How The Power of Belief Opens The Eye of The Brain

When you’re stuck and can’t find a solution to your problem, you can stimulate your brain to come up with solutions by simply making a choice – a choice to believe there is a solution somewhere nearby - waiting to be discovered.

Belief determines what we see and don’t see, in part, because it affects where we are willing to look or not look for solutions. One particular Friday morning, I was getting ready for work, looking for my casual shoes that I wear with my khaki pants on Fridays.  I couldn't find them anywhere. I looked where I always look—in the closet, next to the bed, under the bed, in the living room. I couldn't find them. I looked in all those same places again, thinking I had just overlooked them, but they were nowhere to be found. I thought, maybe I was just a little sleepy. I would look again, slowly and carefully. Not there again. I expanded my search. I looked in the kids' room, in my office, in the bathroom, in the kids' bathroom. Nowhere.

Now I was getting desperate. I was going to be late for work if I didn't find them soon, or - Horror of Horrors! I would have to wear dress shoes (and a suit to match) on a Friday!  It was a crisis. But I was strong. I thought I would look in the usual places one more time.  And then it hit me. If I kept looking in the same places I had already looked, I would never find the shoes. I was only wasting time, frustrating myself, and making myself late for work. The shoes clearly were not in the places I had been looking.  I was in a bit of a dilemma because I had no idea where to look if the shoes were not where they were supposed to be. What were my realistic alternatives? The shoes could not possibly be anywhere else.  

Something told me that if I wanted to find my shoes, I had to look where I had never looked before, even if it made no sense to look there. When I made the decision to change my pattern to include the out of the ordinary, the first off-the-wall place I could think to look was the garage. I never put my shoes in the garage because I don't take my shoes off before entering the house.          

Nevertheless, out of obedience to my inner voice, I opened the garage door and looked around. I was right. My inner voice was wrong. The shoes weren’t there.  But sitting there as big as day was the car I drove only on weekends. I had driven that car to see my folks the previous weekend. Then I remembered I had taken my casual shoes with me. I opened the car door, and there they were, sitting on the back seat, staring at me as if to say, “I told you so." My inner voice was right after all. 

It was then that a light turned on in my head. I stood there staring at my shoes, pondering the lesson life was trying to teach me. I was overwhelmed with one question.  In my life, had I also been looking in the same places over and over for solutions I already knew weren’t there? Was I ignoring the messages life was sending me? Was I going in circles in my life, hoping the next time I passed that way, what I was looking for would suddenly materialize? I had actually convinced myself that the things I had been dissatisfied with for years would suddenly improve if I just improved my attitude, gritted my teeth, and kept going.

I suddenly realized my beliefs and expectations of the way the world ought to be don’t always reflect the way the world really is. The lesson of the missing shoes is that the solution we’re looking for in life isn’t necessarily where it’s supposed to be. Our preconceived notions don't always work. They aren’t always consistent with reality. Is it possible that what you’ve been taught all your life about the problem you are facing isn’t necessarily correct? We need to adjust our beliefs to factor in what life is trying to teach us. We shouldn’t blindly and ignorantly keep repeating the same patterns of behavior over and over, oblivious to the results. We need to listen to life's wake-up calls.

Belief is not a feeling. It’s a choice. When you choose to believe, it floods your system with dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, all of which generate feelings of hope, well-being, courage, and confidence to act. When you are filled with courage and confidence, you suddenly become aware that no one and nothing can stop you. You are now ready to overcome any obstacle. 

Belief is also the most powerful stimulator of creativity known to man. Belief floods the neocortex (our problem solving center) with nutrients and oxygen. In contrast, fear robs the neocortex of nutrients and oxygen and shifts them to the pons and the medulla (at the base of the skull), which controls your fight or flight instinct. Fear causes you to act without thinking. In contrast, belief energizes your problem solving center, which opens the eye of the brain to see solutions that are all around you.

Belief allows you to see things with the brain you could never see with your eyes. 

One thing is true:  When you start looking in places you’ve never looked before, you will start seeing things you’ve never seen before. 

But it all starts with the choice to believe. The solution is always somewhere nearby, and it’s closer than you think.