2.9 To Change Your Current Life Path You Must Change Your Beliefs
“Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Philosopher
YOUR BELIEFS SHAPE YOUR LIFE
You may have concluded that events control your life and that your environment has shaped you into who you are today. However, that could not be further from the truth.
. . . It’s not the events of your life that shape you, but your beliefs as to what those events mean . . .
Lesson 8 text in downloadable PDF File
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BELIEFS AFFECT YOU AT ALL LEVELS
Beliefs are not just limited to impacting your emotions or your actions but they even extend down as far as to be able to impact your physical body. Through a simple but powerful belief, you can transform your body in a number of different ways. You have the capacity to override the impact of drugs. You can send commands to your central nervous system and make measurable changes in your biochemistry, just through the imposition of a belief.
GLOBAL BELIEFS
Some beliefs are so general that they can dominate virtually every aspect of your life, either negatively or positively. These global beliefs can affect your identity, other people, work, time, money and life itself. These large scale beliefs can shape and color every aspect of your life as though they had some outside physical control over these areas of influence. Yet, it really is just a thought that goes through an empowering process that ends in what we know as a belief.
WHAT REALLY IS A BELIEF?
Most people treat a belief as though it’s a thing, when really all that it represents is a feeling of certainty about something or someone. If you say you believe that you’re intelligent, all that you’re really saying is, “I feel certain that I’m intelligent.” That sense of certainty allows you to tap into resources that allow you to produce intelligent results.
COMPLETE KNOWLEDGE IS ALREADY AVAILABLE
We all have access to complete knowledge which already resides within our self allowing us to accomplish virtually anything that we desire. If, for any reason, we lack knowledge in a particular area, we can access it through others and obtain the answers that we need to accomplish our goal. But often through our lack of belief, our uncertainty causes us not to be able to use the capacity that resides within us.
BELIEFS ARE NOT FOUNDED UPON TRUTH
In actuality, it doesn’t even matter if what you believe is true or not. What matters for a belief to be fully operational is that it is empowering. If you can find references which support a belief through a person who supports your belief, or if you can find some personal past experience that supports your belief (whether your belief is faulty or not), your belief is strengthened or weakened depending on the degree of support you are able to come up with.
You can pull from your personal experiences or from other people, or books, movies, self-improvement audio tapes or almost an endless number of other possibilities. Sometimes, you can create a belief solely through your own imagination.
EMOTIONAL INTENSITY IS THE KEY TO EMPOWERING A BELIEF
The greater the number of references you have to support your belief, the stronger it will become. In addition, the greater the emotional intensity that you feel about any of these references, again the stronger your belief will become. With enough emotional intensity and repetition, your nervous system experiences something as being real, even if it hasn’t occurred yet.
CREATE YOUR OWN TRUTH
You have the ability to use imagined references to propel you in the direction of your dreams. People can succeed if they imagine something vividly enough just as easily as if they had the actual experiences. Your brain can’t tell the difference between something you’ve vividly imagined and something you’ve actually experienced.
Everyone who has accomplished some major achievement has had the ability to get themselves to feel certain that they could succeed, even though no one before them had ever accomplished what it was that they accomplished. They’ve been able to create references where no references existed and achieved what in the beginning seemed to be impossible.
FEAR LIMITS BELIEFS
People so often develop limiting beliefs about who they are and what they’re capable of. Because they haven’t succeeded in the past, they believe they won’t be able to succeed in the future. As a result, out of fear, they begin to constantly focus on being “realistic.”
Most people who constantly say, “Lets be realistic,” are really just living in fear, deathly afraid of being disappointed again. Out of that fear, they develop beliefs that cause them to hesitate, to not give their all – consequently they get their expected limited results.
