Our Decision Frames: Beliefs, Assumptions & Schemas

I had a therapist today, and in the course of only 45 minutes, he was able to point out beliefs that were of harm to me: “I don’t own a home; I’m starting a new career; I don’t have a partner; and certainly, no pets or plants. Okay really though, what am I doing with my life?!”

While it's clear my mental habit is that of comparison, I find it more difficult to uncover the mental schemas, or beliefs, that have me think I am “behind” in life. What assumptions and meaning am I assigning to those milestones? Why am I LITERALLY the only person on the planet that sees a more joyful life without a dog? I must be crazy! Wait..am I anti-American?! (sorry went off the rails for a second just give me a moment…) ← Do you see how quickly our beliefs build off each other, and how crazy they can drive us? Just think of all those conspiracy theorists out there, like Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia below...

Think about it - human brains evolved to protect us, so we had to create mental models that would predict our immediate future, and help us determine if something was a threat. So we have schemas about EVERYTHING.

Let’s take a funny example with my parents - my Mother bought a more expensive, sustainable soap. My Father was dumbfounded: “The regular soap was $3 cheaper, I have NO idea why your Mother would choose the soap that is $3 more expensive.” I just had to laugh. My Dad’s entire mental model for buying things was…buy cheap. Why pay more than you had to? He could not even FATHOM the idea that someone would buy a more expensive product for its quality and especially “to do good”.

Okay, let’s get into it. This is the last post related to our decision frames. We went over:

• Purpose

• Values

• Principles

• Identity

• Personality

And for this last Decision Frames post, we discuss the foundations of all the above decision frames - our beliefs, assumptions, and schemas. I’m going to condense this down to beliefs.

We’ll discuss:

• Different types of beliefs we hold

• Why these beliefs are important

• Different ways to remain aware, and question, our beliefs

Just so we are clear - beliefs and assumptions are pretty darn similar, let’s just say that assumptions we carry as we walk through the world are often unconscious and automatic (unless in a more academic/professional context where we are stating assumptions).

Schema is a bit more involved: a schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize

and interpret information. It’s a mental model that we store in long-term memory. These schemas embed beliefs and assumptions. Look on the right for examples of different schemas.

Let’s put some form and structure to how to even think about beliefs.

First, there are types, so I did my best to categorize them:

1. Topic: Is the belief about people, places, things, ideas - material, spiritual? What part of your life is this relevant to?

2. Scale: At what scale does this belief operate? Is this at the scale of the universe/planet/physics, or on a smaller scale, to your personal experience (with society, community, and other people in between)?

3. Public vs. Private: Is this a belief that is in public discussion, or is this specific to your experience?

4. Time Scale: Is this a belief about the past, present, or future, and is it about something only in this moment, or over a longer time period?

5. Empirical vs. Non-Empirical: To what extent are these beliefs even provable via physical evidence?

Okay, why did I even take the time to define the above? Just so we can create mental models about all the different beliefs we hold - I named 5 dimensions, there are definitely more. We hold TONS of beliefs and schemas in our heads, and so many of them are material to getting what we want in life.

Importance of Beliefs

Imagine the difference in experience in life between believing and not believing in Hell. No matter what you believe…imagine how you would live your life differently.

Your life is a function of how you see things. Your perception. Although…your perception will run up against reality. Ray Dalio said, "There is nothing more important than understanding how reality works and how to deal with it.”

It’s important we are doing our best to continuously re-examine our beliefs, our assumptions, and our schemas, to refine our understanding of reality, and take appropriate action to deal with it.

In another article, here were some impacts of our schemas:

• "Schemas influence what we pay attention to. People are more likely to pay attention to things that fit in with their current schemas.

• Schemas also impact how quickly people learn. People also learn information more readily when it fits in with the existing schemas.

• Schemas allow us to think quickly. Even under conditions when things are rapidly changing, our new information is coming in quickly, and people do not usually have to spend a great deal of time interpreting it. Because of the existing schemas, people are able to assimilate this new information quickly and automatically.

• Schemas can also change how we interpret incoming information. When learning new information that does not fit with existing schemas, people sometimes distort or alter the new information to make it fit with what they already know."

An Exercise:

What do you think about the following statements?

