We all have beliefs.
They are part of our belief system.
What are your beliefs?
Explore them and discover if they are limiting you or helping you in your life.
Are you wondering what are beliefs?
And what if you could finally discover yours and see if they are helping you in your life, or may limit your choices and decisions?
Discover all of this in this post.
What are beliefs?
I totally love this subject! I remember the moment I discovered what beliefs I had.
I’m talking about it later in this post so continue reading 🙂
The funny thing is, the moment you start paying attention to them, you’ll listen to someone and will hear all the beliefs they are believing in…!
But let’s first start by discovering what exactly are beliefs.
We all have beliefs regarding ourselves, others and the reality in general. We truly are believers!
They are a perception of the reality, “our reality” in fact. They are built from the experiences we are living.
For example, a 4 years old kid got bitten by a big dog. From this day on, this kid will maybe believe that “all big dogs are dangerous”.
When in fact, we know that it’s not necessarily true! Beliefs are helping people to decide what is important in life and what is “true” (seems real) to them.
Some beliefs are more important than others: the believes that an individual has about his identity (who he is) and about his capacities (what he’s capable of doing).
Most of the time, we don’t even know that we have beliefs, we just have them and they sound completely right to us because they are “our reality”.
We are making important decisions because of these beliefs, and they are also influencing our feelings and the actions we are taking.
Is a belief changing in time? What do you believe?
Even one experience can completely change a belief. If the event has a big (positive or negative) impact, it can change the belief forever.
For example, let’s imagine that the small kid will be brave enough to approach a big dog. Surprisingly, this big dog will be adorable and the kid’s belief can change immediately by becoming “big dogs are really nice”.
It’s not always working so extremely, it just to show you that beliefs can really be transformed from the experiences we are living every day.
Limiting or Helping beliefs
The very interesting part of discovering our beliefs is to see if they are helping us or limiting us.
For example, the kind of beliefs as “Today is going to be a good day, I will call this customer and I will make him sign the contract! I’m believing in me!” can be an amazing belief!
It’s a “I believe I can” kind of belief! Or also like “she believed she could so she did” kind of belief!
It can help the person to get enough confidence getting what he/she really wants.
But someone who’s 55 years old and thinks that “people over 35 are too old to go back to university” will maybe stop himself/herself to go to university and learn something new… just because of this belief!
How to identify what your beliefs are…
Here you will find the typical structure of people’s beliefs. Let’s discover if you believe and about what you maybe are…
Fill the blank to see what beliefs are limiting you and which ones are helping you…
1. I’m not entirely succeeding in… because…
2. If I’m succeeding in… I’m afraid of…
3. Getting everything that I want in… will probably cause me…
4. If I’m trying… I’m afraid of…
5. I cannot become…because…
6. It’s not possible for me to… because…
7. I will never be… because…
8. I will never have… because…
9. I will never succeed at… because…
10. I will always have the problem of… because…
11. It’s not good to always wish to be… because…
12. I don’t deserve… because…
Should we get rid of our beliefs?
Believe it or not (I know it’s a bit ironic to write that here!), there is absolutely no need for getting rid of our beliefs.
We can simply pay attention to them and ask ourselves questions like: is it always like this? Do I know situations or contexts when it’s not necessarily the case?
The part that is fascinating to me is the moment when people discover how to “cut a belief in two”.
For example, a very good friend of mine is a single dad. Very often, he’s telling me about his dates and he’s saying things like “Because I’m a single dad, she probably won’t call back…
It’s too many worries dating someone with a child” or “I cannot even imagine dating this woman, she won’t like the fact that I already have a child”.
I’m teasing him a bit and I’m asking him “do you know any single dad that found love?” or “do you know a single person without a child who’s still not finding love?”, when you ask yourself if you know an exception, you are probably in the right direction 🙂
Actually, I remember sharing in the coaching seminar a very strong belief I used to have: “to be happy, you need to get married and to have kids”.
Then I asked myself the following questions:
– Do I know some people who are happy and aren’t married? Answer: yes.
– Do I know some people who are happy and don’t have kids? Answer: yes.
– Do I know some people who have kids and aren’t happy? Answer: yes.
– Do I know some people who are married and aren’t happy? Answer: yes.
And then I started thinking a lot about all of the typical structure of people’s beliefs that I wrote up there and realized that it’s all a matter of perspective!
It’s not going to change in a day or two! It’s taking time, but it will simply give you something to think about.
Also, when you’re starting to pay attention to these beliefs, you will hear people’s saying a lot of beliefs while they are telling you a story.
You will see, it will be hard not to say anything about it :).
You will want to help but let’s remember that everyone needs time to figure things out, they are maybe not ready if they didn’t ask for your help, then there’s no need and no rush to give them yours.
About all of these beliefs and the fact that they are the mirror of “our reality”, there is a quote that I love that says “the map isn’t the territory” and it’s SO RIGHT.
The map is everything that we THINK is the territory…
Are you interested in learning more about beliefs, your beliefs?
Have a look at this book that is giving a lot of answers…
I was surprised how fast I’ve read it! I really fell understood and now I’m discovering everyday beliefs that I have that are helping me and other that are limiting me, it’s simply fascinating.
The author of the book (Gary van Warmerdam) also has a website about his technic and lots of courses and other learning supports. I may write another article about him and his website in the near future.
The name of the book that you definitely need to read is MindWorks: A Practical Guide for Changing Thoughts Beliefs, and Emotional Reactions. Let me know what you think about it!
