Exploring Beliefs

This is a step by step method to identify beliefs that cause any form of emotional conflict, and then explore and resolve those beliefs.

Knowledge grows with experience. With an expanding ability to accept and to trust ourselves just the way we are, life becomes a very different journey, one that we can enjoy now (even before we fix everything we believe needs changing). We wage an internal war with the parts of our selves we want to correct or change. When you accept this moment, you free yourself to move in any direction you choose. You avoid using your energy to fight with what has already happened. It just is.

Acceptance allows change. The acceptance mode includes everything, even your judgments. It allows you to be okay now, even before you reach your goals. Acceptance permits happiness, clear perception and love. An attitude of acceptance offers a starting point for healing, learning, finding new direction. It provides a foundation from which to learn and grow.

When you begin to accept yourself the way you are right now, you begin new life with new possibilities that did not exist before because you were so caught in the struggle against the reality.

Find a quiet, comfortable place to be and get a pen or pencil.
Ask yourself: “What has been hard for you in the past?”
Give yourself enough time with that questions (at least ten minutes). Let the memory float up their own rate. All you have to do is ask yourself “What has been hard for you in the past?” and receive the response, the gift of self-revelation.

This is an exercise you can do many times. It will reward you with the gift of self-knowledge. It will help you to allow things to creep out of shadows.

Take time to look over what you’ve written. Reading it is different from writing it. It provides you a new perspective and allows you to access the information in different ways. Just be there. See what you see. Remember what you remember. Feel what you feel. If you’d like to drop all excess baggage, make accepting yourself and others the first step. Acceptance is strength. Denial never works. I doesn’t change anything; it prevents anything from changing.

We are going to learn how to discover liberating truths in those memories, so that you can change the way that they affect you, so that you can learn more about the underlying causes of the emotional pain and self-imposed limits you live with.

Choose one thing that has been hard for you in your life.
Here are some examples:
Being mistreated as a child was hard for me.
When my father died, it was hard for me.
When I was out of money, it was hard for me.
Always trying to be good enough so that I’d be safe was hard for me.
Losing money in the stock market was hard for me.

Ask: “What was hard for you about that?” Dare to question the obvious. The question is not intended to challenge you or your beliefs. It is meant to shed light in the corners where you never look.

Do at least five examples to see the relationship between what happened and what was hard for you about it more clearly.
Now you know more about what made you difficult or painful for you.

The conclusion you came to when you were three years old might not seem valid at all if you look at them now.

The meaning we attribute to the events and circumstances in our lives gives form to our perception of those events. That meaning determines how we react emotionally. The meaning that causes the pain. The conclusions you come to about yourself, your life, your chances for happiness hurt more that any event in and of itself. It is beliefs that keep the pain alive long after the situation has gone.

An example:
An attractive young woman, Susan became romantically involved with a young man. This man pursued a romantic, and to some extent sexual, relationship with her and then ended it abruptly in order to focus his attention on another attractive woman.

When the intensity of the moment softened, I asked, “What was hard for you about that?”
“I felt so ashamed.” She said, simply.
“What did you feel ashamed about?” I asked.
“That he dumped me,” she whispered.
“What did that mean to you?”
“It mean that I was nothing. That I was less than nothing. That no one would ever want me because I was just nothing.”
Susan covered her face. Her tears fell between her fingers. Her voice trembled with anger and pain and shame.
“Do you believe that?” I asked after a few moments. Susan’s body relaxed slowly. She leaned back against the couch. A soft smile moved her face.
“No, I don’t.” she said, her voice softened.
Sweet freedom. Susan moved forward free from belief: “I am nothing, less than nothing.”

You can trace the chain that links experience-perception-belief to a way of life more clearly using the same method. You will be able to see how those elements work together to create your very life.

“. . . . . . was hard for me.”
“What did it mean to me then?”
“What did it mean to me now?”
Again, take as much time as you like to be with this question. Let the question roam around in your consciousness, your memories, your body. Notice what you find.

