How real is our reality?

This is a post about working with our beliefs. Beliefs are like a type of filter that we use as we make sense of the information that we receive. We form them without knowing as we live our lives and accumulate experience. Our beliefs take shape and then they in turn shape:

·        how we feel about people and situations - for better or worse

·        how we feel about ourselves and who we are

·        what we feel we can or cannot do or be

That means they can enable us or hold us back by shaping our perspective on reality.

We might not know our beliefs, they are often learned implicitly and stay out of awareness, unless we go looking for them!

Beliefs are resistant to change, because we subconsciously look for evidence to back up existing beliefs most of the time.

That means that we may miss or dismiss evidence that suggests we could do or be something, because we filter it out and ignore it, without even being aware that this is happening. But because what we believe is voluntary, we can choose to get curious about, dispute, or even completely change an unhelpful, outdated belief.

It will take effort to notice the belief behind the habitual behaviours, and effort over time to change it to a better, more helpful belief habit. I'd like to offer a little help here in the form of a 7 step structure you can work through.

It takes 30 minutes the first time and less than ten minutes daily after that. Are you willing to invest that time in the change you want to see in yourself?

1. Write down the quality or capability that you would love to have, yet don’t quite believe you could have. This has to be about you, your quality or capability, rather than about others. Eg. A strong, powerful voice to the world, to match the strength and power of my inner voice.

2. Now write down how it would be to have this quality or capability.

3. What would you do differently, say differently and feel differently? What results would you get? Spend a couple of minutes imagining it was already happening, and feeling the difference. Write down the key things you like about this.

4. Just notice what belief would be different if you had already made this change?

5. Then with curiosity, start a list of times in the past when you have already demonstrated this quality (start looking for proof of where you have already shown a little of this quality, even if short lived or a tiny example). Work on this list, digging into the corners of what you can remember in different contexts. Don't dismiss the evidence you could already have this quality or capability. Keep looking at it with curiosity.

6. Keep going with this list, but now as a log of current activity for 21 days. Simply review daily where you have demonstrated ANY of this quality

7. After 21 days, write a summary of your 21 days and write about how your beliefs are changing. If you have a coach, review your progress with your coach.

Keep going with 6 and 7 for two more sets of 21 days. After this, your new belief habits should be relatively robust.

Barriers to belief-change can be overcome using other techniques. Don't ever give up!

Remember that your reality is shaped by the beliefs you have learned so far about living in the context of the past. Recall how long you have repeated that past learning! No wonder those habits are well installed!!

With adequate practice you will learn new beliefs and perspectives which are more relevant to your future, and you'll find updating your beliefs easier going forward.