Change Your Beliefs, Change Your Life.

In this article we are going to look at how your beliefs shape your experience of the world, and how by changing your beliefs you can effectively create a totally new experience of the world if you want to.

Our beliefs are formed through our experiences and interactions in the world. Their purpose is to allow us to generalise our perceptions so that we know what to expect without having to re- evaluate life continually. Imagine if everyday you needed to start all over in assessing life and what it means. Because of this our beliefs become our ‘personal truth’s’ they are perceptions of reality.

But are our beliefs reality? What I believe may be different to what you believe so which is real your belief or mine? The fact is they are both real to each person individually. From this we have to conclude that reality must be variable depending on what any one person believes to be true.

All of this leads us to resolve that if what we believe creates our reality then if we don’t like parts of our reality (which we now know can be variable) than in order to change it we simply need to change what we believe.

The irony of belief is that is appears to be fixed we view our beliefs as concrete and conclusive. The challenge therefore comes in realising that we have control over them and can in fact decide to believe differently. It is the nature of the mind to seek out and to prove your beliefs. This is how you are the creator of your life, what you chose to believe at anyone time will create the reality of that belief.

Not all of our beliefs are bad, some of them serve us well, beliefs that do not serve us are called limiting beliefs, the trick is to identify the ones that serve us and to get rid of the ones that are not helping us to create the reality we want. The problem lies in the fact that a lot of our beliefs are subconscious, we don’t even realise we believe them. You can’t control something you are not aware of therefore you must bring your beliefs into consciousness in order to change them.

The easiest way to identify what your limiting beliefs is to look more closely at what is showing up in your life that you don’t want. For instance if you’re not making enough money you should look into what your beliefs are around money or what your beliefs are about your ability to make money. As I said previously beliefs can be buried deep in the subconscious and you may not even think you have them. Some examples of limiting beliefs about money are:

* I just can’t imagine myself ever having a lot of money (the most common belief)
* Money isn’t everything – and it’s not but this is a defining statement about not focusing on money and a deeper core belief that people who focus on money have distorted priorities
* I can’t afford that – believing that your ability to regenerate money is limited
    And the list could go on.

Money is just one area of our lives in which we often have limiting beliefs one thing you can guarantee is that in what ever area your limiting beliefs lie they will show up in your life.

To find out what your limiting beliefs are try making a list of all the things in your life that you would change if you could. Explore each point on your list and think carefully about what belief might be lying beneath it.

So what do you do once you have figured out what your limiting beliefs are?

The thing about beliefs is that you can’t just throw them away; they need to be replaced with new beliefs. This means that you need to figure out what beliefs will get you the results you want in life. You can nut this out yourself or the simplest way to figure out what the new beliefs should be is to model someone who already getting the results you want and figure out what it is that they believe. For example if you want to be a spiritually centred person discovering the core beliefs of the Dalai Lama and then modelling them would be a good place to start ( NB: Core beliefs are not necessarily religious beliefs). If you want to be wealthy then find a wealthy person, figure out what they believe and model that belief system. This is where it gets tricky after all we have spent a long time conditioning ourselves with our beliefs and just letting them go and accepting new ones isn’t easy.

To entrench a new belief it takes focus. Think about it while you are driving, cleaning the house, showering as often as you can. Surround yourself with it by reading books by people who share that belief and begin to associate with people who share that belief. However probably the most powerful technique to use in order to ingrain a new belief is to meditate on or pray on it. Meditation and prayer are the highest forms of focus.

Don’t expect miracles (although they can happen), you will find yourself resisting at times because you must remember that the old belief has been well conditioned. We become comfortable and feel secure with behaviours even when they are dysfunctional so letting go may be hard. Expect the resistance and recognise it as the old belief having trouble letting go, remember you can’t change what you aren’t aware of and in being aware and being ok with the resistance (which often feels like knots in your stomach) you will find that it will soon fall away. What we resist persists, what we acknowledge falls away.

Remember as long as you continue to hold the same beliefs you will get the same results.
If it is possible for individuals to experience different realities than reality is not a fixed state. What this means is that reality is a choice made by the individual. You are always making a choice about what your reality is even if it is a subconscious choice. So if you don’t like what you are getting choose differently, the trick is to make your choice a conscious one.

Leonie Spencer
April 2008.