Beliefs: How to Challenge Them Now

When I was younger, I thought that beliefs could not be changed. My “belief” was that once I had a particular belief, I was destined to carry it my entire life. I then realized I was dead wrong on that matter. In fact, changing a negative, self-limiting belief can be changed almost instantly.

But before I dive into changing beliefs, let me give you a little background about beliefs and where they come from.

Beliefs are only thoughts held to be true.  They are not right or wrong, true or false, just VERY strong opinions. So, why is it important to constantly challenge your beliefs? The reality is that you will always act or not act in accordance to your predominate beliefs.

We need to distinguish ideas and beliefs so we can understand how to change them. Beliefs start out as just an idea that grows powerful as we put more focus and energy to it. Tony Robbins said it best; ideas are like a table with no legs while beliefs are the legs that hold up the table or idea. Remember that beliefs are not right or wrong so we can easily create beliefs that do not serve us. One other key thing to mention is that two people can have go through the same experience and leave with two completely separate beliefs.

What we need to do is become aware of when we are putting “legs” under that table. One quick way I have found is understanding the power of our vocabulary. The most powerful words we can speak are “I am.” You can say that confirming “I am” puts more legs under the idea (table) whether it is right or wrong. This means we can easily create powerful beliefs about ourselves that are completely self-limiting.

Here’s an easy four-step process I developed for changing those negative beliefs:
1) Awareness – become aware of what we are thinking
2) Thoughts – change our negative thoughts
3) Re-Program – re-write or re-program the thought
4) Vocabulary – change the words you are staying on a consistent basis

Most of the time we focus on what is not working, what is not right or what we feel we cannot change. By becoming aware of what we think, change negative thoughts to positive ones, re-program the thought or idea to empowering ones and this can be easily accomplished by changing a negative vocabulary to a more positive one.

With peace and gratitude,
Bill