The Power of Belief

Many of us don’t realise that our beliefs control our lives and those beliefs are very often not even our own beliefs. They are the beliefs of our parents or guardians.

Often times we might gain insight into this. from our experiences.

At times, we try to do something that we know we would love to do but it just doesn’t work out. Even if we keep trying, somehow, it still doesn’t work out.

An example of this might be:

We would love to have our own business but no matter how hard we try, we can’t get it off the ground. We never seem to be the one that qualifies for funding. Your negotiations with investors, never get you the support you were hoping for. You go to courses on business and how to run a successful business. You go to regular meet ups with other business people so that you can network. All of your hard work and networking never gets you off to any kind of start.

It might be that you wanted to be a dancer or a singer and you do all the right things to work towards this. You go to lessons, you practice hard and you love it. You know that you are good but every audition you go to, you fail.

Sometimes it is nerves and you trip, where you never did during practice. Sometimes, you know you choreographed a fantastic dance and your performance was flawless, but still you didn’t get the audition. You go back and do more training and increase your hours of practice but the same thing happens, over and over again.

You start to think your hope of your chosen career is just a dream and something impossible for you to do. Over time, you pick yourself up and throw yourself back into it again and again. You believe that some day, you will meet the right business partner or win that audition or get the part you have gone after a myriad times.

Sometimes you even meet someone that you know doesn’t work the hours you do. Everything seems to just fall into their lap. The money flows to them from all sorts of places and they seem to be able to negotiate and sell in their sleep.

You take time out to read as much as you can on your subject. You study your craft over and over. You try to learn from the people you admire and those that seem to be succeeding.

You might experience the same thing in other areas of your life, whether that is your love life, your ability to maintain a loving, caring relationship or your ability to make good, life long friends. It might even be the ability to relax and have a good time. Whatever the issue is, that shows up time and time again in your life, it could be caused by your belief system.

Have you ever heard someone in your family or circle of friends say, "you sound just like your father or mother? "

When you are young, your subconscious is programmed, by your parents or guardians, into their culture, religion, spirituality and beliefs. This helps you to learn the expectations and behaviours of your family and wider social norms.

When you are a baby, your parents may have certain expectations and already have a planned path for you to follow. Even something as simple as your vocabulary; how you are expected to speak, is mirrored to you by your parents.

When a child is still inside their Mother’s womb and until the age of 6 or 7 years of age, a child absorbs everything from those around them. So if what the child hears, when they are young, is derogatory e.g. they repeatedly hear, “don’t be so stupid,” or “why can’t you be a good boy like Stephen?” The child has no filters to stop that from going straight into their subconscious. In other words, they are unable, at this age, to decipher if what is being said, is true or not. They can’t process it and think, no that isn’t true.

When a child is young, what they learn from those around them, literally just goes straight into their subconscious. If the phrase, “you are stupid,” is repeated consistently, throughout that child’s early life, that child will believe they are stupid. The impact of that could mean, that they fail at school and college. They may fail to do anything that doesn’t match the opinion they have of themselves. That opinion was first planted there, by their parents/guardians.

The young baby or toddler looks to their parents for everything. The parents are modelling the behaviour the child will copy. The child learns how they should behave, what is expected of them in their family and later in their community.

Of course there are other people that affect the young child’s beliefs. Religions and religious leaders, nursery school teachers, primary school teachers, grand-parents. If a child is exposed to over zealous religious beliefs, that child will adopt those beliefs because they cannot argue them or stop them from being lodged into their subconscious mind.

When that child gets older, they may see other belief systems and may be so indoctrinated by their parents, that they are convinced theirs is the only real religion.

Alternatively, the child may grow up and be interested in other religions or spirituality. However, if they want to change their beliefs, they may experience great difficulties with this, because of the programming from their parents. This is the power that parents and other important people in a child’s life have, often unwittingly, on their children when they are very young.

So the child that has been consistently brought up with the belief that they are stupid, will continue this belief into adulthood. This will only change if they gain insight and are able to actively change it.

It is possible, for you to have insight into your subconscious beliefs. All you need to do, is investigate what is not working in your life.

The child that was told they were stupid until it became a strong belief, may wish to have a successful business. Do you think they will succeed?

It is unlikely, unless the person recognises that their beliefs are holding them back as an adult.

It is also likely that the child that was told they are stupid, absorbed other beliefs from their parents. E.g. “you won’t amount to anything.” Or, “you can’t do anything right.” This then makes up a bundle of beliefs that go into the same bucket as the “you are stupid,” belief. This belief becomes the child’s reality and is confirmed to them over and over again, growing up.

