How to change beliefs that block success? The first step is knowing the difference between your emotions and your beliefs.
Unlike fleeting emotions that come and go like clouds under varying weather conditions, your beliefs are deeply rooted. They constantly and subconsciously govern all your thoughts, emotions, actions, attitudes, and behaviors.
How beliefs govern your life
Your beliefs act like the operating system in your mind. Your thoughts and emotions are like applications (Apps) that run under the control of that operating system.
For example, two people who see the same movie can respond in two different ways. What they think and feel depends on how they interpret its contents, filtered through their beliefs.
Your beliefs
Everything you believe about yourself, people, and life originated from your parents, elders, and teachers. You absorbed their beliefs and ideas long before you were able to evaluate their correctness and relevance. This applies especially to your religious and social values.
Those early beliefs gradually got modified under the influence of teachers, siblings, friends, partners, religion, media, and life experiences. These beliefs remain buried in your subconscious mind. They determine how you interpret and respond to every situation.
How to change beliefs that block success becomes critically important if you wish to achieve your dream goals.
Click here to watch an amusing story. It provides an underlying key to finding out how to change beliefs that block success.
Purpose of your beliefs
Your beliefs project your past experiences onto the present and imagined future. They try to protect you from harm and discomfort.
For example, imagine you trying to make an important phone call and becoming increasingly upset because the number is constantly engaged or there is no answer.
Imagine that the software running your phone detects your increasing level of distress and blocks you from dialing that number to protect you from further discomfort.
This is similar to what happens in your mind. It reprograms itself to ensure your safety and serenity, based on patterns drawn from past impressionable experiences. Your beliefs will continue to act toward you like a protective guide even after the relevant external circumstances change.
Your beliefs thus determine what you think and do, how you interact with people, what you eat, what you buy, and what goals you aim for. They are the mental filters through which you perceive the world.
What you perceive is thus a personalized version of reality, filtered through your beliefs. This can be positive or negative.
Power of positive belief
An impressive real-life example of the power of positive belief was shown by Roger Banister in 1954. He discovered how to change beliefs that block success.
There was a strong belief at the time that any athlete who runs a mile in under four minutes will die of heart failure. Roger did not believe it.
As a part of his training, he used frequent visualizations to create certainty in his mind and body about crossing the finish line with the clock showing less than 4 minutes.
As a result, he became the first man to run the 4-minute mile.
Surprisingly, his record lasted only six weeks. Many other athletes were able to do the same, simply because the limiting belief was gone. What was holding them back was not their physical ability but their restrictive subconscious belief.
This also applies to who you think you are and what you try to achieve in your life.
Your self-image
You carry a mental blueprint of who you think you are. It was built up from your own beliefs about yourself. These personalized beliefs were unconsciously formed from your past experiences, your successes and failures, and the way other people related to you—especially during your childhood.
You have mentally assembled these fragmented beliefs to construct your self-image. Once any new idea or belief about yourself gets into this self-image, you don’t question its validity. Instead, you proceed to act upon it as if it were true.
Here is an example of the fear of success caused by negative self-belief.
Imagine you were a backbencher at school and had a feeling that other students were better than you. Say you entered university and obtained a degree. After graduation, you went for several job interviews for a position that matched your qualifications, but without success.
Your increasing disappointment, combined with your feeling of inadequacy at school, will prevent you from applying for the level of job you deserve.
Your subconscious mental conditioning will make you settle for a lower position, where there will be no risk of failure due to your imagined inadequacies being discovered.
All your thoughts, emotions, attitudes, behaviors, and abilities are thus consistent with your self-image. To change any aspect that limits what you achieve in life, you need to identify and change the underlying limiting beliefs. How to change beliefs that block success is the key here.
Identify your limiting beliefs
Your subconscious limiting beliefs that underlie your self-image and thus influence your life, might include:
I am not a good person.
I am stupid.
I am ugly.
