Beliefs and the Power Within

In the craziness and chaos of the world today, turning in to your own inner thoughts and beliefs keeps you balanced. Gandhi articulated his wisdom when he said, “Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.” Realize that behind everything you say is a thought and behind every thought is a belief. Beliefs begin in childhood and expand over time. In fact, we learned basic beliefs as young children and created experiences that matched those beliefs throughout life. This article is a segment from my latest book An Awakening: Clear Passage Through Life’s Storms

Long Held Beliefs Form Your Character

Think about your long held beliefs? Do you know that beliefs are often unconscious? Have you ever wondered where your beliefs originated? They don’t just appear randomly—they reflect your long held truths about health, love, work, family as well as politics, religion and money.

Our beliefs seed our character. Some remain indestructible while others are thin around the base and can be broken easily. Think about a belief you hold today. Is it one from childhood or one that has adapted or changed over the years? How have your beliefs influenced your behaviors over the years? ?Realize that personal beliefs can entrench, may become rooted in negativity and/or become destructive. We witnessed this reality through the pandemic with entrenchment driven by political discourse.

So many people stopped listening to others’ viewpoints focusing only on information that matched their own beliefs. Rather than examine truth versus rumor, some of us held firm to our own ways and refused to allow other viewpoints into our world.

Beliefs also drive our self-worth. Are you someone who believes your worth comes from another’s validation—what others believe you to be rather than who you believe yourself to be? Long held beliefs form your character and are often unconscious.

Emotions Reflect Beliefs

Do you continuously try to change things around you to feel better? Try feeling better first and witness how things around you change. Think of your thoughts as weather patterns and your emotions as barometers. Who would you be without your emotions? If the sum total of all your experiences makes up the tapestry of your life, it is your emotions that give this tapestry its color. While words are the language of the mind, actions are language of the body and emotions are language of the soul.

What are your emotional set points? Do you tend to close up, shut down or blow up? Have you learned to maximize positive emotions (desire, faith, love, enthusiasm, hope) and minimize negative ones (fear, jealousy, hatred, revenge, greed, anger)? Or do you maximize negative emotions while minimizing the positive? If you are feeling bad, what you are thinking? Holding in emotions only weakens the body.

To offset this one, try having a kid’s temper tantrum—scream in your car or punch out a pillow to release stress and frustration or just have a good cry. Crying removes toxins from the body and is a safety valve to prevent emotional overdoses. If you are feeling good, keep thinking that way and expand those emotions. Make it a personal priority to feel good and believe in yourself. Stop trying to change things to feel better; feel better and things around you change.

Beliefs Become Biology

Do you know how your thoughts and beliefs forge a relationship with wellness or illness? Your body’s cells are not in competition with one another for the most resources; instead, they work collaboratively and cooperatively allowing multi-celled organisms to evolve and thrive in changing environments. Our beliefs, expressed in thoughts and emotions, influence our cells in ways we’re just beginning to understand. Just think of the placebo effect as a case in point! The placebo effect is when our mind holds something to be true (a belief), it then becomes true.

Personal beliefs held long enough become programmed into our biology. I have seen people with positive beliefs recover from surgery sooner or move on after a devastating loss faster.

When we stifle emotions they embed into the body. Negative and toxic thoughts increase stress levels and lower immune function. For example, grief affects immune function and does not end when any services are over. We know the pandemic brought stages of grief that never ended with continuing losses on multiple fronts. This unconscious stress wreaks havoc on the body, and it is well studied that long term grief, anger, and resentment is associated with developing cancers.

Think of something that brings you down, such as a job loss or a diagnosis of diabetes and pay attention to how your body feels. Can you feel your energy change? Now think of something that brings you joy, such as getting a new job you love or meeting a friend you haven't seen in years, and experience this emotion in your body. Feel the difference.

The body obeys the mind’s operational commands, whether they’re deliberately chosen or they are automatically expressed. At the bidding of prolonged negative thought patterns, the body sinks rapidly into disease and decay; at the command of glad and positive thoughts, it becomes more energized and radiates magnificence. Your thoughts and beliefs forge a relationship with wellness or illness.