IMAGINATION DEVELOPS POWERFUL BELIEFS
Great leaders are rarely “realistic.” They are intelligent, and they are accurate, but they are not realistic by other people’s standards. They know that the human capacity is so much greater than most of us would ever dream. These successful people summon forth their imagination to picture themselves doing something, even after many failures, and succeeding. It is their special ability, this unique focus, which allows them to persist until eventually they gain the distinctions that put them over the top. The reason success eludes most people is that they have insufficient references of success in the past so they fail to continue trying. All great leaders, all people who have achieved success in any area of life, know the power of continuously pursuing their vision, even if all the details of how to achieve it aren’t yet available.
YOU CAN CREATE ANYTHING THAT YOUR MIND CAN CONCEIVE
If you develop the absolute sense of certainty that powerful beliefs provide, then you can get yourself to accomplish virtually anything, including those things that other people are certain are impossible.
HOW TO CHANGE A BELIEF
All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs.
One very effective way to change a belief is to get your mind to associate massive pain to the old belief. You must feel deep within yourself that not only has this belief caused you pain in the past, but it’s causing you even more in the present and, ultimately, can only bring more pain in the future. You must associate tremendous pleasure to the idea of adopting a new, empowering belief.
Operating from the center of your frontal being, your outer personality, everything that you do is either done out of your need to avoid pain or your desire to gain pleasure. If you associate enough pain to anything, you’ll change. The only reason you have a belief about something is that you’ve linked massive pain to not believing it or massive pleasure to keeping it alive.
DOUBT TOPPLES MOST BELIEFS
Another way to change a belief is to create doubt. As you examine your past experiences you will find that there are some beliefs in your past that you used to defend completely and totally and one day, they lost their power and their hold on you. Something caused you to create doubt. It may have been a new experience that negated your old belief showing that it wasn’t what you thought it was, either weakening your old belief or disproving its validity.
Yet experience doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you will change your old belief even if the experience runs counter to its premise. New experiences trigger change only if they cause you to question your beliefs, since whenever you believe something, you no longer question it in any way. The moment you begin to honestly question your beliefs, you no longer feel absolutely certain about them – you lose your feeling of absolute certainty.
BY QUESTIONING ANY BELIEF ENOUGH, DOUBT IS GUARANTEED
Another observation becomes interesting in the light of gaining access to voluntarily changing or altering your belief system. If you question anything enough, you will eventually begin to doubt it.
Based on the different levels of emotional certainty and intensity, your beliefs are either rather easy to change or very difficult to change, but still changeable. If has a low level of emotional certainty and intensity attached to it, it would be better classified as an opinion. If it has a medium level of certainty and intensity it could be called a belief. But if it has a high level of certainty and intensity attached to it, it would then be classified as a conviction.
RAISING A BELIEF TO THE LEVEL OF A CONVICTION
Probably the single biggest factor separating a belief and a conviction is that a conviction has usually been triggered by significant emotional events, during which your mind is forced into intensifying the belief since it links massive pain with not believing.
Holding such a conviction can become crucial to a person’s very survival if the conviction is strong enough. On the positive side, we can be inspired to great heights of achievement through the empowering effect of a conviction.
Often the best thing that you can do to create mastering in any area of your life is to raise a belief to the level of a conviction. Conviction has the power to drive you to action, to push you through all kinds of obstacles. Beliefs can do this as well, but some areas of your life may require the added emotional intensity of conviction.
As an example, a conviction that you are an intelligent person who can always find a way to turn things around can help steer you through some of the toughest times in your life. Similarly, if you can develop a conviction, you can make consistently healthy lifestyle choices for yourself thus avoiding the normal problems that most people struggle with such as being overweight or through other unhealthy lifestyle habits that can lead to sluggishness, illness or low self-esteem.
DEVELOPING CONVICTION
To create a conviction, you need to start with a basic belief. Then you need to reinforce your belief by adding new and more powerful references.
The most powerful reference you can find will be that of another highly motivated person who already has turned your desired belief into a conviction. As you locate and talk with various people who have raised their belief to the level of a conviction, you will more easily be able to get the fire to start burning within your own belief. The more references you develop, and the more emotional the references are, the stronger your conviction will become.