The next step is to find out how an experience from your past and the conclusions you came to about it might affect you now. Becoming aware of how events from your past affect you today will mark a path you can follow that leads to freedom and bring you to the present with less baggage.
Here is an example:

Bernd has lost a lot of money in the stock market.
When I asked him, “How do you feel about that?”
He replied, “Awful. I feel really awful, like I’m a failure. I feel guilty and I’m afraid I’ll make a big mistake again. It haunts me. It’s with me all the time.” The following dialogue went like this:

Me: “Imagine that I have a magic wand. If I wave it, your fear will disappear, and you will feel okay about what happened, do you want me to wave it?”
Bernd: “No!”
Me: Why not?”
Bernd: “Because I might do it again.”
Me: “Do what again?”
Bernd: “What I did before.”
Me: “What did you do before?”
Bernd: I’d be careless: I’d repeat what I did and I’d lose a lot of money . . . and I am tired losing money now!”
Me: “Do you believe that?”
Bernd: “Yes!”
Me: “You would? Knowing what you know now. If you weren’t afraid, you’d make the same investment all over again?”
Bernd: “Well, not the same investment. I know about that. But I might be do it with one I didn’t know about.”
Me: “How would being afraid help you deal with an investment you don’t know about?”
Bernd: “It wouldn’t help me. In fact, it hurts me. When I’m afraid, it’s hard for me to learn. It’s hard to concentrate. I can’t pay attention. I can’t be alert. Being scare all the time wouldn’t help me to avoid mistakes at all! Do you really have magic wand?” (He laughed right out loud.)

Bernd gives us such a clear example of how a conclusion about an event can influence the rest of your life. He believed he had to be afraid in order to prevent another disastrous mistake. He lived with that possibility. The very thing that he did to protect himself increased the likelihood of his making an error because his fear made it impossible to think clearly.

Write down one thing that was hard for you in the past.
Ask yourself, “How does that affect me now?”

Take as long as you want with this question. It helps to stay with it a bit longer when you think you’re ready to move on. That allows more to come forward – more insight, more consciousness.

If, for instance, it was hard for you when a love relationship ended, how does that effect you now? Or, if you have lost a lot of money in the stock market, how does that affect you now? Or, if you suffered a business loss, how does that affect you now?

If you experience strong emotions while doing this, notice if they are familiar. The goal here is to locate the pain, anger, guilt, fear, or shame. Let the feeling wash through you.

Look through what you’ve written so far. See if you can spot the beliefs you have expressed. Read like detective hunting for clues that point to conclusions you came to.
Underline or highlight statements you recognized as beliefs. Remember your belief is your perception of reality, a conclusion you came to. Becoming aware of what you believe is one of the most potentially liberating experiences a person can have.

Often, when people discover that something they have believed is simply not true, they dissolve feelings of anger, guilt, fear and self-doubt that have seemed inevitable – sometimes for years.

It’s not what happens to us, so much as what we come to believe, that shapes our lives. Maybe what hurts you still runs or limits your life now, is the conclusions you came to and the beliefs you formed the seeming evidence at hand.

We can identify self-defeating beliefs to see if they hold true for us now. You can begin to recognize the self-created restrictions that you’ve imposed since you were a small child and may not have questioned since.

“What do you believe that hurts you or limits you now?”
“What did you come to believe about what happened to you in the past?”

Your belief is:
· Your perception of reality or fact.
· A conclusion you come to.
· Something we are told that we have no reason not to accept.

Belief is so simple but so powerful. Our beliefs tell us what to do, how to feel, what is. When beliefs change – and they can in a flash if we question them, whole new vistas open to us. New directions become possible that we could not perceive before.

What do you believe:
· about yourself.
· about life?
· about your chances for happiness?
· about what you can accomplish?
What conclusions did you draw from the seeming evidence at hand, that hurt you or limit you today? You have some materials to work with now.

You have thoughts, memories, images from the past, ideas, conclusions, the sensations in your body. They are all valuable information about your beliefs.

Find out what you believe before you try to change it. Remember, your belief is your perception of reality. Denial never works. I doesn’t change anything; it prevents anything from changing.

“What do you believe that may hurt you or limit you?”
Give yourself enough time (at least ten minutes) to see what occurs to you.

Listen to yourself. There is a thread that winds through your life; you are the only one that can follow it. Only you know what your experiences mean to you. You are the one who can discover what you believe and why. See if you can find at least ten self-defeating beliefs. The more self-defeating beliefs you can identify and unravel, the more unresolved issues from the past you can resolve, the more excess baggage you can drop. Every time a self-defeating belief dissolves in the light of insight, a new possibility emerges.

Choose one of your beliefs to explore. Use this form to check if it is a belief:
I believe . . . . . . . . . . .
Ask yourself the questions and write down the answers:
· Do I believe that?
· Why do I believe that?
· Is it true?

Now ask yourself: “What might happen if I didn’t believe that?”
Write down your answer. Then ask, “Would that be okay?”
One by one self-defeating beliefs can be dissolved. The baggage drop.

