This modern era is full of fools, old and young alike. We see a lot of people get stuck in what they've been raised with, whether those be ideas or ways of doing something. This kind of experience has a tremendous negative impact on your life. To help prevent this, I will be talking about 2 reasons to challenge your own beliefs.

Challenging your own beliefs doesn't mean you throw them away. Nor does it mean you become somebody completely different.

To challenge your own beliefs is to seek improvement that is being concealed by your way of thinking. Unfortunately, there are key areas that get blocked off when someone is unwilling to challenge their own beliefs.

Of these key areas, two of them are vitally important for obtaining and maintaining a healthy state of mind. These 2 areas make up the 2 reasons to challenge your own beliefs.

1. Being "stuck in your ways"

Have you ever been stuck on some kind of schoolwork? You struggle to find the answer, you think you've finally found it, only to realize that the answer key says you got it wrong. Of all the struggles that can happen in life, the worst kind to happen is when you insist that your way is the best way.

This a classic phrase. You've probably heard of people being stuck in their ways at some point in your life most commonly used to refer to people who can't accept other ways of thinking.

It's one thing to hold on to your beliefs and stand up for them, but it's another to treat them as undisputable. It's one thing to have a backbone, it's another thing to close yourself off.

When people get stuck in their ways, they are closing themselves off to the world. This happens mostly because their viewpoint has never been challenged or changed before.

Because they've never been challenged before, they never consider the possibility of another viewpoint and end up assuming their viewpoint is the only one and the correct one. While not a problem in itself to assume you are correct, it can lead to some debilitating problems if left unchecked.

First off, you are neutering your ability to connect with others.

Believe it or not, the most important skill to have in life is the ability to connect with others. It's a very well-known fact that those with enjoyable social lives have better lives in general.

People want to be accepted and found where they're at in their life, not where you are at. When you get stuck in your ways, you are unable to do this without significant change and/or effort.

If you allow yourself to get stuck in your ways, you will end up having a very limited social life because very few people will be willing to tolerate your narrow-mindedness.

Second, you end up stagnating. 

Of all the things that can happen to you, stagnation is the worst thing that can happen. When you stagnate, you stop improving or getting worse. 

You figuratively cannot move, and if you cannot move, figuratively or literally, you are as good as dead. When we stagnate, we are consigning ourselves to a death without death.

Stagnation occurs as a result of no movement occurring in our beliefs or viewpoints, and as a result, we never get any opportunities to learn and grow. Once you stop learning and growing, you are already dead and will need to be revived.

To continue living, we must continue to learn and grow as people as we live our lives. This is the first reason to challenge your own beliefs.

2. Opportunity & Trauma

The difference between somebody who enjoys life and somebody who doesn't can be boiled down to how opportunistic they are. While it isn't the only factor, the measure of how one handles opportunity says a lot about who they are as a person. Pay close enough attention, and you'll notice a connection between opportunistic people and the beliefs they hold.

Admit it. You've passed on opportunities that were right in front of you before. I certainly have. I was scared to take action because I was scared of failing.

You and I have had those moments where we see people do something and we say to ourselves, "Man, I wish I could do that." I'm here to tell you, you can. You just have to shift your beliefs slightly.

This leads to a question: Why do some of us become so unopportunistic? The short answer is your childhood.

The long answer is trauma from childhood caused by you trying to be opportunistic and getting punished for it. A few examples are trying to be social and getting no response, or trying to speak your mind to your parents and being told not to talk back.

These experiences lead to beliefs that say you shouldn't try because nobody will answer or care. Or worse, your opinion or initiative may even upset somebody.

To undo this trauma, you must take steps to show yourself that there is nothing wrong with what you are trying to achieve.

If you are trying to obtain more money, show yourself that getting rich is okay. If you are trying to improve your ability with women, change your viewpoint to one where you are desirable.

Oftentimes, our beliefs are outdated self-defense mechanisms that hold us back as a means of protecting us from our past trauma. Truthfully, the only purpose this trauma serves later on is to show you what trauma you need to let go of.

The most effective techniques for letting go of trauma are referred to as shadow work and can be found very easily on YouTube.

As long as you let yourself hold onto trauma, you will never be able to become opportunistic and seize life as it happens. This is the second reason to challenge your own beliefs.

Reality is what you see in front of you

As obvious as this may sound, reality is truly what is right in front of you. In this way, you may share part of your view with someone else while having a completely unique viewpoint from them.

This is to say that even if we have similar experiences, they will never be exactly the same. The way one person processes and experiences will be different from someone else, no matter how similarly they process it.

When we get stuck, we assume that our viewpoint is the only one and that everybody else has it too. When this happens, we become unable to share the viewpoints of others.

When beliefs are left unchecked, we may be holding ourselves back unintentionally. A lot of beliefs stem from trauma, which is very unhelpful once we've grown out of childhood.

For these reasons, we want to challenge our own beliefs. By doing this, we save ourselves from stagnation and death without death.

- Karl