CREATING A TRIGGER TO PROPEL YOUR CONVICTION
Once you have acquired adequate references, you then need to find a triggering event, or create one on your own. To do this you need to ask yourself, “What will it cost me if I don’t empower my belief to the level of a conviction and make it real within my life?” Ask yourself questions that create emotional intensity.
As an example, if you want to develop a conviction to never do something again that is extremely harmful to yourself or others around you, go out and interview others who have gone further with this action and have incurred real pain and suffering within their lives. See first hand what your actions are leading you toward so that you can feel what your actions really represent in the end. Identify powerfully with the full extent of the path that you are following. These kinds of experiences have the power to push you over the edge and establish true conviction.
TAKING ACTION
And finally, after working through the steps listed above, you need to take action. Each action you take strengthens your commitment and raises the level of your emotional intensity and conviction.
DO NOT LOOK TO OTHERS FOR GUIDANCE – STAY CENTERED
One of the challenges with convictions is that they’re often based on other people’s enthusiasm for your beliefs. So often people believe something because everybody else believes it. But other’s beliefs are not always accurate. Even so, when people are not sure what to do, they look to others for guidance.
Looking to others for guidance is one of the most powerful ways to limit your life – to make it just like everyone else’s. Some of the strongest guidance that people use is information that they get from “experts.” But are experts always right? Think about human history over the last several hundred years and look at the various expert opinions that existed regarding the observation of life. Be it medicine, or religion or whatever, time has shown a great number of expert opinions as being totally unfounded.
Trusting experts blindly is not well-advised.
Don’t blindly accept anything in your life, no matter what the source. Consider all things as they relate to the entire context of your life and determine how does what you are trying to make a decision about make sense for you.
Sometimes even the evidence of your senses can’t be trusted. In the end only you are responsible for your own actions, and you need to develop a knowledge system that goes far beyond your own senses or the opinions of others.
PAIN IS THE ULTIMATE TOOL FOR SHIFTING A BELIEF
You will find it true that pain is the most powerful way to change a belief. However, unless you are able to figure out how to acquire a “correct” belief, you only may be substituting one faulty belief for another.
In the next lesson of this course, you will be presented with a method for acquiring “correct knowledge”, a method called “Correct Responding.”
If you are working with clearly harmful beliefs, you should work toward attempting to release their negative hold on your life so that you can more comfortably receive and assimilate true knowledge that I’ll release in the later sessions of the paid course. It’s vital to examine your beliefs to determine who you have become and what consequences your current beliefs have on your life. Are they empowering you or are they disempowering you?
CONSCIOUS SELF OBSERVATION OF YOUR CURRENT BELIEFS
To determine what your beliefs are, you need to go through a period of conscious self observation.
Stop everything else that you’re doing and take the next ten or twenty minutes and begin to brainstorm all the beliefs you have, both those that empower you and those that disempower you.
Include both your lesser beliefs that don’t seem to matter much as well as your stronger beliefs that seem to make a big difference.
Make sure that you cover:
- If-then beliefs like, “If I consistently give my all, then I will succeed,” or “If I’m totally passionate with this person, he or she will leave me.”
- Global beliefs, like beliefs about people – “People are basically good” or “People are a pain” – beliefs about yourself, beliefs about opportunity, beliefs about time, beliefs about scarcity and abundance.
Write down as many of these beliefs as you can for the next few minutes.
EMPOWERING BELIEFS
What have you learned by going through this exercise? Take a moment to review the beliefs you have written down. Decide upon and circle the three most empowering beliefs on your list. How do they empower you? How do they strengthen your life? Think about the positive processional effects they have upon you. Do you have any beliefs that haven’t yet been powerfully employed within your life that would have immediate and positive impact upon it? Review your list and strengthen your emotional intensity and sense of certainty that these beliefs are true and real so that they can guide your future behaviors.
DISEMPOWERING BELIEFS
Now look at your limiting beliefs. As you review them, what are some of the consequences that these beliefs carry with them? Circle the two most disempowering beliefs. Decide right now, once and for all, that you’re no longer willing to pay the price that these beliefs are taking upon your life. Remember, that if you begin to doubt any of your beliefs and question their validity, you can weaken them so that they no longer impact you.
