What Is A Belief?
I have always struggled with the concept of “belief.” I have never really understood what it entails or why it is so important that one must have a set of beliefs, whatever they may be. My reaction when someone says “believe in yourself” or “believe in ‘something'” is one of hesitation and confusion.
What does it mean?
Is it yielding to something greater than oneself?
Is it blind acceptance of the intangible and the unquantifiable?
The only way to truly understand something is to go back to the roots and start from scratch. This involves experimentation and lots and lots of data.
Before we proceed, I need you to understand that this experiment operates on the edge of what anyone would consider sanity. I am willing to wager that when I state the parameters of this experiment, it might come across as absurd and even crazy, but then again, one man’s belief is another man’s delusion. All I ask is that you proceed with an open mind.
The Experiment
Six months ago, I decided that I would test the impact of a “belief” by first creating a belief and then logging everything from my emotional state, professional and personal performance, to energy levels. I wanted to really understand what a belief does. I wanted to strip away all the noise and go to the roots so I could define it the way I saw fit. I wanted something that was, at its very core, mine.
Buckle up, I am about to blow your mind because this transcends and upends everything I thought I knew.
The first task is to create a belief. The way I approached this was to make the intangible tangible, but it had to be something that required active participation on my end. It also needed a ritual that would, in my books, “affirm” the belief. I went through dozens of iterations until I finally settled on something that gave me daily “affirmations” and allowed me to measure, with a serious degree of accuracy, the impact of this belief. This meant that I had to internalize that when I completed my “ritual” for this “belief,” I was guaranteed good fortune, success, and happiness.
The belief I created is a very simple one, based on numbers. If I saw triplets like 111, 222, 333, 444, and tapped my chest the same number of times, so 1 for 111 and 2 for 222, I had performed a ritual that “affirmed” my belief, and this guaranteed me good fortune, success, and happiness.
The reason why I did it this way is that it guaranteed some level of frequency and, more importantly, chance. If you approach the layout of this belief, you will find that you are certain to meet the numbers 1 through 5 on a digital clock, if and only if you catch it.
Then there are opportunities out in the real world: think license plates and addresses as examples.
Another reason for going about it like this is that it allowed me room to “grow” into the belief rather than blindly accepting it. The act of tapping ensured that I was an active participant in this and took it seriously.
Rather than post over 3,500 points of data, I summarized it using my research skills to give you a very detailed and accurate picture of how a belief develops and what it does to a person. I have divided it into a month-by-month basis starting April 2025.
It is a long read, but it is a deep dive into a very unique experiment that will lead you to question what you believe in.
April
In May, I affirmed my belief a total of 96 times, or about 3.09 times a day. The first week of May felt exactly like the last week of April, but there was this undertone of very light excitement when I affirmed my ritual.
For the remainder of May, this level of excitement rose considerably, and I recorded that in 11 particular instances where I was having a rough day, my emotions slowly started to stabilize, and I did not find myself ruminating about the difficulties of the day.
It was almost as if my brain’s attention was shifted towards something else. I don’t have a label for this “something else” because it was more like my attention was not fixated on ruminating, almost as if I gave myself a stop button for rumination.
Another important point to note here is that when I saw a triplet, my facial expression immediately changed from whatever it was to something one would make when they had discovered something or solved a problem.
I will admit that I did not do a very good job of capturing this , mostly because I was not aware of it, and I have just four recorded instances where I detailed my facial expressions. The most frequent triplets were 222, 333, and 555, representing about 47% of the dataset.
June
In June, I affirmed my belief a total of 106 times, or about 3.53 times a day. June was very interesting because I noticed that I seemed to be getting very lucky with finding triplets in some of the most random places (addresses represented the largest source).
The most frequent triplets were 222, 444, 555, and 888, representing about 65% of the dataset for June. Some important things to note here: I started to get visibly excited when I saw a triplet, and I started to have this thought in my head that I was bound to find a triplet for the day. At the very least one set, and the reason why the source is addresses is because I spent a lot of time exploring my city in June.
Here is where it starts to get interesting.
There are 3 instances for June where I did not find any triplets, and I have noted in my data tracker that I felt incomplete and internalized the notion that today was not going to be a good day. There is no evidence to indicate that the days where I missed the rituals were in fact bad days. They would, from the outside, seem like just normal days, nothing out of the ordinary, yet my journal entries for those three days show that the language I used indicated I was anxious, afraid, and doubtful. Of what, I am not sure.
