Unchallenged Ideas and Unquestioned Beliefs Limit Your Freedom and Cause Prejudice
Personal transformation starts with critical self-examination and self-awareness.
Everything in Life Evolves and Transforms
If you want things to stay the way they are, you are holding onto an illusion.
We are not static beings. Approximately 330 trillion cells in your body are replaced every 80-days1, creating a new you. We are constantly transforming, unaware of this simple fact of nature.
If our physical bodies are in a constant state of flux, why do so many of us persist with rigid, unchallenged patterns of thinking?
Why do we desperately hold onto ideas as unchangeable?
The more rigidly we hold onto fixed ideas, the more they become tradition, dogma, ideology, and various forms of prejudice that damage human dignity.
Often, these ideas and beliefs function as a common good morality to unite people together in the form of tribes, societies, and countries. The less often thoughts and fixed ideas are challenged, the more narrow and limited the group's perceptions. This results in a fear of evolutionary change and a refusal to accept the nature of things at face value.
Most people are seeking some form of order in their lives.
Our brains are looking for patterns. From these patterns, we create predictions and responses that help us to make meaning, and to make sense of our environment — and the world. If you’re not a critical thinker, following someone else’s orders (rules, dogma, and religion) simplifies your life, and alleviates you from asking questions about the meaning of life and the nature of existence.
In other words, your safety depends on someone else's patterns of prediction and response.
Things at rest never stay at rest - unless they're dead.
Homeostasis is a state of settling, calming down, and not changing that is temporary.
Millions of external factors influence every aspect of our existence that continuously challenges homeostasis. Nothing lasts forever and everything transforms from one state to another, unable to return to what once was - the infinite cycle of life and death in the universe.
Your ideas, which you may believe are fixed, never return to the original thought.
Every new thought builds upon previous ideas in new ways, however subtle. Over time, our use of words changes, taking on new meanings or variations, thus influencing our understanding. Each time we meet a new person and discuss ideas, however similar they may seem, we express those thoughts in subtly different, even new ways.
Transformation Is the Only Constant in Life
If you have never challenged yourself to understand why you believe something is true, consider answering this question:
“How does refusing to question this belief or idea serve me?”
If you want to take your answer to the next level, try this thought experiment:
“What are the alternatives to this belief, and how might they serve me and respect human dignity?”