“He who believes he can and he who believes he can’t are both usually right.“
Confucius
If you want to change your life, you have to change your beliefs first. To change your belief’s you have to become open and willing to allow other thoughts. And repeat them.
“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I shall have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Let’s stick with this topic to the beliefs you have concerning yourself and your life. Overall, they truly matter in your world and life, right?
Beliefs as I mentioned become beliefs through the repetition of the thought which represents the belief. This can happen due to hearing something from the outside so often that it turns into a belief or by our own inner repeating of a thought.
So, it is simply something that turned over a period of time consciously or and mostly unconsciously into a “thought-habit”.
If you cultivate a “thought-habit” long enough by repeating it again and again, it grows into a conviction. Which is even stronger than a belief.
Once you are convinced of something, it is usually not easy for anybody to change this conviction of you.
Scientists call this system the “Reticular Activating System”. This is system can pave your road to hell. Or your personal heaven on earth.
Let me explain.
Our eyes receive 17 000 000 Bits of information per second. Yep. The amount of zeros is at least not too small. To know it exactly is nearly impossible. But they are six. Some say that we receive way more through our eyes because of the 1, 2 million fibers in the optic nerve of our eye. Each fiber receives about 100 Bits per second. So.. ah forget it.
I am not a scientist. Feel free to look it up. The point is our brain deals with a ridiculous amount of information all the time.
The Reticular Activating System, let’s call it RAS from now, is a bundle of nerves at our brain stream that filters out the unnecessary information for us.
When you are thinking about buying yourself a blue car of a certain car company, suddenly you start noticing way more of them as before your thoughts about buying it.
The RAS knows what you believe and focus on. So, in order to make life easier for you, it filters the information out for you which are important or “correct” according to your beliefs and focus.
Someone could smile at you simply for the sake of wanting to be nice and give you a smile but if you have very low beliefs about yourself, it is more likely that you believe that this person is smiling because this person found something funny about you.
BAM. Pretty fucked up in such a case. You just missed a beautiful and nice smile from someone.
This was just a tiny example.
As long as you believe something, your brain is not going to help to convince you from the opposite even though it might be way more healthy, fun or good for you.
So by choosing or not questioning negative beliefs about you and your life, you prohibit your brain or to be more precise, your personal RAS, to improve your situation and well-being.
The RAS explains why the saying;
“Where focus goes, energy flows.”
is so damn full of wisdom!
Energy as far as we know contains information. Your focus decides to which informations you are open to. And that information can come in forms of the right people you meet, the right conversations you have or the right ideas you get for example. Or the right action at the right moment without thinking about it.
Maybe you have heard of “limiting beliefs” or a “limiting belief system”.
These are any beliefs that tell you that you cannot do, be or have something.
Fortunately, there are also empowering beliefs. These are usually your friends except they tell you can jump off a building and fly. They tell you what you can do, be or have.
Yes, you got them already. But you can make them grow.
How?
At first, you need to become aware of your limiting beliefs about yourself and your life. You can only change something you are aware and conscious about.
But don’t forget; repeated beliefs have often become convictions, so you easily don’t recognize them as limiting beliefs in the beginning. To question the image you have about your personal world can be tough. But even more, rewarding once you got the courage to do so.
If you wonder what your limiting beliefs are, simply take a look at your actions and the circumstances of your life. These two things are only representatives of your beliefs.
In order to break out of your personal “belief-prison”, I would start to write down each limiting belief each time you recognize one of them.
You can’t shoot them but writing them down is a first step of getting rid of them.
Don’t blame yourself for having accepted them once upon a time. They had good intentions to prevent your ego from disappointment for example. But they are not useful anymore.
With each limiting belief you write down, you can think about the ideal opposite of it and write it down on its right side.
You’ll most likely discover that it might take some effort to come up with the ideal opposite of your limiting belief. But this is one of the worthiest efforts you can make!
Because with each of the new empowering beliefs you set yourself a bit freer. You expand your consciousness and with this your personal field of possibilities.
You are the only one who can do it for you. You created them or allowed them to abide in your RAS.
But not anymore. It’s time to open your own closed doors. Your key for that is to exchange your limiting beliefs with empowering and liberating ones.
You are free to believe anything you want. Choose your favorites.