The child that is called stupid, consistently, may fall behind when they start primary school. They may have to take special classes for reading and writing because they are “slow.” This mirrors back to them, that they are stupid because they can’t learn as quickly as the other children in the class. I am not talking about children who have learning difficulties here, I am talking about a child that was called stupid for no specific reason. They may have made ‘stupid,’ mistakes. They may have been clumsy or were always getting into trouble.

Instead of the parents understanding this a part of the childs development, they called the child stupid. It may even be because the parents had been called stupid growing up and they have continued this pattern with their own children.

The beliefs of your parents is transferred onto you. This is built on over time. It is sometimes called socialisation. Teaching you the social norms, first of the family and then further from your religious leaders and then from your schooling and your country. This happens to every child in the world.

Up until the age of 6 or 7 years, a child simply absorbs all of this into their subconscious minds. They have no filter or other means of stopping this from happening. How good or bad this is for you growing up, depends greatly on the beliefs held by your parents and other influential persons in your young life.

So how do you get rid of these unwanted beliefs?

Well first you need to do some digging. You need to find out what beliefs have been given to you about various things, by your parents. You can also assess your own life and look at what is difficult in your life.

For instance:

Do you never seem to have enough money, despite working and saving hard?

Is every penny accounted for?

Do you never seem to get ahead?

Ask yourself what your parents said about money when you were growing up:

Did they say things like: We never have enough money.

Money doesn’t grow on trees.

I just don’t know how we are going to pay that bill.

Did your parents have to take on extra jobs, on top of their day jobs to make ends meet?

Were there arguments about money?

Make a list of these.

There will be a core belief that has other similar or associated beliefs around the core belief – think of these as being in bundles.

So in the money bundle you may even have conflicting beliefs – this would show up in your life.

If this is the case. You might find that amazingly, you can always find money to go on a yearly holiday or to pay special tuition e.g. piano lessons.

Did your parents do that?

In other areas, you might find you have mounting debt and difficulty making ends meet. Again, think about your childhood for clues and think about what areas you really struggle with. This will give you insight into the beliefs you hold.

You might not even have realised that you held these beliefs. That is because you didn’t put them there!

Another example – this example is about living your life the way you want to, opposed to working at a job you tolerate. Success.

Were your parents practical people that could have done better in life but instead, felt it was safer to stay in a steady job.

Did they advise you to do the same?

Is there something you would love to do?

Was it something you tried to by going to college or university to achieve?

This may be photography, the arts, other creative jobs, being an author, being an airline pilot or a research scientist.

Did you find that you succeeded at college or at university but when you tried to set up in your chosen field, you couldn’t seem to make enough money doing it?

Did you have to return to a practical job!

Have you experienced this multiple times in your life?

Did you try repeatedly to do what you loved but simply couldn’t live on what you made from what you loved to do?

Did this leave you with no choice but to keep going back to a job you barely tolerated?

Or, did you opt for a practical job in a similar field?

Examples of this might include:

Working behind the scenes in a recording studio, when you really wanted to be a musician.

Working as an agent for actors, when you really wanted to be an actor.

Working in a science lab, putting out all the equipment, when you wanted to be the scientist.

Working as a nurse, when you really wanted a career in complementary medicine.

Again, look at the things your parents said to you as you were growing up – do some digging back into your childhood.

Did they say things like: "Oh you are such a good artist, it’s a lovely hobby to have."(They didn’t take it seriously as a career option)

They may have said that you have to be practical because art won’t bring the money in.

They might have even thrown in all the historical artists that died starving and poverty stricken! Parents never harp on about the artists that succeed!

Lets say you wanted to be an actor but your parents said, “You have to be really brilliant to be a famous actor.”

The implication of this sentence is, "you might be good at acting but the competition is huge and you aren’t brilliant enough at it."

You might have heard from your teachers:

“Listen Kathy/Thomas, it is commendable that you received straight A’s in Chemistry but unless you can pull up from a C in Mathematics, forget being a scientist.”

One or both of your parents may have had extraordinary talent for something but didn’t pursue it because of what their parents said about it. As a result, they became stuck in a practical job and now they are passing that on to you.

Your parents may even have been derogatory and dismissive of your talents and abilities. They may have said that you would never make it in anything you love doing and would be better getting a “safe” career. AKA – boring and practical!

Again, look at your life. What areas do you struggle to succeed in?

