess.
That brings me to elaborate on my third core belief that feeds into this surface-level debate about whether or not the government should tax the rich to help the poor. Do I believe that the rich should give away extra money to those in need? Absolutely.
But I also believe it’s their God-given right to choose how if and how they give it. Many rich people donate tons and tons of money to charities and people in need. Those who have that cynical view towards those who are rich are actually wrong.
The majority of rich people give away tons of money. Sure, there’s a minority of scrooges out there who don’t care about other people. But the majority of rich people take care of themselves and their families, and when they have extra left over, they give it to those who need it.
The unfortunate result of excessive taxation is that the rich don’t have as much extra money to give in the way THEY want to give it, so they cannot offer as much or no longer want to. It rips away the individual’s desire to give.
Those are my core beliefs related to the surface argument about whether or not the rich should be taxed to feed the poor. You can piece it together where you think I fall on the surface-level argument, but it’s not as black and white as what you’d originally think.
Hopefully, this gives you a good example of the difference between a core belief and a surface-level argument.
We’re going to close this episode by me giving you some tips on how to start forming your own core belief system. First, you start talking to people about what they believe, and when they say something that resonates with you, write it down and keep a document of everyone else’s beliefs.
As you start talking to people and learning from them, then you can start categorizing it into various categories that make sense like I’ve done. That will help you kickstart that process. Plus, reading will also help you build your own core belief system.
It’s very important that you study opposing viewpoints. For example, you need to study socialism and capitalism to make a choice about your opinion on both issues. If you haven’t become aware of both sides, then you’re not really making a true choice at all.
If you learn both opposing sides and you really find your voice in the, then you’ll know what resonates with you the most, and you’ll really understand others better.
The third tactic is a summary of the first two. I just want to reiterate it because it’s important, but you need to study what others believe as much as possible. Absorb all these different belief systems and core beliefs. Only then will you be able to narrow down your own.
Maybe you’ll resonate with multiple angles, but eventually you’ll be able to start crossing things off your list and making choices. You won’t have so many contradictions.
An additional tip is that studying the constitution and other legal and government documents can help you develop your core beliefs.
When you finally develop your core beliefs, you’re going to feel more confident in being able to express yourself. You’ll know what it’s like to have your own voice, and you’ll have a stronger mind that will attract people to your personal life and your business.
You’ll be a safe person for your clients. You actually know what you believe. While that may evolve over time, overall, your core belief system is still active. That’s the important part. I’ve even had people ask me if they can read my core beliefs document.
We need more people with core beliefs in our society because conflict and turmoil just cause chaos. A prosperous society starts within an individual’s home. It may take several months to get where you need to be, but it will be worth it.
Until next time, resist the urge to go back to bed. There’s a lot of anxiety involved when you don’t have a core belief system because you don’t feel safe. You want to just go back to bed and stay within your comfort zone.
But I encourage you to fight that urge and instead, choose to have your own voice.
With that said, I will see and hear from you during our next very early morning conversation.
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