There is a well-hidden treasure trove burried within the journey of discovering our own personal power. Unearthing it, I assure you, is a life-changing event. It is found when we take a look at certain aspects of life that, left unexamined, seem completely mysterious. Since these aspects of life have no obvious function or purpose, we often take the option of letting them run on auto-pilot. We haven't taken the time to notice their impact on our day-to-day life, so we go about living in the dark of what are actually powerful forces that drive many of our actions.
The most significant of these mysterious forces is our beliefs. We don't often - if ever - think about it, but every single action we take begins with a belief. We get into our car and drive to work in the morning because we believe we will have a safe journey. We lie in bed at night and drift off to sleep because we believe that we will wake up the following morning. We call a friend and make plans because we believe we will enjoy the visit.
In Step 3, we talked about the practice of self-vigilance, which allows us to witness our thought process from a place of deep connection with our inner, most genuine selves. If you've tried this practice, you'll surely have had some surprising revelations! By taking a step back and creating a gap between our true self (our inner "I") and our thoughts, we begin to realize the vast variety and quantity of thoughts that stream through our mind. Most likely, you'll also have noticed that far more of those thoughts than you would have predicted are negative and/or self-deprecating.
This point of realization is where we enter the arena of belief. A belief, simply put, is a practiced thought. We've thought the thought enough times that we've determined it to be undeniably true, and it is added to our list of belief statements. Usually, we've thought the thought as many times as we have because of life circumstances - i.e. we've driven our car to work safely enough times that we no longer merely think we will arrive safely, we believe we will. Of course, it is easy to see with this example that a belief is not a guarantee. Life may have shown us that it is reasonable to expect a safe travel to work, but there is always the slight chance that we will get into an accident. This is a risk we are willing to take; it is small enough that it does not alter our belief.
What, then, about the beliefs we hold about ourselves? Or others? Or money? Or love? Or health? A belief is nothing more than a practiced thought. I invite you to choose a belief you hold about any of these topics and really sit with it for a minute.
No, seriously. Pick one. It might not be as easy as it sounds. You might need to focus on a topic for a moment. Don't worry. Consciously follow your train of thought and you'll find one.
Where does this belief come from? What life experiences have formed it? And - here's the real zinger - how does this belief fuel your present and future decisions? Does it allow you to enjoy your life, perhaps even passionately? Or does it hold you back in some way? Does it encourage growth and/or any version of success you'd like to have? Or does it keep you in a place you consider mediocre? Does it foster positive interaction with other people? Or does it tend to lead to disappointment? Does it make you feel fearless? Or fearful?
In the same way that thoughts are not inherently bad, beliefs are not inherently bad. They are, however, often inherently flawed. Beliefs, like thoughts, are tools that act as the creating force behind our actions. The difference between a thought and a belief is as follows: A thought arises spontaneously, leaving us the choice to accept or deny it. A belief is molded over time, made up of thoughts we have already decided to accept. Therefore, there is a consciousness, and should be a level of ownership associated with a belief.
Why, then, do we so often hold such negative, limiting beliefs? Friends, this whole business of belief can get pretty messy when we remember that, without the practice of self-vigilance, we have been blindly and unconsciously accepting thoughts all of our life! We build our beliefs out of thoughts we've previously collected. If we were collecting those thoughts without paying attention to whether we really wanted to call them our own, then we are building beliefs out of foreign, unknowable, and perhaps even damaged materials! The building blocks of our beliefs are ours and ours only. So, it naturally follows that, if we have been forming beliefs all of our life out of thoughts we have not fully examined, we are walking around with all sorts of misshapen, poorly structured beliefs that do not represent who we really are. Our beliefs are flawed - not because they are wrong, but simply because they do not reflect our true nature.
Here is the treasure trove: Your beliefs are yours and they are powerfully moving you through every moment of your life. If you are willing to pay attention to your thoughts, to accept only those that serve you and mold new beliefs that truly define who you are, you will begin to experience unprecedented levels of power over your personal self. It is not even necessary to dismantle your old, flawed beliefs. With your new, more conscious, more stable ones in tow, the old beliefs will, quite quickly and uneventfully, crumble. They will crumble. So don't even focus there. Just start building, my friends. Take every thought that moves you, every thought that makes you smile, every thought that rings a note that resonates in your heart, and start building.
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