The power of belief is the backbone of all your experiences. You can completely change your circumstances when you have unshakeable faith in something, but you can keep yourself imprisoned in a nightmare as well...
If your life seems to be one of continuous struggle, if you find yourself constantly doing things you don't want to do because you think it's the only way to get by, you can be sure you have some unwanted beliefs getting in the way.
The trouble is you probably don't realise why you're experiencing this, because these false beliefs that make you think this way, were downloaded without you realising it. Like a virus on a computer, someone that you trusted programmed these ideas into you before you had any choice to accept or reject them.
Paradoxically they were probably people that loved you. Their intention was not to limit you, in fact they thought that they were keeping you safe from disappointment in life, by lowering your expectations so you didn't get hurt.
But these beliefs
are preventing you from living your ideal life, from expressing your greatness, so it's vitally
important to uncover them and change them
Once you become aware of these uninvited guests, you can consciously see how they influence you - by doing this you diminish their power.
Once something is conscious you have a choice as to how you react and, more importantly, you have the ability to change it. Then you can start to use the power of belief to your benefit instead of to your detriment.
"Whether you think you can or you think you can't - you're right"
- Henry Ford -
We often read about people who have overcome almost impossible odds to achieve something and it’s always because of the power of belief. They believed there was a way, even if they didn’t know what it was.
Take a look at the following examples of how strong the power of belief is:
If patients think they are being treated with drugs to heal their illness, but are actually given a sugar pill (or fake medication of some sort) instead of the real thing, they still experience the healing results they have been told to expect from the 'drug'. They believe they’ll get better and they do!
If the brain expects that a treatment will work, it sends healing chemicals into the bloodstream, which facilitates that. And the opposite is equally true and equally powerful: When the brain expects that a therapy will not work, it doesn't. It's called the 'nocebo' effect"
- Dr Bruce Lipton -
On 6th May 1954 Roger Bannister was the first person to ever run a mile in under 4 minutes. Up until then doctors and scientists had said it was impossible and anyone who tried it would die in the attempt!
But only 46 days later someone else did it too! And within three years, 16 other runners had also run sub 4 minute miles.
This is the power of belief at work – when it was believed impossible nobody could do it. As soon as someone showed it could be done – suddenly everyone was doing it.
Another astounding outcome of the power of belief is the effect it can have on others in your environment. A study was done during which teachers of a group of students were told that 5 of their students had unusually high IQ’s and to expect better results from them. They were also told not to tell the students they knew.
At the end of the year the students were given an IQ test and the ‘high IQ’ students predictably showed better results than the others. Here’s the astounding part – these 5 students were actually picked at random and did not initially display any higher level of IQ than their classmates. It seems the power of belief on the part of the teachers had influenced better results for the 5 students.
In another study undertaken by the researchers, this was taken a step further. This time it involved research students who were teaching rats to run through mazes. Half of them were told they had rats that had been bred for good performance and the other half were told their rats had been bred for bad performance.
Again – the students got the results they believed they would – the ‘bright’ rats performed much better than the ‘dull’ rats – although in fact there was no difference at all in the rats they had been given. Once more, the power of belief changed the outcome – of rats!
OK – enough examples already!
I just find it fascinating and there are many places you can read more about this subject, but the point I’m making is that your beliefs shape your life in every way.
They rule everything from your job, your relationships and whether you live life on your terms or for ever under the conditions of others.
Your beliefs can steal your life, or give you the freedom you yearn for.
So if you want your future to be different to your past, if you want to reclaim your free spirit, you'll need to change the ones that don't serve you.
1. You have to do things you don't want to do, in order to survive
2. Being a free spirit is not an option in this world - you have to fit in to succeed,
3. My family has always lived like this, so I will too
4.
If you follow your heart you'll end up failing
5.
You need to work hard in order to have the life you want
6. Other people are stopping me from doing what I want to
7. There's no such thing as 'the universe will provide' - it's all down to me
8. It's selfish to do what I want to do
9. I'll believe it when I see it
10. I don't have anything special to offer, so I need to just take what work I can get
11. I'm too old, too fat, too ugly, too broke, too stupid, too uneducated etc etc etc...
12. Everyone is unhappy in some area of their life... it's just the way life is...
OK so you get it. The limiting beliefs need to go and be replaced by empowering thoughts - but how? The basic steps are as follows:
When you actually experience the positive outcome you begin to realise and then believe it’s possible, and once you experience that outcome repeatedly it becomes a belief. Two conflicting beliefs cannot co-exist and so the ‘old’ limiting belief is replaced by the newer positive one.
In order for the power of belief to work in your favor, your first step is to uncover your destructive beliefs and start building new, positive ones. This can be done in the following ways:
Journal about areas in your life where you are not getting what you want. This is something that has helped me enormously. There’s something about seeing your thoughts on paper that will help you see when you’re buying into some negative belief that you don’t notice when you’re just thinking it.
Journal about areas in your life where you ARE getting what you want. Write down how you feel about things that manifest easily for you and see how that differs from those that challenge you.
Be conscious of how you talk to yourself and others about your life and experiences. Are you always telling people how bad life is, or telling yourself that you're not good enough to achieve something? You may be surprised how often you're doing this.
Take note of the negative things you say and write them in your journal. Then consciously stop yourself every time you start to say something negative and change it to a positive.... or just don't say anything at all!
Reading uplifting books and articles. Read books about people achieving things ‘against the odds’ - there are plenty of them around. They have a wonderfully positive effect and help to build a belief that anything is possible if you believe it is.
Spend time with people who are experiencing life the way you want to. Find out what their beliefs are. They will have beliefs that support their lifestyle, their freedom and/or health. If you don't know anyone that fits this description to spend time with, read autobiographies of people who are or were successful doing what they loved. And by successful I mean they were living their dream, on their terms.
Once you set your mind on living life your way, and doing what you're here to do, you will often find that at first it seems like actually the opposite is happening.
This is just your old belief system at work bringing up everything that has stopped you doing this in the past and showing you what beliefs you need to change in order to be free.
Celebrate this! It's making your job so much easier because you can actually see the results of your old thinking right in front of you and now you have the opportunity to change it.
You don't need to have an unshakeable belief in something to have it happen in your life. You only need to get rid of the idea that it's impossible.
The power of belief is probably pretty obvious to you - so there's a tendency to believe that you have to have a solid belief in something before it will manifest in your life.
But in fact, simply believing it's possible is enough. I've achieved lots of things that I wasn't 100% sure I could do - but I did know they were possible.
A bit like the sub 4 minute runners - they may not have known if they could run that fast or not - but because it had became a reality that running one mile in under 4 minutes was possible - it became a possibility for them too.
The beliefs you hold are a big factor in how you live your life, whether you follow your heart and live up to your potential, or whether you do what you think you should do and stay trapped instead.
Either way it's your choice, but if you want to reclaim your free spirit and have more fun and laughter in your life, more abundance - then using the power of belief to help you by clearing out those beliefs that don't serve you will set you on the path to living life your way and thriving.
If you feel that right now you're not living a life that you love, if you feel that you still believe that you have some limiting beliefs that are holding you back, sign up below and download the first part of my brand new course absolutely free. Inside you'll find out how to surrender to your true self and embrace your free spirit:
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