Here is a simple way to identify such limiting beliefs that act as invisible roadblocks on your chosen path to success.
Say you have the problem of never having enough money, no matter how hard you try to earn more. Now detach yourself from that issue and objectively ask yourself:
What must I believe to create such a situation?
After listening to your inner voice, you may come up with an insightful answer based on your past perceptions, such as: Money is the root cause of all evil.
A problem area in your life
Not having enough money
Old belief that created it
Money is the root cause of all evil.
This example shows how your subconscious belief will always triumph over your conscious effort to have more money.
Such limiting beliefs, which are like invisible barriers in your life today, are all based on your self-image, beliefs, and experiences. You can change such limiting beliefs that govern your life by using a simple trick.
How to create new beliefs
Your subconscious mind does not know what is real and what is imagined. You can use this concept to replace any limiting belief with an empowering alternative.
You need to imagine the desired outcome using all applicable senses, repeatedly and vividly—as if already achieved.
Your subconscious mind will then get reprogrammed with this new belief and start supporting the thoughts and actions relating to that new belief. This is the first step toward removing obstacles to awakening your natural-born creative genius.
You can accelerate this process by mentally experiencing the desired outcome as if it had already been achieved and feeding it with every applicable emotion.
This is like creating a multisensory filmstrip of the final outcome, with color, sound, emotions, touch, smell, and taste. And running it through your mind several times a day in a casual and relaxed manner—especially just before falling asleep.
In the example given earlier, the money problem can be resolved by creating a new belief, such as:
I accept the money flowing into my life as a heavenly gift.
This new belief must be brought to life and programmed into the subconscious mind by imagining in minute detail the final outcomes—as if already achieved.
For example, vividly imagine through all applicable senses the money flowing in from all directions, and mentally experience with all applicable senses everything you are doing with that money.
Here is the complete mechanism.
A problem area in your life
Not having enough money
Old belief that created it
Money is the root cause of all evil
New belief to overwrite it
I accept the money flowing into my life as a heavenly gift
Underlying this method is the assumption that you are in total control of your life and have the power to change it however you want. This is based on the vast innate human potential within you that enables you to reach any goal.
Religious scriptures express this concept in different forms, such as:
Ask with faith, and you shall receive.
Here is another example:
A problem area in your life
A string of failed relationships
Old belief that created it
I am a bad person, so I don’t deserve love
New belief to overwrite it
I am a wonderful person, so I easily attract love
Find and overwrite limiting beliefs
Past mental programs will continue to govern your present-day life until you change them.
What we found, we threw away; what we could not find, we kept.
An ancient riddle
Since you were the one who created these programs in your subconscious mind, you have the power to change them.
Only you have the password!
This requires taking personal responsibility for everything in your life without blaming others, as people often tend to do.
Here is how you can overwrite any limiting belief causing problems such as fear of public speaking due to poor self-esteem, etc., with an empowering alternative.
First, identify a major problem you are presently struggling to overcome.
A problem area in your life
…...
Second, find the underlying old belief that must be causing that problem.
Old belief that created it
……
Third, find the new belief you will create to overwrite the old one.
New belief to overwrite it
……
Each new belief must be expressed using positive words, such as,
Money is flowing into my life,
instead of
I don’t have money problems.
That is because our all-powerful but childlike subconscious mind does not understand the negative operator “Not.” So it will interpret the above sentence as: I do have money problems!
To ensure your limiting beliefs get overwritten by the empowering alternatives you have created, you must start living your new beliefs every day, despite any initial setbacks. You must mentally create the final outcomes as if they have already been achieved.
That means clearly imagining the final outcome using all applicable senses in minute detail, such as:
seeing the final outcome,
hearing people congratulating you, and
feeling the joy of achieving your goal.
You now know how to change beliefs that block success. Use this knowledge to achieve your dream goals by overcoming the unseen obstacles hiding in your subconscious mind.
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