Find twenty things you believe that might prove limiting, self-defeating beliefs or beliefs that might cause emotional pain.

For each belief, ask yourself.:
“Why do I belief that?”
“What might happen if I didn’t believe that?”
“Is it true?”

What might your life be if you trusted yourself to want only good things?
What if you trusted your desire, your wanting, your awareness of what would be welcome to you, as if it were an inner sense of direction that would guide you through life perfectly, providing you with every experience needed along the way for your perfect development and happiness?

Perhaps everything we truly want is readily available to us and all we need is information about how to get it. What if you lived your life as a research project for getting what you want and learning what would be best for you?

A young woman Sonya had a rough time supporting herself while she studied for a career as an opera singer. She expressed angry, impatience about the obstacles she encountered, She was especially angry about waiting on tables in order to pay her bills and furious about her predicament in general. The idea of accepting her situation fueled the fires of fury.

After she looked at me as if I were stupid for a moment, she replied with all the dignity of her calling, “I have a voice that is a gift from God and I’m using it to ask people how they like their soup!”
Me: “And why, if you have a voice that is a gift of God, do you want to sing Opera?”
Sonya: “Because it would be a crime to waste it.”
Me: “Why do you want to avoid wasting it?”
Sonya: “Because I want to use it. I want to share it with other people.”
Me: “Why do you want to share it with people?”
Sonya: “Because it’s beautiful.”
Me: “Why do you want to share something beautiful with people?”
Sonya: “Because then I’ll be doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ll be doing what I’m here for.”
Me: “Why do you want to be doing what you’re here for?”
Sonya: “Because then maybe I could be happy.” Her eyes filled with tears and she laughed. “You mean to tell me that I have been making myself miserable for years, because I want to be happy? Ohhh, my God.

So often we become unhappy if we don’t yet have something we want. We get so lost in the feeling of frustration, anger, shame and despair that we completely forget what we want, what we welcome into our lives.

At that moment we stop actively wanting what we want. We make ourselves miserable in order to get what we want so that we can be happy.

This kind of approach to motivation is not only self-defeating, it will get you to be unhappy in order to be happy.

Knowing what you want and what you really want it for is the best way to greet each new day. It allows you to live in the moment, which is the only moment you can live fully.

I have asked hundreds of people,
“Why do you want what you want?” and
“What do you want that for?”
Their answers create the perfect definition of happiness in all of it’s wonderful forms. They say things like these:

To find peace.
To feel good.
To know I’m doing the right thing.
To feel at one with Gold and the Universe.
Bliss.
Ecstasy.
Joy.
To be true to myself.
To feel love.
To have fun.
To feel free.
To know that I’m okay.
To relax.
To unfold who I am.
To be happy.

I have seen no skill more valuable for enhancing relationships and getting more of what you want than the simple ability to ask for it. Telling someone what you’re unhappy about is very different from letting them know what you want. Rather than waiting until you’re in pain, or raging inside, ask yourself what do you welcome into your life now? Who would you like to have know that?

If you can express your desires as a gift of self-revelation rather than a demand, people can share them with you in a whole new way. Even if they can’t give you what you want, they may still be on your side and want you to have it. They may even be willing to help you get it.

Choose something that you want. If it is something that you’re unhappy about not having, that would be a good one.

Ask yourself,
“Why do I want that?” or “”What do I want for?”
When you get answer, ask again,
“Why do I want that?”
Ask again and again.

Take each answer and ask yourself: “Why do I want that?” or “What do I want that for?” until you come to the end of your answers.

The purpose is to find out more about how you come you want what you want, to live more consciously.

Take something you would like to achieve, have, or experience. Write it down.
What are some steps you can take to bring that into reality?
Look for things you could enjoy doing to move toward that goal or attract it to you.
For each of your goal, ask yourself, “Can I have that?” Answer YES or NO.
For each NO answer, ask yourself “why?”
“Why can’t I have that?”
Write down your response. You may have one self-limiting belief or many.
Ask yourself, “Do I belief that?”

A wise man once said, “I can predict the future.”
“Amazing!” the people cried, “How can you do that?”
“It’s easy,” he said, “Most likely it will be accumulation of what you do every single day.”
He continued, “If you spend your time two hours a day watching TV and the other guy spends two hours a day for productive activity - in twenty years - both of you would have a totally different kind of future. Can you predict that?”

If you want to change your life, all you have to do is to turn, perhaps ever so slightly, and take the very next step in a new direction. Choosing the results you desire purposely will clarify your intent. It will clear your mind and keep you on the path you choose.