Uncovering your beliefs (15 mins)
Doubt.
We all experience doubt at different times in life for different reasons and due to difference situations. Doubt is a helpful state at times, it can cause us to think more thoughtfully about something, it can drive us to explore more avenues than first thought. However, when doubt starts driving it can take over and stall progress, reduce our ability to achieve a growth mindset, and cause us to second guess ourselves.
Today I found myself considering doubt and its relationship with success.
I discovered that I had a belief that said if doubt is present you cannot be successful.
When a belief comes to the surface which was previously unconscious to us, we need to conduct a sort of dig to discover if that belief is really true, identify what the belief actually is, decipher where it came from and explore why we have formed it. The purpose? We can then reevaluate and upgrade old beliefs that are causing us a problem in our present day experience.
Consciously replacing an old belief and experiencing the emotions tied to the new belief based on a reevaluated view of the world recalibrates and signals to our system to engage in life in a new way, and in most cases, we experience an improved quality of life as a result.
Where Do Beliefs Come From?
Most of our core beliefs and values are developed at an early age, they are instilled in us consciously and subconsciously from our parents, care givers, social connections, society, cultures, communities, and education experiences.
Our conscious beliefs can be easier to identify. For example, the belief “It’s good to brush your teeth to maintain a healthy mouth” is one that many people learn at a young age and generally a shared common positive belief. However some of our unconscious beliefs are sneaky and are better at hiding from our own awareness. We only get to dig into them later in life - if at all - if something happens and we are willing to conduct a self evaluation and spend time exploring our beliefs.
Usually uncovering unconscious beliefs and therefore subconscious programming begins because there is a discomfort, frustration, physical or emotional situation that we are dealing with and we long for a different experience.
We then realize we need to support our body, mind, and spirit in some form, perhaps through books, podcasts, online materials, educators, advisors, support systems, and or practitioners to help us uncover the things we are not aware of, so we can rediscover balance and move into an experience that presents an improved quality of life. The only way to make a change to something is to become aware of it first. You’ve probably heard before that if you keep doing the same thing over and over you’ll get the same results. So if you don’t like the results you have to make changes.
Beliefs & Your Reality
If you don’t believe you can do something it’s unlikely you’ll ever achieve it. You have to have a clear belief that you’ll be able to do it, or at least have the conviction and confidence that when you try you’ll achieve it. Even if you might not know how you’re going to do it, you will have unwavering clarity that you will find a way to do it.
Take walking up the stairs; for able bodied individuals at some point in your life you learned how to walk up the stairs, as an adult if you start thinking about how you are walking up the stairs when you are doing it, it’s more than likely you’ll trip. When asked, “Do you believe you can walk up the stairs?” those individuals would univocally say yes, 100%. It’s likely that their prior experience has taught them it’s possible, therefore reinforcing that belief, and giving them confidence to say yes. They are successful at walking up the stairs - achieving that goal, and there is no doubt they can do it.
If, however, you are asked, “Do you believe you can give a Ted talk?”, the answers will vary. They will be filled with responses of “Yes”, “No”, “I wouldn’t want to”, “Maybe”, “Not sure”, and many many more. Dig into those answers and you’ll find that the beliefs people hold about themselves determines how they perceive and experience their world, and ultimately how they engage with their own world, leading to the choices and decisions they make.
If you don’t believe in something then how are you going to do it? We know that we have to believe in something so clearly, and feel all the emotions of that belief coming true for that to become part of our reality. Dr. Melissa E. Mlianak highlights how emotions drive thoughts, drive behaviors and drive experiences, and right back to emotions. Dr Joe Dispenza talks about our personality being equal to our personal reality. Bob Proctor highlights how our felt emotions show up in our experiences, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy demonstrates that unhelpful thinking patterns can lead to, or reinforce psychological problems. There is plenty of scientific and artful evidence out there to demonstrate clearly that our beliefs are central and critical to life experience.
Digging into my Beliefs
During an exercise today I discovered one of my beliefs is that success and doubt cannot co-exist. I discovered that one of my beliefs was “To be successful there must be no doubt”. It popped up in a strong way which became counterproductive. It shot to number 1 as one of my limiting beliefs.
Well that presents a problem, and here’s why:
I discover I had a circular thought pattern that went something like this… To achieve success there must be no doubt, to have no doubt there must be full confidence, to have full confidence there must be proof of success, to have success there must be no doubt…. That is an utterly infinite and impossible loop with no end in sight. A continuous circle of chasing your tail, never ever arriving at the intersect of success and doubt living harmoniously together. This belief needs challenging.
