Content we are to operate within the socially conditioned framework of our beliefs, ever changing over time to accommodate the evolution of our thought. It is without examination that we accept beliefs and without thought that we allow beliefs to fade into insignificance. –Christina Bialas
WHAT ARE BELIEFS
Your thoughts are magnetic in nature and attract other like thoughts, situations, experiences and people. As thoughts enter into your awareness, other like thoughts soon trickle building momentum. Thoughts attract thoughts! If no opposing thoughts tackle the growing collection of like thoughts a belief forms. A belief is a super-sized bundle of like thoughts.
Beliefs are your assumptions about reality. Your beliefs are yours alone. And they are neither factual nor fiction. They are your personal interpretations of your reality some ever changing and some holding strongly true for only you. Believing something is true does not make it true anymore than believing something is false makes it false.
We use words like verified, fact, scientific, true furthering our impression that our beliefs hold some degree of virtue. However, if you genuinely contemplate what truth your beliefs hold you will undeniably conclude that beliefs are mere assumptions about your reality and nothing more. Your beliefs are your prejudices, biases, preconceptions, predispositions, and influences all bundled up by your thoughts. When you “think,” you rearrange your prejudices.
You view your world through packaged beliefs. What you believe about the physical world largely determines what you will experience. What do you believe about other people, the air you breathe, restrictions upon you, your family situation? How do you believe you were formed? What do you believe about the world around you? Our mammoth beliefs keep us tethered allowing little persuasion in. However, we easily adopt beliefs when we have no former thoughts on a matter. Initial thoughts planted with no counteractive belief to contend with spark a trail of like thoughts. When we watch the news, pick up the newspaper or engage in conversation with a friend we form beliefs rapidly on the ideas presented based on the initial trigger of thought. Thoughts attract more thoughts until a belief is formed.
It is difficult to see the mask of beliefs you have been parading under because of the method beliefs receive our acceptance: attracted like thoughts validated through the strength of their magnetic power. You have a thought that attracts another thought and then another. Thoughts left unchecked collect further strengthening the core. As roots develop experiences are brought into being that validates the grouping of thoughts; as you think the thought, you draw experiences that endorse the thought. Seemingly then what you think appears to be true because you have provided both the original thought and the experience that validates it. This pattern is cyclical until it is broken.
For example, you have thoughts of disappointment and frustration with other people. Constantly, you “think” of ways that people disappoint you. You are focused on this aspect. You often complain that other people disappointment you. Since your focus is on the many ways in which people disappoint you, you attract it. You draw to yourself disappointment and clearly see it because of this concentrated focus. In this analogy, you have created the original disappointing thoughts and the experience that follows: people disappointing you. What you experience appears true because you look for and see ways that people disappoint you thereby giving credence to the original thought. What you believe you see, and in turn you end up believing it even more because you keep creating it. Conversely, what you do not believe you repel and therefore do not see. If you focused on ways people please you, your thoughts and focus would shift changing what you experience to pleasant encounters. What you believe to be true and what you believe to be false is what you experience.
Your beliefs always come first followed by a reality that validates the belief. Your beliefs are attracted like thoughts. If you change your beliefs (thoughts), then what you validate as truth changes along with it. Your beliefs are nothing more than a perspective, a viewing angle, which only holds truth from the point of view of the angle. Change your viewing angle and truth changes. There are no truths except what you believe to be true, just as what is false exists only within the parameters of your beliefs. What is true and what is false are virtually indistinguishable.
Take a moment to examine the truths and fallacies associated with these statements. After you read each statement, pause a moment and consider what you think about each example. Is each statement true or false?
- People are good at heart.
- Puppies are cute.
- The earth is round.
- The sky is blue.
These statements seem true, don’t they? However, any statement made relies upon “your definition.” What is good? What is cute? What does it mean to be round? What does blue look like? To illustrate further, suppose we gather a bunch of objects and “call them round.” We could easily call the shape square or rectangular or invent an entirely new name. The only thing we have done is provide a definition. By virtue of calling objects round, roundness is not bestowed upon them. It is true that they are round only within the parameters and according to our definition of what we believe round is. If we later rename round objects calling them “contours,” it becomes false under our beliefs that the object is round. The only change is in our belief.
