It is more harmful to compromise on one's own beliefs than to adhere to them.

"Person who has never made a mistake in his life has never tried anything new" - Einstein. When we have a belief, it is always better to make to self steady and identify whether, we have to go follow it or we should compromise on it. When we are sure it is pragmatic, we can definitely adhere to it, rather than compromising on it.

Compromising on one's belief is harmful because when we have followed our belief, we know whether, we are in a right track or not. If we not progressing, we made a mistake, we can correct ourself and move on. Lets consider the other scenario where we didnt follow our belief and compromised on it. In that case we will not know, whether belief which we had was correct or wrong. we compromised on the belief and it has went wrong. Then we would be cursing ourself for not doing a proper study and proceeded intially.

Best illustration is from my real life secenario, after completing my high school, I have to make a decision to choose a field of Engineering. Unfortunately i didnt have enough guidance, i have to go by my belief. My belief was to take up Electronics and communication stream in Engineering. I made a thorough study and made sure it wasnt a unrecoverable error. When i was doing my pre-final year, i found my interest in programming. Even though i adhered to my belief, i was wrong but still i learnt from it and with my sternous efforts got placed in a software firm. If i hadnt gone by my belief, then till the end of my life. I would have been assuming, i would have done better, if i had taken Electronics and communication stream.

Even though following our belief is the best thing to do but not in all the cases. We have to understand the risk and, whether it is logical to adhere to our beliefs. Lets consider an example, during our 3rd year we started a complex project and have to finish in relatively short period of time.Everyone believed that we will complete it on time, inspite of our proffessor's warning us it would not be feasible, pick an alternate topic.We were obstinate not to change but finally we failed, since we didnt have enough time. We should have studied the complexity before starting the project, which we failed to do.

Summing it up on the whole, we cannot come to conclusion whether compromising on a belief is harmful or not. It depends on the belief and the current scenario. It is always good to analyse and then make a decision, rather than following blindly.