I conducted a belief assessment because I believe that evaluating and reevaluating our belief structures helps us grow and evolve. As neuroplasticity tells us, no matter our age, our brains possess the ability to grow, expand, evolve, and we can deepen our life wisdom and experiences.
As I dug into my beliefs it became apparent that the relationship between success and doubt were showing up for me and I wanted to understand their relationship, why this particular belief was coming up, and where the belief was coming from.
What is doubt? It’s not being 100% sure of something, lacking conviction, feeling fearful and uncertain, not being confident in a successful outcome, not being convinced something is possible.
What is success? This is the accomplishment of an aim, purpose, or goal. Something we feel satisfaction about and have achieved.
Our definitions of success vary from person to person. Success is personal. However, in general we will perceive success as a positive experience and doubt as something that casts questions over things and makes us shuffle in our seats.
On a healthy note, doubt can be helpful. It encourages us to ask questions, it helps us explore situations or scenarios to consider all possibilities so we can build a more robust response or solution. However, if doubt gets too strong it becomes an unhelpful and unhealthy block.
Our ego can use doubt as a tactic to convince us not to do something. It’s just trying to keep us safe so we can’t really complain. However it’s similar to keeping a plane grounded at the airport, what’s the point of that? A plane is built and made to fly not stay on the ground. We have to move past doubt and our limiting beliefs, and that means updating our unconscious programming or beliefs structures, so we too, can fly.
I start asking myself more questions around these topics.
Do I believe that for pretty much everything in life, we never truly know how to do something until we’ve done it? Yes! 100% agree. Am I therefore willing to consider that I need to update my belief that doubt can be present and co-exist with success?
Maybe. Give me real life examples my mind says.
Ok, the Wright Brothers, did they know how to fly before they flew? No, of course not, they had to go through the process of discovering how to fly and once they had flown they then knew it could be done and kept refining their approach. Bob Proctor talks about this in his book “Change Your Paradigm, Change Your Life.”
Did Richard Branson know how to cross the Atlantic successfully in a hot air balloon in 1991 before he did it? No, of course not, but the experience of his prior attempts, going through the process, and then trying again ultimately gave him insight into how to do it.
There are countless stories of people in business, the arts, and politics taking on roles and jobs they have never done before but become extraordinarily successful at it. Take a look at Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has gone from Actor to President to war-time Leader. All very different roles yet demonstrating extraordinary success.
Did all of these people experience doubt at different times? I’ve not spoken to any of them but my guess is, yes of course, it would be highly likely. Ah, real life evidence that success and doubt can co-exist.
It’s likely though that their doubt beliefs were not stronger than their success beliefs. The unconscious message playing in their entire being meant their mind, body, and spirit were all in alignment. Their belief system was playing the right track. The book by Jon Acuff “Soundtracks” has more on that.
A Letter to Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
We don’t have to know how to do something to be extraordinarily successful at it. Doubt is something we can welcome along for the journey but as Elizabeth Gilbert speaks about fear, the same applies to doubt, we must not put it in the driving seat.
So, the big question, how do we remove something from the driving seat and replace it with a new belief?
A New Belief
Finding a new belief isn’t always a straightforward exercise, but is such a worthwhile exercise.
Think of it like a shopping trip, in a conventional trip to the store for new clothes, you visit a few stores, try a few things on, and perhaps bring a few things home. At the store, you can try those clothes on, you don’t have to buy them, and secondly even if you do buy them you still retain the option (usually) to return them if they don’t quite work.
Approach exploring a new belief statement in the same way.
Sketch out words and sentences on a piece of paper, speak them out loud to yourself, and or with someone else to give yourself the chance to try on the new belief to see how it feels. If it doesn’t immediately feel fabulous, keep refining it.
By approaching the discovery of your new belief in this way, it takes the pressure off from coming up with the perfect belief. A discussion of perfectionism is something for another day.
The key to this part of the exercise is to notice what you feel and how your body responds.
Notice when you answer with a clear YES! or a clear NO! Notice when you answer with a maybe. When you have a clear yes, follow that line of thinking, why do say yes? Do the same with a clear no. Ask yourself am I willing to consider that I might need an updated belief?
Pay attention to how your body responds too. Do you roll your eyes when you suggest something? Do you let out an audible sigh? Do you procrastinate and go off and make a coffee (I did at one point!). Do you find yourself googling random topics during the exercise. That’s ok, these are all part of the process and they’re all cues and insights into getting into the weeds.