• People don’t change

• People are selfish

• We can't escape fate

• Life is hard

• Money is scarce

• Intelligence is born not made

• The world is going down the toilet

First, reflect:

1. Did you have an immediate opinion?

2. If so, what was your level of confidence?

3. What evidence, if any, did you pick out?

4. What evidence did you likely leave out?

This is meant to be a metacognitive exercise for you to reflect on your thinking. If you were very confident about your answer on any of these - raise a red flag - you should NOT be confident about statements like these. There is a ton of evidence on either side that is impossible to count up right away - for any critical thinker, you would hesitate to join a side.

How to Actually Apply This Topic

We don’t have time to go line by line in a yellow-pages-style belief catalog and re-examine all of those beliefs. But some of them are “active ingredients” in our life right now, or will be in the future.

Some signs you might need to re-examine a belief/assumption/schema:

• You feel stuck - in repeated thoughts, in a situation, in life generally

• You are unsatisfied

• Your relationships in your life are suffering

• You are not getting what you want in life

• You are having a hard time letting go of something

• You are feeling tension - with yourself, with someone, with your relationship to anything

You will need to do the work, perhaps with a therapist or a coach (like me!) to uncover some of the beliefs that are putting you in your situation. Likely you will want to work backwards:

• What are the current outcomes?

• What actions led to those outcomes?

• What thoughts led to those actions?

• What led to those thoughts?

• [uncover and disrupt limiting thoughts]

Let's say you got to the root of the problem, and it's a belief you are holding on to. Ask yourself a few questions, like:

1. Material vs. Non-Material: To what extent is this belief active in your life experience? What's the impact on you?

2. Confident vs. Not Confident: What is the level of certainty around this belief?

3. Cost/Benefit: What is the cost and/or the benefit of changing the belief?

4. Fixed vs. Changeable: Am I willing to change this belief?

5. Empirical vs. Non-Empirical: Is this provable? Can I use facts or experience to evaluate my belief?

Let’s take a troubled friendship. Person A, Sheila, doesn’t respect Person B, Mariana, because Sheila believes Mariana is selfish. For the sake of this situation, on the whole, Mariana is not selfish. Going through the questions:

1. This is material for Sheila - she wants to stay friends with Mariana as they have a long relationship but is having frequent bad experiences with her

2. Sheila is confident in her opinion based on a recent experience and apparently many other memories

3. Sheila gets the benefit of being righteous but at the cost of losing a friend. If she entertains that her belief is wrong, she might experience guilt or embarrassment of admitting she was wrong; but she would likely gain back the friendship of Mariana

4. Sheila realizes this is a changeable belief, even if it is hard

5. Sheila reflects on the evidence - instances of when she was selfish, but also, all the other experiences where she was selfless. And she realizes, on the whole, Mariana isn't selfish, even if Sheila was bothered by this one instance.

[actual footage of Sheila and Mariana]

A few other recommendations on managing our beliefs:

1. Examine your “intellectual curiosity”.

There is a concept called “intellectual curiosity” that describes an inclination of a person to ask questions and drive toward truth - which also means, not having the need to be right. If you want to improve your performance in life, you are almost certainly going to need intellectual curiosity to question certain beliefs that are holding you back.

Examine your own curiosity, willingness to be wrong, and how fixed your beliefs are. Change in performance comes with a change in action - how willing are you to change your opinion?

2. Relish in disagreement.

Much of society has attached too much meaning and status to being right. We need the opposite - embrace disagreement, devil's advocates, and even try to take the opposite side of your argument. Everyone thinks they are right - everyone thinks they are the hero of their story - everyone has the right intentions (mostly). There is always more to the story, and we have to understand that our cognition - our schemas, our knowledge, our perspective, our biases - are limited, and limit us.

3. Examine your experts.

To operate more efficiently, we all choose "our experts" as our source of truth. Be careful here, not to count too much on 1 source of truth. Everybody operates under the influence of incentives, consciously or not. By having a balanced set of "experts" we choose to listen to, we can better calibrate the truth.

4. Be aware of your biases.

We are all victims to the same biases, for example, confirmation bias. Rather than use contrary evidence to inform whether a certain belief is true, we discard it unconsciously and only look for evidence that confirms our pre-existing thoughts.

Conclusion

Even the smartest people in the world are susceptible to beliefs and assumptions that are harmful - just think about the debates about vaccines, voter fraud, and climate change. We hold very rigid beliefs about the people in our lives and have a hard time adjusting when they change. All this is to say - let's be a bit more humble and get into the habit of being self-aware and questioning our understanding of reality. It's our key to surviving and thriving.

If you are curious to see how examining beliefs can unlock your potential, let’s schedule a discovery call and see if coaching might be the right fit.

For Learning and With Love,

Chris