Why talk about circles, contours or blobs for that matter? It is important to see your beliefs for the “thoughts” that they are and realize that your beliefs do not bequeath truth, in any instance. Understanding and accepting that your beliefs hold no truths helps when it comes time to shed adverse beliefs. If you hold your beliefs as absolute truth, you will not be able to let go. You will find yourself defending them. If you are willing to examine your beliefs only on the worth of serving you, understanding they are only a framework of thoughts holding no virtue, then you will be able to reject underserving beliefs.
Do people disappoint you? Do you have a hard time making ends meet? Are you chronically ill? Do you have a weight problem? Is a dollar a lot of money? Is a million dollars a lot of money? Are you attractive? What do you believe? What you believe does not matter a little, it matters a whole heck of a lot!
Your beliefs are your viewing angle. Imagine Person A driving to work. Person A thinks drivers on the road are reckless, rude and idiotic. Person B is also driving on the road but thinks other drivers are courteous, respectful and only occasionally absent minded. Person B has forgiving thoughts. Person A has aggressive thoughts. Which driver do you think has a more pleasurable drive to work? Which driver do you suppose is more likely to draw tickets and accidents? Which driver experiences stress behind the wheel?
I will say it again because it is that important: What you believe matters! If entertaining therapeutic thoughts while driving draws a pleasurable safer driving experience, what does thinking successful thoughts do for you? What about concentrating on thin thoughts or healthy thoughts? Your beliefs are your viewing angle neither right nor wrong. They are perspective from which you view reality. Your viewing angle makes all the difference in what you see and experience.
Take for evaluation the beliefs we hold about what the Sun looks like. If you ask any child what color the Sun is, almost 100% will respond with “yellow.” We learned to draw the Sun as a perfectly round lemon yellow ball of fire in Kindergarten and have doodled it that way ever since. But the Sun is not just yellow. It produces a range of visible light from red to blue in which yellow is the most plentiful. If the sun were cooler, it would look red. If it were hotter it would look blue because both of these colors are contained within it.
The Earth’s atmosphere acts as a kind of light filter. Some colors are filtered more than others. While the Sun is a yellow star, the Earth’s atmosphere makes the Sun look “more yellow” than if you were to observe it from outer space where it would look “more white.” White light is a combination of all colors produced equally by a glowing object.
The Sun appears whiter in a high noon sky because it has less air to travel through. Less air means all colors are equally reaching your eyes. From a high flying plane or the moon, the Sun also appears to be white; closer to the way it really is! Your beliefs about the color of the Sun, as it turns out, are all relative to the position which you view it, much like your beliefs. Your beliefs serve as a filter through which reality is funneled. And like the sun, you allow certain information to permeate the barriers of your beliefs.
How the Sun appears is much like how your beliefs appear. It depends on the angle from which they are viewed. While the Sun might look yellow or intensely white depends upon your view. But because it appears yellow does not negate, or make false, the other colors contained within the Sun. Neither does having multiple colors negate the yellowish appearance. It is both true that it is yellow and false. Neither is right. Neither is wrong.
We can appreciate this distinction as it applies to the Sun. It becomes much more difficult when we apply it to our own way of viewing reality because we believe the truths we have constructed. Our beliefs filter thoughts, just like earth filters the suns color. However, all colors are present in the sun just as all possible thoughts and beliefs are available to us if we choose to stop clinging to archaic ideas that do not serve us. We do have a choice to alter our beliefs since we can control what we think.
Consider your thoughts towards other people. We hold all sorts of beliefs about other people we often accept as undisputable facts. We believe Joe is outrageous or Angela is shy based only upon our point of view and consequently our definition (definitions are just thoughts you have) of what outrageous is or what it means to be shy. What we believe about someone else does not make it true of that person. If that were the case, what others believe about us would hold absolute truth. However, we are dynamic and every changing with situations and people we interact with. What we believe about anything does not genie blink truth into it.
You harbor all sorts of beliefs that have been readily accepted without regard to their source or influence. Some beliefs you inherited from your parents, some are cultural, some are influenced by peers, and several are even formed after a book you have read or are validated through reading the Sunday newspaper. You are quite susceptible to the influences of others especially when they seem to validate your beliefs.
