How To Change Your Beliefs To Have A Great Life
Are you getting what you want from life? Are you prosperous, have great relationships, lots of friends, are in good health, eat well, etc.? If you have all these things, you need to thank your caregivers for giving you beliefs that support your excellent quality of life. And if you don’t have these things, then you will likely have conscious and unconscious beliefs that don’t support you, and you will need to change the beliefs that hold you back.
What Are Beliefs
To begin, let’s start with defining what beliefs are.
A Common Definition of beliefs is accepting that a statement is true or that something exists.
The definition I like best is: “A belief is something we have when we don’t have all of the facts.”
What about Your Own Beliefs
Have you ever thought about your beliefs (or hold onto)? Do you understand that these beliefs run your life and control what you do and don’t do? They are like human software programs that confine you to specific actions and thoughts!
Do you understand that many times that some of your beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, are either holding you back or are helping you have a wonderful life?
These beliefs run your life. Despite this power to control our lives, few people question their beliefs or give them any conscious thought or consideration.
How About Your Key Beliefs?
You know, the ones that you think are so important!
For example, the ones around money, relationships, or how to treat yourself or others?
Do they serve you or keep you stuck? Are you creating the results you want in life right now? If not, to get a different result, it demands that you d do something different. A great place to start is with the beliefs driving your actions. At the very least, you need to go to need to review what’s holding you back.
Where Did You Get These Beliefs?
Have you ever thought about where you got your beliefs? Do you remember where /when you took on these beliefs or from whom?
So often took on our core beliefs when we were quite young and unable to discern if they would serve us over time. Additionally, we take them on from somebody we trust, usually a caregiver, teacher, or peer. Beliefs don’t just end up in our heads out of the blue. They have to come from somewhere.
My Personal Experience
When I was between two and three, I took on beliefs that altered my life. I spent decades trying to undo these unconscious beliefs. With no knowledge or understanding, it was not a straightforward task.
As a child, we all want to be loved. Sometimes our parents are incapable of providing what we need, so we must adapt. Sometimes we have to take on beliefs to stay alive or make sense of the world.
People who grow up in negligent families have to rationalize why a primary caregiver treats some so poorly. To accomplish this, a person might change the situation and make the negligent caregivers into good people when they are anything. Still, my belief that I picked up as a child had a significant adverse effect. I likely took on these beliefs when I was only two or three years old. I couldn’t identify them as simply beliefs and thought they were the “truth” when they were none of this!
Check out our post on Changing Negative Core Beliefs HERE
Emotional Component
Many times we take on beliefs as a result of some emotional experience.
For example, a parent is angry, and a child believes that angry people are dangerous.
As a child, you can feel neglected by a caregiver, so you may make up a belief that you are not good enough or they are doing their best, etc. None of this is necessarily true. We associate an emotion with a belief. Either triggering the emotion or the belief can initiate the process. Additionally, the process will continue to run in our life until we address and change the underlying structure.
I discovered that the motion was tied to the belief that the behavior dissolved when I released. At that moment, how I saw the world changed. In an instant, with the emotion and belief out of the way, I saw the world much more clearly. The great news: once you get the old belief out of the way and replace it with something that serves you, a whole new world will open up for you!
Okay, It’s Your Turn
Think about an area in your life that is working as well as you want. In reflecting on your beliefs, have you ever asked the question: “why did somebody else believe this to be true?” You see, far too often, we take on these beliefs that we can quickly adapt without even knowing whether they are accurate or will serve us!
What to Do If Your Beliefs Don’t Serve You?
Sometimes our beliefs don’t serve us and hold us back from having the life we want. Sometimes we have beliefs that we are not even consciously aware of having.
As we age and it can become easier to observe our patterns, we may find ourselves motivated enough (usually moving away from pain) to decide we need to do something differently. As a result, we know that it is in our best interest to change our beliefs and replace what an updated version will help us achieve our life goals.
Beliefs-Can I Change Them?
The great news is that beliefs are pliable, and you can change them!
Eventually, you will get to a point in your life where you are trying to achieve some new result, and you’re not being successful! You want something more! (Which is likely why you’re reading this post – good for you!)
Maybe you have a new goal or create a better relationship with your family, friends, etc. The bottom line is that you want more love, success, happiness, etc. As the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. You have to do something different to get a new result, which means changing your beliefs!
Where to Start?
A great place to start is asking yourself something simple: Why am I doing this? What must I believe to be true to be doing this? How long have I been doing this, and who taught me how to do this?
Some unconscious level that you need to do something different!
You know you need to take on new skills or ways of looking at the world to achieve your desired results.
In most cases, our beliefs are not things that we have chosen consciously, nor for the most part, are have we given much thought about them. They are mostly things we have picked up over the years.