To question the certainty held by your disempowering beliefs, ask yourself the following questions:
1. How might this belief be ridiculous or absurd?
2. Was the person I learned this belief from worth modeling in this area?
3. What will it ultimately cost me emotionally if I don’t let go of this belief?
4. What will it ultimately cost me in my relationships if I don’t let go of this belief.
5. What will it ultimately cost me physically if I don’t let go of this belief?
6. What will it ultimately c
7. What will it cost my family or loved ones if I don’t let go of this belief?
If you’ve taken the time to really answer these questions, you may find that your beliefs have been significantly weakened just through the analysis of these questions.
Now become fully associated with what these beliefs have been costing you and the real costs in the future if you do not change. Link such intense pain that you’ll want to rid yourself of them forever, and then, finally, decide to do so now.
IMPORTANT
You won’t be able to get rid of a belief pattern without replacing it with a new one. So write down the replacements for the two limiting beliefs that you’ve just eliminated. What is their opposite, their antithesis?
If you are not getting the results you want in your life, you need to ask yourself, “what would I have to believe in order to succeed in this area?” “Who is already succeeding in this area, and what do they believe differently than I do about what’s possible?” or “What’s necessary to believe in order to succeed?” You may very well discover the key belief that has been eluding you.
If you’re experiencing pain, if you feel challenged or frustrated or angry, you may want to ask yourself, “What would I have to believe in order to feel the way I do?” The miracle of this simple process is that it will uncover beliefs you aren’t even aware you have.
While you’re examining these limiting beliefs, notice how your feelings change. Realize, believe, and trust that if you change the meaning of any event in your mind, you will immediately change how you feel and what you do, which will lead you to change your actions and thus transform your destiny.
Changing what something means will change the decisions you make. Remember, nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning you give it. So make sure that you consciously choose the meaning that is most in alignment with the destiny you’ve chosen for yourself.
Beliefs have the awesome potential to create or destroy. Do you truly want to harness the power to create the vision you want rather than destroy your dreams? If you do, learn to choose the beliefs that empower you. Create convictions that drive you in the direction of the destiny that calls from your higher Self.
IN CONCLUSION
If through the analysis of your belief system, you agree that up until now you have become a product of your conditioning, particularly the first eighteen years of life, open your mind to the possibility that you can use the same process to design an entirely new life and become anyone that you would like to become?
Is this really possible? Yes and No. Technically it is totally and completely possible. However, the problem is that we all came into life carrying with us a unique blueprint, a purpose that needs to carried out so that we can further our development that our soul requires of us.
If you could clearly identify what this unique soul’s purpose is, you could then utilize the techniques for changing your beliefs that are outlined above. You would be able to determine what new beliefs would empower you and help you to pursue this path and you would be able to define which old beliefs need to be removed to do so.
Beliefs are powerful tools and until you know what it is that you came here to do with your life, you cannot blindly play with your belief system.
As it exists, your belief system has become a chaotic heap consisting of both empowering and unempowering beliefs. It is possible that some of your disempowering beliefs are there within your life to help direct you through experience required to pursue your path.
Until you know for certain what your life path actually is, you can’t evaluate your beliefs based upon moving away from pain toward pleasure, or based on any other polarity judgment such as good or bad, empowering or disempowering.
You need to first obtain the answer to “What is My Soul’s Purpose? What is it that I came here to do with my life?”
That’s why I spent 7 full time years working on finding my own actual life path and is why I needed to gain the answer to all three of life’s key archetypal questions. And that’s why I’m now sharing this process with you now.
Define, know and accept the answer to your own question, “What Is My Souls’ Purpose?” and you are well on your way toward success. If you don’t find the answer to this question and allow your life to be lead solely by the throw of the dice or the gust of the wind, you will never receive true fulfillment and will always have a gaping hole within you that still needs to be filled.
What are the odds that you will accidentally stumble upon and powerfully implement your Soul’s Purpose without conscious effort? Probably zero!