Your beliefs create your reality. Beliefs are the underpinning and defining feature in our life stories. These narratives run like background songs telling us who we are, what we deserve (or don’t deserve), our worthiness and lovableness, or lack thereof.
Our perception of the world around us is filtered through our belief system which acts as a frame of reference in how we interpret events, phenomena, our own subjective experience and other people’s behaviour. It acts as a kind of automatic operating programme of how information from the outside and internal world is analyzed and interpreted. The power of our worldview lies in the fact that it satisfies our egoic mind that an explanation exists for whatever is happening. Further, the ‘confirmation bias’ of the mind validates and reinforces the ‘correctness’ of our beliefs and worldview. The confirmation bias ensures that our minds only seek (and find) information that supports our beliefs and discards all information that challenges them.
Sometimes these beliefs are based on pasts experience… not what actually happened, but how we responded to and interpreted events. While this occurs throughout life, young children are particularly vulnerable to ‘misinterpretation’ since our frontal lobes and abstract/logical thinking only come on-line at around schooling age. Most beliefs are culturally transferred, via social programming, passed onto us from our family and society. Often a family or ancestral story replicates itself in each generation as it has never been questioned. As children we had very little real choice in the formation of our beliefs and value systems. We accepted what has been told to us as the truth which then become guiding values and the basis of our belief system.
Maybe it is time to question what we believe and to let go of the stories that do not serve us - that limit us and keep us stuck in mental patterns that cause us suffering. When these stories/programmes are activated and equated with the truth, a guiding question to ask yourself is “How do I feel in my body?” Lean into the feeling and ‘call out’ the story – “It is not true!” Then consciously choose what you wish to believe.
Image credit: Iona Miller
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