What is a Belief?
A belief is a degree of certainty we have that something is true.  Our core beliefs are often based on the beliefs of other people we unconsciously accepted as true when we were too young to decide if the person's belief really served us.  This is how we adopt the beliefs of our parents and beliefs and behaviours are passed from one generation to the next.

How do beliefs influence our behaviour?
Let's look at an example.  Imagine you are in a restaurant receiving excellent service from a waiter, he is genuinely friendly and clearly enjoys his work, this waiter we will call Michael.  Now imagine you are in the same restaurant receiving poor service from a different waiter, this guy is not happy and is often rude to the customers.  This waiter we will call Harry.

Now match the following beliefs with either Michael or Harry:

• "People do not appreciate good service."
  
• "All our customers deserve good service."

It's obvious isn't it?  And the reason it is obvious is it is easy to see which belief is inline with which behaviour.  When our beliefs and behaviours are inline we are in a state of congruence and when they are not we experience incongruence.

Let's say that Harry actually likes the way Michael works and wants to learn how Michael does it (Michael gets more tips for obvious reasons).  Let's also assume Michael is willing to help Harry and give him some coaching on becoming a more successful waiter.

Traditional behaviour training may see Michael teaching Harry to do the following:

• Be courteous at all times
  
• Offer a genuine smile
  
• Be available but not intrusive

Michael could teach Harry how to perform all of these behaviours and Harry's performance as a waiter will probably improve - for a while.  But Harry has changed his behaviour without changing the underlying belief that "people don't appreciate good service" and his beliefs and behaviours are no-longer inline.  He will feel incongruent, he may not be consciously aware of this feeling though particularly at first when the customers respond favourably to his new approach by being more generous with their tipping.

After this initial "flurry" though one of the following is most likely to happen:

1. As these behaviours do not come "naturally" to Harry it will require his conscious effort to maintain them and the feeling of incongruence is likely to manifest itself in lapses of the new behaviour.  Eventually he will return completely to his old habits which are in-line with his belief "people do not appreciate good service" thereby resolving the incongruence.  He might not feel "happy" about having reverted back to his old behaviour but he will feel congruent.
   
   
2. If Harry gets powerful, positive and frequent feedback from customers such that his original belief "people don't appreciate good service" is no longer true for him he may change his belief into something similar to Michael's "all customers should be treated as honoured guests" thereby resolving the incongruence by changing the belief to be inline with his new experience.

What is happening here?  In number 1 Harry has bought himself back into line by modifying his behaviour to fit his existing belief.  In number 2 something powerful has happened as a result of his new behaviour and he has now modified his belief to fit his experience of the world responding to his new behaviour.

If you were to guess at the most likely outcome, which one would you choose?  The odds are very much against his experience positively changing his beliefs - although they could.

So what can be done?  We have determined the direction of influence is very much from beliefs to behaviour and that change in behaviour without the corresponding change in beliefs will cause incongruence which will be resolved either by changing the belief to fit the behaviour (less likely) or revert back to the old behaviour inline with the belief (more likely).

Click here to go to the Belief Models page.