But there is a line recorded at the very end of one of the journal entries which reads as follows:
“I have this feeling in my chest that I have upset someone or something larger than me.”
July
In July, I affirmed my belief a total of 127 times, or about 4.09 times a day. The majority of the triplets, 39%, came from a digital clock that sits on my desk. The most frequent triplets were 111, 444, and 555.
I did not deliberately put this clock there; it has always been there, but I seemed to have become pretty good at looking at it right when a triplet showed up.
The takeaway for July, based on my data tracker and journal entries, is that I had a strong air of positivity around me and in everything I did. Many entries end with this line and its variations:
“I feel like everything is going to work out and I made the right choices.”
Another ends as follows:
“Something has changed in me that is convincing me to do more and to believe that I am blessed!”
On my data tracker, I have noted my strong desire to be bolder and have more confidence in my own abilities and to put them to the test because I strongly “felt” that the odds were in my favor. This is when I decided to go against the norm in one aspect of my life because I “felt” very strongly that I could do it. That I should be able to do it and there is no reason why I cannot.
I increased the amount of weights I lift. In the grand scheme of things, this might not sound like a big deal, but to someone like me who approaches these things with a ruler in my pocket, it was not easy. And I was not conservative with the increase; I scaled way more than I normally would, and I have been lifting that new set ever since.
I am still in disbelief that not only was I able to do it but also the impact on my mental state. Here is a line from my journal for that day, and if you have been approaching this with an open mind, it should concern you (edited for brevity):
“I may have inadvertently invented a new belief system that actually works. Earlier today I saw a triplet, and upon completing my ritual, I had this thought in my head that I should increase my weights and that I should double the increase at the very least. This goes against the standard, but I ‘felt’ deep down inside of me that it was just going to work out and somehow I am guaranteed success. I am still not clear on why I succeeded and why even right now I feel like nothing is impossible for me. Truth be told, I am a little suspicious of my own success. The math is not adding up. Even if I have been conservative with past increases, this still is a huge jump, and yet I completed the set.”
Did my belief system give me superpowers, or did it unearth what was buried under years of doubt, lack of confidence, and impostor syndrome?
August
In August, I affirmed my belief a total of 142 times, or about 4.5 times a day. The majority of the triplets, 80%, came from two digital clocks: the one on my desk and another that hangs on the wall (I rarely used to look at this one). Between the two, about 60% are from the one on my desk.
The most frequent numbers were 111, 333, and 555. At this point, if you are wondering why the dataset is showing a strong bias towards clocks, I suggest looking up “frequency illusion,” more commonly known on social media as the red car theory. A few amazing things happened in August that I think you should take the time to explore on your own and come to your own conclusions.
The first is that the increased frequency of the affirmations started to give me the confidence that I should do the things that I have been meaning to do or have been putting off for one reason or another.
I wish I could share with you the powerful feeling of this confidence, but I will do my best to put it in words, words lifted from my journal:
“To doubt that something is not going to work out is to doubt my faith in my own skills and abilities, the ones I have spent decades building, refining, and relying on. They have served me well in times of need and in times of greed, and I would be remiss not to mention the conviction my ritual has helped me embody. I cannot quantify it yet, but having performed them today, I feel as if the path ahead of me is clear. It is very strange putting something in words I do not understand, but I feel very strongly that no matter what I do, it is going to be ok.”
The second thing is that for this entire month, I wore a heart rate tracker and monitored the before and after. As soon as I saw a triplet, my heart rate increased. I am no doctor, but I am guessing this is a result of my excitement at seeing a triplet. About 2–4 minutes after completing my affirmation, I found that my heart rate decreased, and my emotional state shifted towards the calm end of the spectrum.
Here is where it gets even more interesting.
For August, I recorded six days that were difficult. On these days, something I did not expect happened.
On one particular day, which represents the extreme end of difficult days for August, my heart rate was high in response to the external stress I was dealing with, but as soon as I saw a triplet, it did not go up; it went down, and then upon completing my affirmation, it stayed down. In fact, the data shows it normalized to what I would see on a normal stress-free day.
But that is not all.
The external forces that were causing the stress did not disappear. They were there, but how I approached them after the affirmation gave me insight into the power of belief.
This is a paragraph from my journal for that day (edited for brevity):
“I had so much work to do, and with the tight deadlines, I was worried I would never turn things around on time, and with multiple teams on vacation, prioritizing projects was making it difficult to maintain focus… I saw a triplet completely out of random on my computer’s clock, and I felt this wave of calm and ease wash over me before my hand even reached my chest, and the next thing I know is that my face, which was scrunched up under the weight of stress and deadlines, felt relaxed and light. What is strange is that not only did the notion of stress completely disappear, I was also convinced that the amount of work was more than doable, and it was.”
