I suspect that if we all tried to uncover the biggest reason why we don’t pursue our dreams, we’d find it has mostly to do with belief. Do we really believe we can make money doing what we love? Do we really believe we can make a difference in the world? Do we really believe we can succeed?
Abraham-Hicks defines belief as just a thought we keep on thinking. We’d still believe in Santa Claus if at some point we didn’t stop and consider the strong evidence against a fat man in red squeezing through chimneys all over the world in one night on a sleigh driven by flying reindeer. Most of our beliefs are deep rooted and programmed throughout our early lives, and we take them with us into adulthood even though they are no longer true, or perhaps were never true in the first place. The more we abide by them without question, the more limiting they become. And regardless of whether they’re true or not, we act in accordance with them. So when we start sentences with “I can’t afford…,” “I’m too old…,” “I could never be self employed…,” “I’m not creative…,” “I’m fat…,” etc, we’re just running that old mental tape that we never bothered to challenge as we moved through life. If we tell ourselves all day long that we’re fat, our subconscious believes we’re fat and so we start acting as though we were. Which is likely to make us fat. Then we use that as evidence to keep believing that we’re fat. What an endless cycle!
So if it’s true that we are what we say we are, then shouldn’t we say it positively? We can use positive self talk to reprogram the beliefs that keep us from achieving the things we want in life. Positive and consistent affirmations are highly effective at rewiring the negative thoughts that make up our belief system. They must be positive, specific and action oriented. So instead of “I am fat,” use “I feel healthy when I’m eating more vegetables and jogging every day.” Any negative thought can be challenged with a positive one. When in doubt, believe that anything is possible.
Over time, these affirmations will start to come up more readily. They’ll beat the negative thought to the punchline and our positive self talk will become more habitual. At that point, we can change our entire belief system and create a new one that’s based wholly on positive truths instead of false negative stories. So what’s the reason you’re not where you want to be in life? Follow it back to the root belief and work at consistently challenging it. Once you notice what’s going on, it’s hard to settle into any of your limiting beliefs without questioning them.
