Beliefs: Pathways to change

What determines the difference in human actions is the belief we hold onto. Our life is a mere reflection of our beliefs and the power of belief is the driving force of our life. When the conscious and subconscious are aligned, the path towards enlightenment becomes easy. If there is a discrepancy between what we consciously want and what we subconsciously believe we can have, then there’s conflict and frustration and beliefs become limiting factors in moving forward. As most of us do not consciously decide what we are going to believe, our individual or collective beliefs can often be wrong, limiting and misleading. Some of them are generalisations about our past, based on our interpretation of painful and pleasurable experiences and once we adopt a belief, we forget that it’s merely an interpretation.

Beliefs always do not represent what is true and factual. They are based on perceptions of reality and are shaped by our past experiences and environment we live in. Most of our attitude, skills and knowledge are all mere means for the fulfilment of our beliefs. We can only live according to our beliefs and not underperform or outperform them. Whatever we do, it is out of our conscious or unconscious beliefs about what will ultimately lead to joy or misery. To lead your life with love, happiness and peace, you got to believe you deserve a life of love, peace and happiness. But most of our beliefs also are limited in nature because of our habitual negative thought patterns. If you want to change your life and create long-term happiness, you must be willing to change those beliefs that are holding you back.

Beliefs have the power to create both joy of misery

Your beliefs create your reality- that which you believe in, you attract it into your life be it joy or misery. Your belief in abundance will bring abundance into your life, when there is only scarcity in your beliefs, only scarcity will unfold. Similarly if you belief that destiny itself is a matter of choice, then there is nothing that can stop you from becoming what you wish to become. If we want to direct our lives, then we must take conscious control over our beliefs because when your belief becomes ‘can’, then the ‘how’ unfolds automatically.

Believing something can be done sets your mind in motion to find a way to do it. It is scientifically proven that when we change our perception or beliefs, we send totally different messages to our cells and reprogram their expression. You can reprogram your pessimistic cells to be more optimistic by adopting positive thinking practices, like mindfulness and gratitude. You can follow the path to your enlightenment by altering your current perception of “reality” by changing your belief system.

Your thoughts influence your beliefs

Changing your thoughts can help you transform your beliefs to be flowing in the direction of that which you want to. Your thoughts become emotions, which in turn make you act in a given way, creating habitual patterns in your life. So, choosing those thoughts that support and empower can make your beliefs more meaningful. Your thoughts should be in the best interest of not only what you want but also of others and have to be in congruence with right values. To reframe your beliefs, learn to observe your negative mindset and release the patterns that cause you or others harm, that bring you down and make you doubt your inner strength.

In reframing your belief,

• Your dominant thoughts and feelings have to be right.

• Your thinking process has to be in congruence to your willingness to go on the path enlightenment. And

• You should motivated to follow the path.

It really doesn’t matter which one of your beliefs is true, what matters is which one is most empowering and whether your beliefs are strengthening or weakening you. There are several ways to reprogram the subconscious mind and transform your belief system.

• Visualisation: In visualisation, we focus on positive mental images in order to achieve a particular goal. It is the ability to vividly imagine what you want to be or your desire to “see” it in the mind’s eye—before it exists in any physical reality.

• Affirmations: Affirmations are an effective way to plant positive messages into your subconscious. It is one of the most effective ways to change a limited or negative belief. Repetition of an affirmation changes the neural pathways in your brain over time to produce the new belief.

• Meditation: Meditation plays a vital role in reprogramming the subconscious mind because it helps to still the mind. In this state, your brain becomes more receptive, it becomes fertile ground for whatever you want to “implant” into the mind.

• Positive Self-talk: Perhaps the most powerful influence on your attitude and emotions is what you say to yourself and believe. By effectively managing your self-talk, you can begin to change your beliefs to positive.

• Gratitude The best thing you can do to change your own belief system and feed new information into yourself is to develop the sense of gratitude. Being grateful for what you have is a powerful force in attracting what you desire more.

All battles are within ourselves, though we tend to think it’s external people, places and things that create our conditions. Thus, it’s important to consciously give our subconscious mind directives that coincide with our wishes, for only what we believe can we achieve. Reframe your limiting beliefs through visualisation, positive affirmations or self-talk, mindful awareness and by practicing gratitude.

To do,

Develop mindful awareness of your beliefs both empowering and disempowering. Think about the positive effects your empowering beliefs have on you. Similarly observe your limiting or negative beliefs and think of what are the consequences that these beliefs carry with them. Isolate such beliefs and question their longevity. The only reason you have held onto these beliefs might be because either you link pain to not believing or pleasure to keep it alive. Remember to question their validity so they no longer impact you. Asking yourself, “What will this belief ultimately cost my emotional/physical health, or my personal/ professional relationship?” Associating to what these beliefs have been costing you can help you let go of them. Create a new belief or you can use affirmations to consciously choose the beliefs that empower you and are most in alignment with the destiny you’ve chosen for yourself.

Observe how you feel like (confident, empowered and self-assured)about your new beliefs and practice these feelings to get comfortable with them. Trust in the new belief and take action from the new awareness or from the perspective of your new beliefs. This way, you can consciously choose empowering beliefs and create the vibrational atmosphere for what you want to manifest.

Through mindfulness and moments of introspection, we can sift through the intricacies of our thoughts, distinguishing what takes us toward our contentment and what moves us away from it. The decision always lies with us.