You won’t immediately come up with your hit new belief, if you did, we’d all do it all the time and we’d find them easily. Finding that new outfit doesn’t always happen with the first pick of clothes off the rack. Persist. Keep exploring. Be curious and open to what’s coming up. Trust yourself, you’ll get to the answer.
When you do discover your new statement, you’ll have a sense of relief, it will feel satisfying, you’ll feel good about it, you’ll possibly even feel encouraged by it.
Take that sentence and sit with it, try it out for a few days, write it on a post it note and leave it on your desk. Tomorrow, when you look at it, notice how you feel. Put action into practice, use your new belief and apply it, find images that represent it, these will reinforce it for you. Keep musing over it. At the end of the day, if you feel you want to tweak it, do so. It’s yours to play with. If you want support in exploring and transforming individual subconscious beliefs Joanne Baldwin at For The Love of Balance has a series of wonderful programs for individuals.
So what happened for me in my belief discovery? I thought you’d ask.
Let’s recap, my old limiting belief statement:
“To be successful there must be no doubt.”
My new reevaluated and updated belief statement is:
“To be successful there is a healthy balance of confidence, wisdom, experience, doubt, instinct and intuition.“
This new belief feels GREAT to me! It feels so expansive, it feels as though I’m addressing the reality of doubt, accepting its existence but not placing it in the driving seat. I can imagine the sensations in my body of how the emotions feel when this statement is true. I close my eyes and feel what it feels like when I’m enjoying success. I can feel how excited I am at being successful, and knowing that a good healthy dose of all those other items contributes to my success. How do I know this? Because I’ve been successful, and I continue to be. This new updated statement is now reinforcing that belief, and doubt is in its rightful place and I’ve introduced it to a new healthy relationship.
Steps to Working out Your Own Beliefs
Firstly, let go of the idea that you have to discover all of your beliefs in one go. Unconscious beliefs don’t all reveal themselves to you at the same time. Beliefs come to the surface at different times for different reasons. Trust that the first one that rises up is the one that you need to become familiar with and is ripe for reevaluation.
Start by considering a challenge or issue you are facing.
Take out a pen and paper.
Write that challenge as a question at the top of your page. i.e. “What is preventing me from becoming the world’s greatest mathematician?“
Write more questions to that main question, no more than three additional questions to begin with. Draw arrows leading from each question and write a sentence in response to them. Don’t censor your writing, just write i.e. “Why am I hesitant about this? —> “Because I’ve not had the opportunity to work under the best mathematicians in the world and I believe to be the world’s best mathematician you must work for the current world’s greatest. I also believe that to be the world’s greatest mathematician you must be admired.” —> “What is admiration?”
Once you have written a few answers to your questions, then ask “Is that really true?” i.e. “Who did the first world’s greatest mathematician work for?” “Are there mathematicians that I respect and admire?”, “Have they all worked for the greatest mathematician?”, What does the greatest mean to me?”
Next say to yourself “Give me some real world examples”. These examples reinforce or disprove your belief, remember if your belief is true you will not be able to find one alternative out there. For example, gravity is a physics law. It can’t be disputed. If you can’t think of any real world examples, google, and see what comes up.
Look through what you have written and see where you have written anything that looks like a statement.
Pull out statements, such as “Admiration is ……”, or “Greatness is……”, “I believe that….”.
Write on another sheet of paper this header at the top “Some of my beliefs”. Below that title list out all those statements you’ve written previously.
Review everything on that page and notice any patterns. You’ll see them and start connecting the dots.
Then on the other side of the sheet write “My new beliefs”.
This is where you get to try on the clothes. Take favorite words and phrases that feel good and start stringing them together. You’ll write and re-write, don’t worry about that, just keep writing. During this process your new belief statement will appear.
During that last step you might feel frustration, you might feel agitated about finding a new sentence and want to just write something down to be done. Remind yourself you’re not doing this for anyone else other than yourself and it’s going to help you engage and experience life in a new way that benefits you and adds to your desires. Practice patience with yourself and you will get that statement.
Once the statement comes out, write it clearly on the sheet, circle it, put stars around it. Celebrate it’s existence and enjoy reflecting on it. When the time comes to update it, you’ll know if you need to.
Go out and put your new belief into practice, action it. Like everything, you need to practice, and create a new habit.
Let us know how you get on, have you ever done any exploring into what your beliefs are? What did you discover? Leave a comment below.
Be well, live intentionally
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