We have all heard the word belief, but what really is a belief and can you change any belief you already have? The answer to that question is YES! Lets explore this magical word Belief….
A belief is a feeling of certainty about something. We choose our beliefs by the meanings we assign to all and any events in our lives. Events will always be part of our journey through life, but it is how we interpret the initial event and assign a meaning that will determine your beliefs about the event.
Your beliefs have been building from birth through family, friends, life experience, work, school and life in general. Beliffs are reference points from the past that we had decided are either paiful or pleasurable moments in life that we treat as realities for future references to draw from.
Our beliefs have the ability to empower us or disempower us. What deteremines this is our association to pain and pleasure. Do you associate pain as empowering and a motivator that gains pleasure at the end point or do you want the pleasure first ? Lets take Ian Thorpes interview last night as a reference. He mentioned that in order to be the best swimmer he would continually push past his pain threshold in his training. He also became one with the wate
r and followed the flow of the water and manoevered his body to fit in with the natural flow of the water. Became one with the water. He became comfortable with pain and would not limited by his pain and thus gained immense pleasure as one of the world best swimmers.
Pain is not always a indicator of hurt, it can also be used as a guide to what is unfimilar and pushes us to move through limiting beleifs we have assigned to ourselves. Our actions are a result of our Beliefs. To create lasting change in actions/ behaviours, you must challenge the beliefs that are holding you back.
Beliefs are not limited to just our emotions or actions, they have the capacity to chnge our physical body. The intensity of an emotion repetitiously will change your biochemistry. Our physical body is mapped out to know where physical pain is being held, holds a certain emotional thought process. Eg. Lower back is scarsity thinking of lack of funds/money worries.
How are you beliefs shaping your now and future. Are the supporting, nurturing, and empowering you? If the answer to these questions are not as you would like then lets look at how establish new beliefs. Firstly beliefs are gathered as refernece points from personal experiences, people, books even our imagination is a refernece point as long as there is a high emotional intensity to it.
If you want to change a limiting belief, look at your reference points you have accumulated to date and check in to guage whether they are empowering or not. If not, find information that will suppport your new belief you want and continue to think this new thought supported by actions and behaviours that will create new neural pathways from the conscious mind hat will link to the unconscious mind.
- You want to run a 5k run, with no prior running skills.
- You would buy running shoes
- Start a daily running routine of maybe 1k for 2 weeks, with stretches before and after your run
- Increase from 1k to 2k for another 2weeks daily. With each new increase will come pain both on a physical and mental self talk side. Your mind will want to tell you that you cant run that far and your body will respond by increasing pain in areas of your legs, back, shoulder and neck. Now, here at the two week mark, is decision time. Do you continue and note that your health and fitness increase or will you decide it takes up alot of your time, its cold outside (if running outdoor), your muscles hurt and what will you gain if you continue.
- You stay at your routine now knowing you have reached the 1k mark aand are seeing the improvements as you feel great, your mental clarity/focus is improving, your body is slowly changing shape and you are pushing past pain barriers and feeling pleasure in knowing you are pushing past your limiting beleifs.
- You running is becoming more fluid, you may have even spoken to other people who run and ask questions that will help you improve even more and read up on other running techniques.
- With continued commitment, you have reached your 5k mark. Your body looks amazing and people around you are commenting on how great you look, which boosts your confidence in yourself and your abilities. Your family love the new and improved you, your eating habits too have improved as well. You start noticing the amazing things you say to yourself which transpires into improvements in your relationships, work, family, finances also has you have probably broken some old habits that where holding you back as well. So overall your whole life has changed all because of a thought and the persistence to break through beliefs you had about yourself that have now been replaced with much more empowering thoughts about you and where you sit in life.
Now at the very beginning of this venture you had no reference to draw information from other than to run. So, now you have sarted to run and worked out what is working for you and what needs improvement. (Conscious thinking) You asked other runners for techniques on running and read books on running. New refernence points to work from, along with commitment to run. Also comments from others on how you are acting and behaving and how you look, also new reference point to let you know that what you are doing is being noticed by others. New eating habit, also new reference point. End product completion of goal, new reference points of success, increased health and vitality and improved lifestyle. (unconsciously you can run with good techniques easily)
Can you see how we can create new reference point, pain and pleasure is included but your thinking and association to this is different, and new beliefs have been created and installed.
New beliefs can be created with a single thought, that is converted to action that leads to new behaviours, which build strong newnueral circuits to and from the brain that move from it being a conscious decision to an unconscious thought.
What beliefs are empowering your life and what beliefs could do with a modification?
Rachael xx