The Power of Faith

In a world where intellect is on the rise, we often undermine faith.

We classify faith as mainly for savages or the uneducated.

Even though our era has produced magical technological & scientific works…

Is faith to be discarded like yesterday’s trash?

Depends on the kind of person that you are.

For some people, faith just does not do it for them.

All good.

However, in the world of communication skills, the topic that we predominantly discuss in this blog:

Faith is a must.

‘Faith in what?’

Depends on you.

It can be faith in finding the big truth, faith in your best self, faith in a religion etc.

Doesn’t matter.

The underlying premise is that faith is the fire extinguisher for limiting beliefs.

When you embody the narrative, you transform yourself at a BEING level.

Faith alone will not do it though.

Faith + Intentful action + Sharp intellect will do it.

Why Faith?

Faith is the UNSHAKEABLE belief in something.

I use the word ‘something’ because I believe it is good to keep faith arbitrary to each individual.

You can’t force faith.

Wars are fought because someone was trying to get someone else to be faithful on something they didn’t truly BELIEVE.

We all have beliefs scattered in our lives.

From getting into our Uber ride, believing that the driver is not a murderer.

To conquering our fears.

Being too intellectual in the world of emotions can make a coward out of you.

For example with speech anxiety…

You know that you’re nervous. Or better yet, terrified.

However, if you were to stop & dissect each of the painful emotions, then you would take no action.

Faith allows you to bulldoze thru the dark emotions.

And overpower it with light.

A little bit of a flame in a dark room will still light up that dark room.

When facing limiting beliefs, reason & intellect have a ceiling.

The Power of Faith is Earned

There is this mistaken belief that knowledge and faith cannot coexist with one another.

False.

Knowledge is the precursor to faith.

If you are simply getting your mind to BELIEVE in something, without any form of knowledge pre-existing it, you will struggle.

Not saying it’s not doable.

However, the journey will be tough.

Satisfying the intellectual side to you makes the faithful journey much easier.

And once you begin the journey, it’s a game of strengthening the muscle.

A person who is a pure coward in all facets of their life will find it almost impossible to have self-belief.

It’s because the person lacks experience & knowledge in the realm of conquering difficult tasks.

However, if this person has conquered at least 1-2 fears in their life…

Now they have some knowledge to build their faith on top of.

‘Is their job done?’

Absolutely not.

Self-belief is a muscle that needs to be routinely exercised.

Therefore, more knowledge needs to be acquired to fuel the fire.

And that fire will make it easier to assimilate that knowledge.

Faith and knowledge are synergistic forces that are meant to be combined.

What are the Practical Benefits of Faith?

Well, thus far I talked about how a belief helps extinguish limiting thoughts.

It’s hard to use raw intellect to reason with limiting thoughts.

Why?

Because a lot of your limiting thoughts do not make logical sense.

However, even though it doesn’t make logical sense does not negate the existence of those thoughts.

This allows the power of faith to not only extinguish limitations in thinking paradigms, it also allows you to REPLACE thoughts as well.

Thoughts are the precursor to behavior.

And if you plant the right thoughts & nurture it, the behavior will eventually catch up.

A brilliant example of this is Israel Adesanya.

At the time of writing this blog, Israel is a professional UFC fighter who has been CRUSHING it.

Annihilating his competition while being entertaining at the same time.

Not only is he a hardcore fighter, but he also is an avid anime fan.

And I don’t mean that he only consumes anime as a hobby.

He says that anime has played a huge role in his fight game.

The ability for anime characters to POWER UP (increase in strength when met with conflict) is a mental narrative that he follows.

Heck, he RESONATES so much with the ‘Power-Up’ concept, that he decided to incorporate this into his arsenal for fighting.

But wait!

Is the ability of a cartoon character to power up factually accurate?

No.

And who gives a shit?

It’s having a practical benefit for this fighter.

We often act as though science & logical concepts are the only portals towards truth.

However, that’s only a part of the picture.

Science & logic are great in handling the objective world.

Faith & stories are great at handling the subjective world.

Know when to apply which.

Avoid Getting Carried Away

I do want to leave one last thought regarding the power of faith.

It can truly be unleashed by the pure of heart & the wise.

That’s a rite of passage.

Just like how I said too much intellect can make you a coward.

Likewise, too much faith can make you a fanatic.

There are a lot of brainwashed individuals out there who are acting like savages in the name of faith.

And this gives the whole act of belief a bad rep.

The truth of the matter is, for any activity that has been scaled, there will be winners & weirdos.

It’s just a part of life.

Understand that weirdos exist.

And see how you can take the path of the winner.

As I said, the pure of heart & the wise know how to find and invest in the right narrative in context to their life.

So if you lack any sort of belief, just view it as being early on in the game.

Keep pushing forward.

As you push forward & embody the mantra ‘begin before you’re ready.’

You’ll accumulate battle scars.

The battle scars will lead to further self-education & relevant knowledge.

More importantly, the battle scars will humble you.

And that humble attitude will purify the heart & make you wise for your age.

That’s when the right narrative will stick out.

From there, it’s a game of bringing that narrative to LIFE.

When the words become behavior, that’s when you are leveraging the power of faith.

Belief Sparks Change

The dark truth is, that life is not fair.

The light truth is, that life is not unfair.

It’s neutral.

We have the game of choosing the narrative that will guide our thoughts.

And those colored thoughts will influence our perception which will alter our behavior.

Leverage the world of intellect.

Leverage the world of faith.

Only the foolish claim the 2 worlds to be different.

Either they don’t have street smarts.

Either they don’t have books smarts.

Navigate around that…

And become the best of both.

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– ArmaniTalks