How To Work With Beliefs To Change Your Life For The Better

There are 2 ways to work with beliefs in order to improve our lives.  The first of those is to work with the beliefs we already have and use them to produce results.

The concept here is to use what we already believe in order to produce changes.  For instance, most of us believe that flipping a switch on the wall will change the state of a light, either on or off.  We also believe that placing a key in the ignition of a car and turning it will cause the engine to come to life.  These are beliefs that produce a result when we comply with them.

Forgiving others in order to be ‘forgiven’ ourselves is a belief that works for those who truly believe in a God that punishes us for our mistakes.  Blessing others so that we may be blessed ourselves is another belief that works for those who truly believe in the process. However, if you have doubts whether this works or not, then results will not be quickly forthcoming.

And that leads us to the other method of working with beliefs, and that is to change what we believe will produce reliable results.

You see, the universe is set up in such a way that our beliefs are reflected in our experiences.  If we believe that others are critical and uncaring, then our experiences will reflect that belief and we get hurt and become lonely.  If we believe that “the economy” is tight and money is hard to come by, then our experiences will reflect that belief and we find out what it’s like to be poor.

However, when we believe that our lives ARE blessed and that more blessings are coming to us each and every day, then the universe has a different image to present to us.

Think of the world around you as a movie screen, and the beliefs you have within you comprise the film that is projected upon that screen.  As soon as your beliefs change, the image on the screen changes to reflect the new beliefs.

But here again, knowing the cause of a problem and being able to DO something about it are two different things.  What we need is a process that will automatically and naturally alter the beliefs within us.

There are actually several processes that have been used over time.  One process is prayer – and this works when you believe it does.  Repeating affirmations about what we desire as being a current reality is another process that works when you believe in
the process.

As you’ll find on my content site, I found a way to use affirmations that doesn’t require that you believe in the process, because the belief is CREATED by the process, or at least transferred from one set of beliefs to another.

This process comes from NLP, and uses something called “pacing and leading” statements.  You start out ‘affirming’ things that you already believe are true, such as “My name is _____.  I live on planet Earth.  Two plus two equals four. I am having a hard time right now.”

By pacing your current beliefs, you are gathering momentum that will carry over into a new statement that immediately follows.  This ‘pacing’ affirmation picks up the belief that you already have in the ‘leading’ affirmations.  So one example of using this
process would be:

My name is _____. (pacing)
I live on planet Earth. (pacing)
2+2=4 (pacing)
I am having a hard time right now. (pacing)
But things are about to improve. (leading)

Four leading affirmations is a minimum, although you don’t need any more than 6 or 7.

If you think about the ‘strength’ of a belief as something that can be measured on a scale, and you measure the strength of your belief that life is about to improve for you before you start this process, by the time you’ve said a few pacing affirmations and then a single leading affirmation, and then repeated the process a few times, you’ll notice that your level of belief in the new statement is growing a little at a time, until you reach a point where you accept the statement as fact.

This is where things really get interesting, because once your inner mind accepts the new statement as fact, the universe has a new belief to reflect back to you in your life.  The net effect is that life will begin to improve for you.

Obviously, this only touches the surface of things.  We all have thousands of different beliefs within us, and some beliefs will counteract other beliefs.  When you think about the ‘new’ leading affirmation, some thoughts will come up that will refute it.  Take note of them, because they are showing you what you believe on a deeper, inner level.  These will be beliefs that you’ll want to change to support your new desired experiences.

Another process that you can use that also helps to reshape our beliefs is creative daydreaming.  By spending some time daydreaming about the life you want to live, your inner mind becomes conditioned to the idea and will accept its possibility more so than it did before.  This is the basis for what has been known as “creative visualization” although the visualization itself doesn’t actually change anything, it’s the beliefs that are affected that do the work after the visualization process is finished.

You can take this process one step further and extend it out into the world around you by ‘pretending’ that things are the way  you’d like them to be.  As kids, we had a natural instinct to pretend, and it does seem that this is a powerful process that has the potential to change everything.

The bottom line is that the universe will reflect your beliefs in the experiences you have.  It’s as if our beliefs act as a magnet to ‘attract’ related experiences to us.  Once you alter your beliefs, your experiences will change as well.