In the moment, all your beliefs may feel like empowering beliefs. When you stop to reflect on them, are they all supporting you on your road to success and happiness?
Choose Empowering Beliefs to Support Your Road to Success
You can join just about any random conversation and ask, “Can you believe some of the things people think these days?” There’s always a reason for us to think some other people are crazy just because we all have our own particular world view.
However, get a little bit more specific about your beliefs and things change. “I can’t believe people think XYZ.” Some people might agree with you. Some might give you a horrified look and respond, “Well, actually, I can’t believe people think ABC”. And then you’re either in for a lively debate or some seriously awkward moments.
How Belief Systems Affect Our Success and Happiness
We all believe in something, even if we’re not outwardly expressing it all the time. We’d like to think that we derive our beliefs based on “rational decisions”. That’s partly true. But, at the end of the day, the truth is that we still mostly act on what we believe rather than what we know. How long ago was it that people “knew” the sun revolved around the earth?
Beliefs are only strong opinions at best. They color and filter our view of everything. The problem is, we get used to these filters and forget that we have them on. Then we believe that the way we see things is the way it is, which of course may not always be the case. Everybody’s got glasses on, yes? This game involves a bunch of people wearing glasses and making the whole thing up as we go.
In the end, our beliefs are neither true nor false. Our beliefs can only be supportive or not supportive of our success and happiness. They can be empowering beliefs or non-empowering.
For example, how many times have you heard someone else say or even caught yourself saying, “I have to work hard in order to earn a lot”. Not exactly the most motivating thought pattern, is it? While we rarely, if ever, get anywhere by being lazy, there are times when working smarter is better than pushing yourself to the brink of exhaustion.
Learn How to Re-Examine Your Beliefs
Some of our beliefs get so iron-clad into our nervous system that they turn into inflexible conclusions about life, especially if they were unconsciously and often accidentally imprinted into us as children. When we are young, we have far less experience to really draw educated distinctions between a temporary situation and something that seems permanent and irreversible. The problem is that most people never re-examine the map of life that they drew when they were children. They never seek to revise their belief systems to reflect who they are today and who they want to be tomorrow.
If we’re making this all up as we go anyway, you might as well believe that you will get what you need to meet your goals, or that you will learn how. Then we go from feeling and thinking into doing, making mistakes, making adjustments, having some success, and gaining confidence. Then, we repeat the whole thing over and over.
Eventually, we move away from belief into full knowing—the knowing that comes from believing in something more than what may be evident on the surface. The wisdom comes from the experience of testing those beliefs in the “real world”.
Careful what you believe: it can do more than start a heated argument. It can stop you in your tracks before you’ve even started your journey if it isn’t an empowering belief.
What beliefs can you re-examine that are not serving you anymore? What are some new, empowering beliefs that are a better fit for the person you are today? Share them with our community, we want to hear from you!
For Your Freedom,
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