The Power of Self-Belief
Expand Yourself by Challenging Your Beliefs
If you're committed to leading your best life, always learning and growing, then one of the challenges you may brush up against is the power of your beliefs.
Beliefs are the filters you see the world through. They shape your reality and are powerful influencers of how you experience your life.
Sometimes your beliefs are useful. For example, a belief that you're good at tennis is useful when you walk onto the court to compete.
Other beliefs however, are not so useful. For example, a belief that your voice is less valuable than someone else's can hold you back from speaking up.
According to Dr Nicole LePera, psychologist and best selling author of How to do the Work, core beliefs, those that are connected to our deepest perceptions about our identity, are our most entrenched beliefs and these are often formed before the age of seven.
It's these beliefs that sit behind the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. And it's these beliefs that provide the greatest opportunity for creating change.
Sometimes however, these beliefs have been sitting in our sub-conscious for so long they become hard to identify. One way to gain an insight about what they might be is to reflect on how you describe yourself. For example you might say things like I'm smart, I'm good at maths, I'm introverted, I'm a morning person or I'm a good runner.
These are reflections of your core beliefs and they inform how you categorize and view yourself in the world.
Once they are formed, these beliefs don't just sit there passively however. They create a launching pad for your mind to engage in what's called confirmation bias. Just like a metal detector on the beach, your brain starts attracting experiences and finding reasons to prove your beliefs are true.
And research shows we're really good as proving what we believe.
In fact, we're so good at it that a study in the British Medical Journal found when people went into surgery, or were given a placebo, in 51% of cases, the placebo worked just as well as the surgery.
This confirmation bias extends to all sorts of things. For example, if you're in the market for a Fiat, all of a sudden you'll notice all the Fiat's on the road. If you've just broken up with your partner and are feeling sorry for yourself, you'll start seeing happy couples everywhere and if you believe you're no good at social interaction, chances are you'll continue to feel awkward when you meet someone new.
This is the power of belief.
What you believe is what you create.
The good news is that given your beliefs shape your experiences, you can change your experiences by shaping your beliefs. The key is becoming more conscious about what they are and then taking action to challenge them.
Here are three steps that may be useful as a way of getting started.
Begin noticing and listing the beliefs you have about yourself. How do you describe yourself? Write your beliefs down.
Look at each belief and ask yourself where it comes from. What evidence do you have that it's true? What evidence do you have that challenges it? For each belief that isn't useful, ask yourself who you would be if that belief was false. Write that down.
What new thought do you need to practise to create a more useful belief? Given beliefs are thoughts that are repeated over time, you can create new beliefs by practising new thoughts and repeating these consistently. You can also take small daily actions that challenge your unhelpful beliefs and start accumulating evidence for the contrary view.
Creating awareness of limiting self-beliefs, practising new thoughts and taking small daily actions that challenge them can lead to new, more helpful beliefs over time. This in turn is one critical step in finding your voice, speaking up with confidence and making the contribution in life that you’d like to make.
As Wayne Dyer said "A belief system is nothing more than a thought you've thought over and over again."