If there is a career you would really love to succeed in but struggle with, you can bet you have a belief system installed in your subconscious. You received these beliefs from the important people in your life, growing up.

Remember beliefs come in bundles – usually there is a core belief e.g. “I am not good enough to succeed.” There will be other beliefs surrounding that topic like: “I will never make any money doing what I love doing,” or “I can’t succeed at that”

You may have a fear that stops you trying because you are scared that you will fail and that would feel worse than trying and never succeeding.

Okay, so all of that said, how do you change your beliefs?

Obviously, when you were a child between 0 and age 7, you absorbed what you saw and what you were told without being able to stop it.

The good news is:

You have a short period where you can absorb new information before you go off to sleep and when you just start waking up from sleep. In these two periods you can re-program your subconscious by in putting the beliefs you desire to have.

This is much better than having a set of beliefs that belong to someone else.

However, this reprogramming has to be done consistently.

You can either buy in a programme that you play (with earphones on) as you go off to sleep or you can record your own programme of the beliefs you want in your subconscious.

Bear in mind that as a child, you were open to other peoples beliefs all day, every day whereas now, you only have a short window so it will take longer to reprogram your mind.

You may even find initially, that you have resistance and some of the old programmes/beliefs try to sabotage your efforts.

You might sabotage yourself during the day time with thoughts like:

“This is just so much nonsense, what’s the point.”

“I have been doing this for six weeks and nothing has changed."

Remember that you are only doing this for about an hour at night, as you go off to sleep. You also need to repeat it, if you can as you wake up. Alternatively, you could say to yourself as you waken, that you are living your best life or I am successful doing what I love doing. Or, say whatever is important to you.

Don’t make too many changes at once because you may find that your internal critic causes you more sabotage during the day, with thoughts that bring you down.

As such, you also have to become aware of the thoughts you have during the day. Sometimes when you have had the same thoughts for years and years e.g. “what’s the point, I will never make it anyway,” you may struggle for a while before you are able to replace the thoughts with better ones.

The easiest way to help convince yourself of the power of yours thoughts, is to give yourself simple suggestions to do with your physical and mental self.

Try this:

Tell yourself over and over again during a day that you are off – keep telling yourself you are really, really, exhausted. Watch what happens over the day. You will find that your body follows your thoughts. Over the day you will start to feel really tired and drained.

You can also try the same example only this time, tell yourself that you feel a bit unwell or you have a headache. Keep saying it with your thoughts and you can say it out loud too. Pretty soon, you will feel a headache coming on or you will start to feel slightly under the weather.

Be aware that the next day you might actually feel unwell.

This is the quickest way to see how much power your thoughts have over you.

There is another trick you can do that proves that your thoughts controls what happens in your body. Imagine that you have a lemon (even better if you can’t stand the thought of eating a lemon!), imagine biting into it and the bitter taste hitting your taste buds, keep going, munch it up in your mouth. You will start to salivate because your body believes you are really eating a lemon!

So after doing this little experiment, you can have a bit more confidence that changing your thoughts during the day will have an impact.

So if you catch yourself in the act of thinking something derogatory about yourself, act quickly by saying “No!”

Then replace this with a more good feeling thought, e.g. “I can do this!”

This will take time and practice but in conjunction with your nightly re-programming, you will start to see some changes. When you start to see the evidence of these changes, keep going with your practices until that evidence really starts to blossom in your life.

After that happens, you can now re-programme your subconscious with another couple of happy beliefs, that you want to see in your life. So rinse and repeat!

Here are a few other ways to reprogram your subconscious mind, or to help move things along.

Hypnosis by a reputable hypnotist.

Repeated practice with something you want to learn. Keep going. You will start to see a response in your life. As above, keep going until this really starts to blossom. Also bear in mind that this is a longer way of doing things.

Your subconscious also learns by repetition. This is how you learned to play an instrument and how you learned to drive. Eventually, after practising it enough times, it became second nature, you don’t have to think about it anymore.

You can also write out your old, undesirable beliefs and then cross them out with red pen and then write out a belief you do want. Do this daily with the same new beliefs for about 6 -8 weeks. It will help support what you are doing with other ways of reprogramming.

Ideally, you want to target the core belief in each bundle, as that is the one holding all the rest together. You might have to stab in the dark with this one, go with whatever statement feels like it is the core belief. Alternatively, you can meditate on these beliefs, asking to be shown the core belief.

Determination and consistency is what you need to continue on with the changes you are making. Don’t give up too soon!