Once we bring them to consciousness, we can alter virtually any beliefs with a little bit of work. We can then work with our new beliefs to reinforce them and integrate them into a new reality. As a result, we can achieve virtually anything our heart desires.
Changing Beliefs
The good news is that it is relatively simple to upgrade your belief system. So how do you alter or update your beliefs that don’t serve you?
Below you will find a series of steps to allow you to change anything you want to. With anything change process, the two main ingredients are repetition and time. Your subconscious mind knows it needs to get that you are serious about the change process and that it is something you want to accomplish.
Step 1) Identify Something in Your Life That You Wish to Change
Identify an area in your life where things are not working the way you would like. Question what you believe about the situation. Discover the crucial belief that will change the situation into the way you want to be. Note: there could be more than one belief.
It’s unnecessary to decide whether the belief is true or not. You don’t have to consider whether the belief is true or not. This doesn’t matter. What matters is the end you want to create in understanding what beliefs will support you in achieving the success you want.
Example:
You want to start a YouTube channel to support your business. Unfortunately, you procrastinate every time you try to get the channel going. Unconsciously, you realize that you lack the confidence to take action. Underneath this is a belief about yourself that is holding you back, such as “I’m not good at this,” “I won’t be good at this!” Etc. You have to find the beliefs that are stopping you from achieving what you want and then replace them.’
For example, if you change the beliefs above to something simple like: “I love learning new things,” or “With practice, I will get better over time!” Or “This is nothing more than a learning experience, and I learn new skills easily!” Any or all these new beliefs will help you to take action
If you change your original beliefs from “I won’t be good at this” to this is nothing more than a learning experience, and I learned things quickly,” this will provide you with new possibilities. Changing the belief will give you further options and break down success barriers.
Step 2) Choose The Belief You Want!
This step is pretty straightforward. Now that you have identified beliefs that are holding you back, it’s essential that you choose a belief that will empower you to get what you want in life.
The example above pulled together several beliefs that could support success. You will now choose a belief that helps you get what you want. For example, “I am smart,” “I love exercising,” “I love taking massive action,” etc.
As you have already identified the belief holding you back, you have to replace it with the belief that you think will help you achieve what you want.
Step C: Release Attachments (To The Belief(s)) That Are Keeping You Stuck
There will often be some emotional component tied to your identified belief. These emotions are buried deep within our subconscious minds. The emotional connections can trigger the attached behavior or the reverse. For example, a belief can start the emotional component, or the emotional component can trigger the belief.
As another example, suppose you have a belief that is “I’m not smart.” This belief could be tied to an experience when something happened between the child and a caregiver. The person obtains a secondary benefit by holding onto the old belief. For example, by getting upset, the person feels sorry for themselves.
As a result, with their emotional “payoff,” these buried and outdated beliefs may take a bit of extra work to release. For this reason, a person may take some time to let go.
Understanding the emotional tie and the price you’ve been paying will make it much easier for you to get on board to replace a belief that is not serving you. Getting a clear understanding of what has been going on now becomes your greatest support for creating change and building an exciting future.
D: Create the Belief You Want
With your new goal in mind, it is time to ask yourself better questions!
A great one to start with is: “What new belief would support me to achieve the goal that I want?”
What will support you the most is a new belief that helps you overcome procrastination and take lots of action. You will get quick feedback about whether you need to adjust the new belief or look for something else holding you back by taking action immediately.
For example, if you won’t take lots of action and instead are sitting around playing video games, then there’s more work to do!
E: Establish Proof of Success For Your New Belief!
The final and essential step is to take action to ingrain this new belief into your subconscious mind and make the change permanent.
To do this, it will require two strategies: repetition and emotion – the more your subconscious mind hears this, the quicker it will make it real.
Now start working on your goal and monitor your success. When you have tangible results, Celebrate your success!
F: Start Now!!!
The faster you get going, the faster this will change.
Take massive action, starting right now! YUP NOW!!
Keep track of your progress, especially in the early stages, and adjust accordingly. If you find yourself taking action, the new belief is doing its job. If not, try one of the other beliefs to see if you’re getting the desired results.
Closing Comments:
Beliefs are like a software program. Most beliefs are installed randomly with little review, taken on unconsciously when we were young children will not last our lifetime and will need to be replaced or modified.
Yes, some beliefs will serve you a lifetime. At the same time, many beliefs become outdated, especially in today’s rapidly changing world. If you’re not getting the results you want, trust that a belief is running that does not support you or the current situation.
For example, if you desire to lose weight but believe: “I love junk food,” you have significant problems. As a result, not a lot of productivity is going to happen. Also, if you have a subconscious emotional connection with the “I love junk food” belief, finding and releasing the emotional wound that has you eating crap is essential. None of this is insurmountable; you can change any of this, especially once you bring it into conscious thought.
Use the action steps above and change your life starting today!