It is no coincidence that others seemingly validate you; like attracts like. You are a magnet for those who think like you do which lends added support to your belief system furthering the appearance of truth. You likewise notice emotional intensity towards those who object to your beliefs. Your thoughts toward them (and their beliefs) are profound repellants. That does not mean you avoid people who disagree with you. On the contrary, you will find that your interpretations agree very little with other people on an array of subjects. However, you are bound to those on your predominant frequency.
Major beliefs contain a web of attached thoughts that pull individuals together such as beliefs on raising a family, religious similarities, or economically similar situations. It is the strength of your major beliefs that cement relationships. While you might disagree on many aspects, these weaker beliefs do not contain the force to repel the mega sized belief attractors.
As you change neighborhoods, switch jobs, attend a new church, move to a new geographical area, divorce, marry, have children, receive a startling diagnosis, stop drinking or quite smoking your beliefs migrate quickly to a new set of lens from which you will view reality. You always follow the pattern: Think, Create, Perceive Believe, Validate.
THINK>CREATE>PERCEIVE>BELIEVE>VALIDATE
So what, if the sky is blue or not blue? What difference does it make if the sun is yellow, white or rainbow? When you understand that your beliefs are not facts, you are free to change them to any degree. As long as you clutch a belief, it clutches you. By grasping an understanding that there is no truth in what you believe, you can untie yourself from limiting beliefs such as: I will never amount to anything. I’ll always be fat. My health is poor. I am always late. The economy prevents me.
It is important to grasp the role beliefs play in creating your reality because what prevents you from moving up the ladder of success, achieving a goal, becoming well or losing weight lies always in what you believe. Shortly, we will talk about why beliefs prevent you from change and how you can change your beliefs to support a more desirable experience. Right now, it is imperative that you begin separating your beliefs from fact.
Begin to see your beliefs for what they are: collected thoughts that you have been validating. It is not necessary to abandon your beliefs, just yet. Some serve you well and many you will keep. However, it is important that you realize all you hold are thoughts on matters, and thoughts do not make things true or false. As you sift through any of your beliefs, you will understand this. Once you understand this, you can direct your thoughts to build desirable beliefs.
Thoughts build beliefs. Beliefs thrust themselves out into your experiences. But not all thoughts are projected as we have learned; only those thoughts that are habitual, durable and intense thrust themselves out. What thoughts are strong enough to thrust forward into reality? Your beliefs, of course, are those energized thoughts thrust out due to their massive size and attracting power. What you experience is a manifestation of your beliefs; your bundled habitually intense thoughts.
Due to the intensity of your habitual thought patterns your beliefs are extremely influential to you and radiate quite strongly attracting other like thoughts and beliefs of similar nature. That is why your experiences change very little from day to day, why you have predominantly the same thoughts, why you seem stuck, and why change is so difficult to incorporate. Experiencing situations outside of your beliefs is much like oaring up stream in white capped water. You can only sustain temporarily.
Your beliefs surround you; how you see yourself, your ability, how you view the economy, where you live, opportunities available to you are all determined by what you believe. Conversely, what you do not believe you cannot attract. It will always be pushed away. You cannot attract your dream house, ideal spouse, superior income or anything that is unbelievable to you. Experiences that are unbelievable for you will be held from you.
There is a difference between unbelievable and doubt. You can doubt the likelihood of something such as winning a basketball game. However, both winning the basketball game and losing the basketball game are believable outcomes for you. Experiences such as winning the lottery, becoming a millionaire, or being the next big rock star are experiences that are likely very unbelievable for you. Constructive thoughts on the plausibility of these experiences are so very limited, while destructive thoughts (such as “it will never happen to me) are so common that these particular experiences are drawn away from you. Again, confirming the original thought that, “I could never be a rock star or millionaire.”
People who have success draw the experiences towards them through constructive thoughts. Put simply, they believe they can have the experience. Just like you believe winning the basketball game is an option. People who succeed are certain that success is a very, very likely option for them too; as likely an outcome as winning a T-ball game. It is not something they push out to their wishful thinking list. They draw the experience very near to them through thoughts of absolute certain believability. In fact their thoughts are so forceful that having the experience is as sure to them as the newspaper appearing on the front step in the morning. It is with that level of certainty that they proceed.
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