Change Your Beliefs; Change Your Reality

The difference between getting what we want and spending years complaining about the fact that we don’t yet have it often boils down to one fundamental question: Will we get into action toward the outcome we desire, or will we be held back by our limiting beliefs about why we can’t achieve it or don’t deserve it?

As a Law of Attraction coach who has worked for over a decade helping people realize goals in all aspects of their lives, I have come to understand the primary mechanism that determines whether we take the path of action or the path of resignation.  That mechanism is our beliefs.  When we believe that our actions will lead to success; we take them – usually without hesitation and with great excitement.  But if we have even a sneaking suspicion that our actions will lead to failure, we are likely to remain stuck.

Our core beliefs – about ourselves, about other people, and about the world itself – may be invisible to the eye, but they color our perception of everything we see. For example, if we have a core belief that we are inadequate or that resources around us are scarce, this belief will filter the infinite number of experiences that could unfold at virtually every moment and bring to our awareness only those that confirm what we already believe to be true.  Instead of seeing evidence of abundance around us – abundance of love, of laughter, of creativity, of energy – our beliefs will magnetize to us evidence of lack.  The scariest thing about our core beliefs is that most of the time they operate on auto-pilot, without our conscious awareness.

Limiting beliefs about ourselves – such as “I am unlovable,” “I am unworthy,” or “No one understands me” can almost always be traced to things we experienced early in our lives that we lacked the maturity to understand.  If we permit these beliefs to remain unexamined by our wiser adult minds, decades-old conclusions will continue to inform our present-moment perceptions – and the 5-year-old who interpreted Dad’s lack of attentiveness to mean that she was unworthy of attention will continue to run the show of our lives from behind the scenes.  There is a bit of similarity between the disempowering beliefs we hold about ourselves and the moss that grows on the underside of a rock.  They gain strength in the darkness, in the privacy of our own unexpressed thoughts.  But the moment we expose those outdated thoughts to the sun and examine them in the light of day, they lose the grip they once had on our emotions and therefore our actions – freeing us to take more evolved and more inspired actions.

Any time we are living some aspect of our lives in a way that is unfulfilling; when there is someplace where we desire a different result than the one that is currently showing up, we can be sure that the unwanted circumstance is an outer reflection of an inner belief we are holding about ourselves.  How do I know this?  Because there is no end to the amount of love, of prosperity, of joy, happiness, laughter or abundance in the universe in which we live.  The only factor that determines how much or how little of these things we experience is how much we allow ourselves to receive.  Negative beliefs are like a dam in the river.  To increase the flow we don’t need to add more water; we need only to remove the log.  This is where a coach can be of tremendous value in helping us achieve our goals.

Talking with a coach is radically different than talking with a friend.  Friends are familiar; they’ve heard all our stories and, for the most part at least, they accept our beliefs.  Friends commiserate, whereas a coach challenges our thinking and questions our previously unchecked assumptions.  A coach holds us accountable to the outer experiences we are committed to creating by helping us dismantle the internal beliefs that are blocking us from experiencing it.

While I am a huge believer in the value of coaching (I’ve been coached by a number of extraordinary individuals and have not been without one for the last fifteen years), it’s also true that with a little practice and self-awareness, we can learn to coach ourselves.  Here is a simple process to identify and shift a limiting belief:

1. The next time you are feeling any type of negative emotion (frustration, sadness, resignation, etc.) in relation to something you want to create, close your eyes and tune into your internal dialog, as this will lead you to the underlying belief that directly opposes the goal you are trying to achieve.  When you hear the underlying belief, write it down.
2. Read this statement to yourself out loud, and feel the energy of it as you do.  What emotions are triggered as you think this thought?  For example, I recently caught myself in the midst of a belief that “Life is hard.”  As I repeated these words to myself, I could feel the heaviness of it, felt like my creativity was being smothered in a blanket of apathy.
3. Now, having identified the thoughts and feelings associated with this disempowering belief, consciously search your mind and heart for a thought that feels better – even slightly better.  Often, the fastest way to do this is to simply recall a time in your life when you had evidence to the contrary.  My “Life is hard” belief I challenged by deliberately recalling the sensation of falling in love, of things working out just right, of having a great day or effortlessly coming across something I had been looking for.  Almost instantly I felt a sense of lightness and relief.
4. Once you are anchored in a higher feeling place, re-examine the old belief from this new perspective, and allow yourself to edit it in whatever way you choose.  Going back to the previous example, I rewrote “Life is hard” to “Life is a gift.”  From there, ask yourself what one action you could take that would be a living demonstration and proof of your now more evolved belief.   This will become your new point of attraction.

We create from our beliefs – whether we are consciously aware of it or not.  Through our beliefs we broadcast a pathway of energy toward one of an infinite number of possible futures.  When we shift an internal belief, we shift more than just our mental state.  We create a shift in consciousness, in energy, and in the reality that in every moment we are in the process of creating.