Have you ever stopped and wondered whether you actually have a belief about something or not? No, you don’t have a belief about something just by saying you do. Beliefs fall in our subconscious mind and are very tricky to figure out. I attended a seminar this week that was an eye-opener to me personally. My idea about beliefs has changed tremendously. I’m not going to bore you with theories, but I’d rather give you examples in our everyday life that we strongly believe in when in fact, is just a “belief” we have and not necessarily a fact.
Beliefs are based on experiences or verbal knowledge we get from people we are surrounded by, it is what has been programmed in our minds for so long. How do you think you personality has been formed? By the people around you, things you learn, and the experiences you go through. One big factor of your personality is your belief.
An example on how humans are programmed is the following idea that we live by everyday and we strongly believe in. Let us say that you have got out of the shower and you didn’t dry your hair, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? “I’ll catch a cold!” when in fact, that is not true. It has been proven scientifically that water on hair has nothing to do with catching a cold, so in fact it is a old wives’ tale! How did we get that idea? Look back at your childhood, when you’d walk out of the shower, what is the first thing that your mother would yell about? “You have wet hair! You’ll catch a cold!” This has been programmed in our minds and it has become a belief that this in fact will happen to us!
Another example If I ask anyone now “What happens to your health as you grow older?” the answer I’d get back from people right away is “Goes down the drain” and that was my answer in the seminar to the speaker. Why was that my answer? Because growing up, everything around me has been implementing the fact that these 2 ideas are best together “Getting old – getting weak”.
How do we start changing beliefs? Obviously it is not as easy as reading a book or whatsoever. A belief is like a tree that you have to nourish and keep watering as you go, especially if it’s a new belief you’re trying to plant in your mind. You take out garbage in your house once a day or in most cases 3 to 4 times a day. Have you ever thought what happens to the garbage in our brain? The ideas and thoughts we should get rid of? If you’re thinking sleeping then that’s not throwing anything or refreshing anything. One way to do so is to change the interpretation of a certain event that happened to you in the past that you’re basing your belief on. How? Instead of thinking something happened to you because of this reason, look around that reason and try to break the bad experience to something good. Events do change a lot! An example on that is when you’re dealing with a client or any other person for that matter and that person start yelling at you, what do you do? I assure you, you wouldn’t stare and smile. But let us change around the event for a while to a sick person who just got out of an operation yelling at you… What do you do? You empathize. They’re both yelling, they’re both doing the same thing… why are we more understanding of one over the other? Because events differ, and we choose to make an exception for one over the other.
It is amazing how our belief has a tremendous effect on us physically. Why are cancer patients always advised to be happy? Watch comedy shows? Because that’s what changes the behavior of their body. If you’re serious about changing certain beliefs, there are things that you should abide with. Your brain doesn’t understand certain words: “Try” “Do Not”. Should we give it a go? Let us say that I’m asking you to “try to stand” what’s try to stand really? You’re probably trying to figure out the act? When you first try to be in between, you’re still sitting, and when you’re almost up, you’re standing. There’s no such thing as “try”. Okay, how about if I tell you right now “Don’t think of a yellow banana” What are you thinking of now? A yellow banana! This is how it works.
We usually tend to blame others and rarely do we own up to our mistakes. If I’m working in a corporation, and I’m trying to get my job done… but my job will get done if I get a response from the other department. What do I do? Start blaming the other department for not getting a response back? While in fact, I should be blaming myself because it is my fault for not being able to influence the other department in getting the job done. The same things happen with kids nowadays, if they run carelessly, bang their heads they’ll start crying and the parent would hit the table in hope that now even the table is crying and would say “Bad table!” This is how we are programmed to not own up to our mistake. It wasn’t the table’s fault… It’s the child’s fault for not paying attention… we grow up thinking that everything that happens to us is everyone else’s fault, just not ours.
So start by changing beliefs, believing that you can change,
and abide by the change.