| | How To Create New Empowering Beliefs by Ian Barrett  As you woke up this morning and moved out into the day, you did so by gathering up a host of beliefs to take with you. You then put them on as spectacles through which to view the world.
You have beliefs about yourself (your skills, your values, your dignity). You have beliefs about other people (what makes them tick, what they want, how to relate to them, etc). You have beliefs about work, play, recreation, hobbies and volunteer activities. You have beliefs about the world (politics, education, crime, police, the justice system, other countries, wars, journalism, and environment). You have beliefs about a thousand different concepts (time, history, the past, the future, causation, personality, emotions and destiny).
Further, because you have these beliefs, you operate from them as one uses a map to navigate territory. Beliefs as mental maps govern our life, emotions, health, skills, and everyday experiences. So where did these belief maps come from? How did we develop, create, or absorb them? How much validity do they have? What compromises these beliefs? How would we change them if we wanted to?
Beliefs develop over time out of our experiences. We construct our beliefs via the ideas, thoughts, feelings, meanings that we bring to bear upon various concepts.
At birth, we have no beliefs. Rather, beliefs arise as our perceptions, understandings and learning grow and solidify as a form of focused awareness. In this way, they develop into some durable internal maps about the territory out there.
Structurally, a belief involves thoughts about some thing or another plus validating, affirming, and accepting thoughts about these primary thoughts. This explains why merely repeating an empowering belief statement will not have the same effect as believing an empowering belief statement.
Now, it is useful also to have some understanding of disbelief. To disbelieve a statement, we essentially bring thoughts of doubt, uncertainty, and questions to bear on the primary thought. In other words, we think: "I have questions about that idea". Hence, we are in a state of doubt about a particular thought. Thus, if you question anything enough eventually you will disbelieve it, including yourself. Part of the process of being coached is to encourage the client to question some of their own assumptions and ideas.
The natural growth of beliefs starts with vague representations of what we experience. We 'think' about but don't 'know'. We have questions and doubts about how to organise our thinking into constructed and logical concepts and assumed 'knowledge' about a particular thing. Yet as these representations gain more and more clarity, we develop various forms of knowledge about things. As that knowledge solidifies, it takes the form of knowing 'what we have learnt', what we understand about life, then progressively the idea takes greater hold in our mind.
At this point, when an idea is more solidly engrained in our minds, we have fewer doubts, less questions, and more of a sense that the idea itself is reality. Now we believe in the idea considered. we feel convinced about it. Eventually we feel so convinced that it becomes a conviction in our life.
Unfortunately, negative beliefs can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Negative expectations create negative outcomes, and naturally, positive expectations create positive outcomes. The good news is that we are all capable of creating new empowering beliefs. Several of my coaching sessions are based on the idea that we can eradicate limiting beliefs and create new empowering beliefs. Anything can become a belief. All you need to do is establish what you want to believe, or what belief would support you in achieving your goals and look for instances in your life that support this belief.
"There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." - Dr. Denis Waitley
Here is a useful exercise you might like to help you create some new empowering beliefs:
First of all, think of a goal you have in your life. You might like to write it down to help make more sense of it. Then you need to write down three beliefs that don't support you in achieving your goal, such as "I am lazy" or "I am frightened about facing my fears". Then, for each negative belief, write down the answers for these two questions:
1. What has this negative belief cost me so far?
2. What will this negative belief cost me in 5 years time?
Next, I'd like you to think about the hidden benefits of not getting you goal. These are often the excuses you make to not take action. Can you think of three hidden benefits? Then ask yourself what is the true cost of keeping this 'benefit' in your life. Write it down.
The next step is to write down three empowering beliefs that are going to help you get your goal. Now it is worth bearing in mind that there are five different ways new beliefs can be installed, from:
1. Past outcomes (remember a time)
2. Events (is there an area of your life you already do/are this)
3. Creative Thinking (could you dream/imagine it)
4. Education (what could you learn)
5. Environment (who could you model)
The final exercise is for each of your new empowering beliefs, write down two different ways you could do something to strengthen them. You may need to think of other areas of your life where you have already demonstrated having one of these beliefs. If you have the belief in another life area, then you most certainly can transfer it to another.
Good luck with the exercise, and hopefully it will leave you feeling good and motivated.
To find out more about my coaching work on beliefs, why not get in touch and book a free coaching session? | |