That is what I recorded for that day, and I have a hard time believing that last line because on that day the amount of work that was delivered is equivalent to what would be done in about a week and a half.
September
In September, I affirmed my belief a total of 146 times, or about 4.6 times a day. The most frequent triplets were 111, 333, 555, and 777. The first three triplets came from the two clocks, and the last one is something I ran into frequently. Its sources are addresses, number plates, and phone numbers. It is the only anomalous recording I have for this entire experiment, as it represents the second most frequent triplet, accounting for about 30% of the dataset. I would normally see other triplets like 999, 888, and 666 every now and then, but they represented a small portion for each month.
To have a triplet that cannot be displayed on a clock indicates to me that either the pattern recognition in my brain has recognized the positive impact of this ritual and is on the lookout for triplets, or I just got lucky. Given that I only have data for one month for this anomaly, I cannot substantiate either.
At this point in the experiment, I should make you aware that I was no longer seeing this as an experiment but more as a ritual that needed to be completed every day. I was not making any wishes when I saw triplets, nor was I verbalizing what I wanted to happen. I was just doing my thing because it was my thing, and something you will find interesting is the paragraph from my journal below (edited for brevity):
“I had a moment today where I completely forgot why I am doing what I am doing (this experiment). I recall when I completed the affirmation for the third time today, I had this moment of confusion. I was knee-deep in a task, and it was as if the subconscious part of me saw the triplets, carried out the ritual, and handed back control. It was unnerving for a brief second until I sort of snapped back to reality. My understanding is that this has become such a big part of me that every fibre of my being sees it as some sort of duty to be performed, and if performed correctly, there are guaranteed rewards. I say this because the confusion was cleared with the thought in my head that ‘everything is going to be ok now.'”
The thing with curiosity is that you cannot satiate it with a singular answer.
Every answer, experience, and result leads to another question. The difficult part is figuring out what question to ask next. While I had convinced myself that my belief system was delivering results and the data was backing up that claim, there was, in the end, one question that remained to be answered.
What happens if I stop?
October
In October, I affirmed my belief a total of 4 times, or about 0.12 times a day. The four recorded instances are what I would consider a reflex, where I completed the affirmation like I was on autopilot. While there were other instances where I came close to going through the motions, I was able to catch myself in time and stop. But that is not what is important.
What is important is what it did to me.
Anxiety
Anger
Guilt
Fear
The main course for October.
Despite having a very good month where I accomplished and achieved a fair bit, I found myself feeling the full weight of these emotions, affecting my judgment and my outlook for the future.
There is another feeling that I had trouble understanding, or more appropriately labeling, until I decided to spend some time wording it out and doing some research.
Betrayal.
I am unable to explain even to myself why I feel like I betrayed a belief that I conjured up in my fucking living room. There are no religious scriptures or prophets that have advocated for this ritual, and yet everything about leaving this self-created belief system behind resembles what many people who have left religion have said about their experiences.
There is an entry in my journal around mid-October:
“I have this feeling of doom and fear every time I avoid following through with my affirmation. I see the triplets, but I stop myself, and then immediately I notice these thoughts in my head, that somehow things are going to be bad and that I am going to fail. I am terrified of why my brain thinks this way. I created this entire thing, it is not real, and yet I value it just as much as one would value their religion.”
What is more interesting is that I noticed I started to have more doubts about whether something is going to work out or not. These would significantly peak when I avoided completing the affirmation.
The problem with an intangible belief is that it creates bubbles in which we occupy ourselves. A pocket reality of our own. When the bubble breaks, all hell breaks loose, and that is exactly what was happening to me.
My internal systems were struggling to reorient themselves for independence. They were convinced that without this belief system, I was nothing, and, that I was, in a way, committing a crime.
This manufactured belief had become a very strong part of my identity and it did that in just 5 months. What conclusion you draw from this is entirely upto you.
If I was to define what a belief is after having completed this experiment then the way I see it is that “a belief isn’t a conviction that something is true. It is at its very root a bundle of emotions that give you hope, bring joy, and comfort accompanied by a whisper that says “its going to be ok”, “you can do this” and above all else it is adding tangibility to the intangible through a series of actions and rituals.”
But what makes a belief true?
Is it the number of people who share the same belief, or the existence of verifiable proof that the belief works?
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