Well, of course information is important. Without it we wouldn’t know how to do things, how to get somewhere, and so on. So, maybe the real question to ask would be, how important is information? You see, there are limitations to the benefits of information. As my friend Pete writes in his book At the Crossroads, “Information does not produce transformation.”
Most of us operate with two sets of beliefs. We express our formal beliefs – the things that we say that we believe, that we know to be true. We may talk about and even debate these ideas. But then there are our functional beliefs. This is where the rubber meets the road. Here is where we find out what you really believe. These are the things we put into everyday practice.
The problem we often encounter is when our beliefs are incongruent – we say one thing but do another. We claim that we love our parents but then we are disrespectful to them and ignore their wishes. We express that honesty is a core value but then we lie to people about something we did in order to avoid the heat.
If we truly want to live lives that are wrapped in purpose, one of the first areas we need to address is matching our functional beliefs to our formal beliefs – our actions to our words. In doing so, our lives will become more consistent, more fulfilled, and more at peace.