Changing your beliefs
It would be nice to change your beliefs overnight, but this is an astoundingly
difficult thing to achieve. As we’ve established, our beliefs are dug deep into the
soils of our subconscious mind. When we accept
notions without question, we
live with them for most of our lives. Some of these ideas make sense to us, but
don’t empower us. They limit our potential in life.
The first step is to identify which core beliefs you want to change. For example,
one of my core beliefs was: ‘I can’t change my future, so I’ll never be able to
achieve big things.’
These beliefs didn’t make me feel good, but if I’d tried to change them right
away, I’d have felt as though I were lying to myself. After all, these beliefs were
my truth. But why did I think they were
the
truth?
When I confronted my restricting beliefs, I discovered that I believed what I did
because of what I’d been told by someone I looked up to. They’d
told me that
everyone is given a specific life and we have no control over it whatsoever.
Apparently, some people were just born lucky and others weren’t, and we have
to accept it. We shouldn’t waste our time trying to create something different. It
was explained much more subtly than I’ve described it. However, not only was
this ideology fed into my mind from a young age, but it was also reiterated by
everyone around me. And so I believed that I had no power to change the course
of my life.
As I got older and things got harder, my own beliefs saddened me. I felt I had no
alternative and I must live like this because that’s what was intended for me. But
I didn’t want to believe this – I wanted a way out.
I started to question the validity of my beliefs. I also became sceptical about how
credible the source of these beliefs was. Sure, they came from someone who was
respected and everyone around me confirmed them, but none of these people
were the type of person I aspired to.
In my late teens, I wanted to be rich and famous,
so I decided to study people
who
were
rich and famous, and see if their beliefs were different from mine.
These individuals thought limitlessly. They seemed like positive people, too.
They talked about charity, respecting other people, being healthy.
Escape your mental limitations.
Don’t spend your life being
imprisoned by a belief system that
limits your potential and prevents
your dreams from coming true.
When I started looking at people who’d accomplished some of the greatest
achievements on our planet, the theme seemed to be the same.
I also studied
some of the most admired spiritual leaders. I found many who stated that our
beliefs create the life we experience.
I realized that what I’d been taught wasn’t necessarily false; it was true for the
person who’d told me it and for others around me. When I looked at the lives of
those people, there was a common theme: struggle. They had no reason to
believe otherwise. Life hadn’t treated them well, so all they’d known was
hardship.
Our rational brains try to make sense of life around us.
If someone offers a
theory that resonates, we accept it as our truth. When I was told that life would
be difficult, it was much easier to believe than to question it. I took it on as a
truth because it fitted with my life experiences so far.
Our beliefs are like a lens we use to view life;
we see what we convince ourselves is true.
With this realization, I knew that if I could change my beliefs,
I could change
my life. I wanted to know if there were people out there who were born into
circumstances like mine but still managed to achieve great things.
Not only were there countless cases of such people, but also many of them were
born into worse situations than mine. Reading their success stories disproved
everything I’d been conditioned to believe. They helped me to build a solid case
against my own rational mind, using evidence. The more stories I read, the
firmer my resolve became.
I could now accept a new belief: I can change
my future and achieve great
things.
The key point here is that if you want change your belief, you have to
disprove
your current belief by finding enough evidence to support the belief you want
.
There are always success stories out there that will assist you in this process.
