Beliefs are at the very heart of us. They shape our world as we know it and who we are within the world.
Beliefs are creeds and doctrines you hold about life, yourself and others. They are responsible for who you are, how you have and who you will become. Your beliefs are your guiding principles, your faith or passion and provide meaning and direction in life for you.
In essence, what you believe, whether true or false, is your reality and you have accordingly. Beliefs can if worked well, be a formidable force for good in your life. They can also limit your thoughts and actions and have devastating consequences.
Anthony Robbins in his book "Unlimited Power", gives an example of a two groups of unfortunate people with bleeding ulcers. With the first group, they were told they were receiving medication that would provide complete relief. The people in the second group were informed that their medication was experimental and little was known about it`s efficiency. As you may guess, 70% of the people in the first group experienced a major improvement with their ulcers. Sadly, only 25% of people in the second group reported the same relief.
In fact, both groups received a placebo.
What made the difference here was the belief systems of members in each group. Years ago, it was said that no human being could run more than a mile in 4 minutes. This was blown out of the water with Sir Roger Bannister aged 25 years at the time, running the first mile in less than 4 minutes. This historic event took place on 6 May 1954 during a meet at Iffley Road Track at Oxford University. It was watched by about 3,000 spectators. The claim that a 4-minute mile was once thought to be impossible by informed observers was and is a widely propagated myth created by sportswriters and debunked by Bannister himself in his memoir, The Four Minute Mile (1955).
In a UK poll triggered by Channel 4 in 2002, the British public voted Roger Bannister's historic sub-4-minute mile Number 13 in the list of the 100 Greatest Sporting Moments.
Incredibly, just 46 days later on June 21 in Turku, Finland, Roger's record was broken by Australian runner, Michael Landy. Michael was the second man to break the four-minute mile barrier in the mile run. And two months after that, during the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games hosted in Vancouver in Canada, Michael Landy and Roger Bannister competed against each other in a race billed as "The Miracle Mile". They both realized it again with Roger winning and Michael Landy 0.8 s behind him.
On February 20, 1994, forty years after Roger Bannister's breaking of the barrier, the Irish runner Eamonn Coghlan became the first man over the age of 40 to run a sub-four-minute mile. He was in fact 41 years old at the time. He ran more than a second faster than Roger. It was a different kind of mile of course – less significant possibly. However, it was still the culmination of a near-impossible quest. And, beyond that, a race that will stand in the history books forever.
Here's how Sir Roger Bannister himself described one of the greatest moments in sports history:
"I had a moment of mixed joy and anguish, when my mind took over. It raced well ahead of my body and drew my body. unity of movement and aim. The world appeared to stand still, or did not exist. The only reality was the next two hundred yards of track under my feet.
When he crossed the finish line with a time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, he broke through a psychological barrier as well.
The belief that they could do it became true because they acted on their beliefs, and their actions shaped the world.
If you believe in success, you make your own values which construct the framework that your life is built around. You know what your goals are, and you know what you want to achieve. You put your mind in the right place in order to make it happen! You set out to do something and to succeed in doing it. It really does not matter what, or how humble the undertaking is. If you believe you can succeed, you will. Achieving success in whatever endeavor you choose may be the goal of life.
If you believe that you will fail, chances are – you are setting yourself up for failure. Success is based on a mindset that starts with believing in yourself. If you believe in your potential to make yourself the best YOU that you can be, then the options are limitless. That is when things will start to happen.
As Henry Ford said: "If you think you can do a thing or think you can not do a thing, you're right."
We create our experiences. Very often, when it comes to success, we are our own worst enemy and we do not even know it. Through worry and fear, we create all the failures. Because we become what we think about most. Our thoughts create our next experience, our next moment.
And our beliefs create our thoughts.
The core beliefs or rules of life that you live by today are not merely those your parents, schools and society taught you. They also come from your culture, friends, television, music, books, politics, as well as assumptions and misunderstandings.
Take a few moments to think about beliefs you hold that might be holding you back.
It can be in the form "I am …" or just about the world in general.
There is no true or false with beliefs. Only disempowering and empowering ones. Do not worry about "truth", and instead decide if it's useful to you, or if a different belief would be more useful.
Once you have identified a limiting belief, know that this belief can be changed and overcome. Choose a belief you would like to have instead of the limiting belief. Better still, a belief that you previously thought impossible, that you could never do or be. Once you've identified your limiting belief, think about the emotional payoff it gives you which is personal and unique to you.
Then ask yourself: "Is the emotional payoff I am getting worth holding on to this belief"? Working with your limiting beliefs and changing them will have bigger and positive consequences as you go through life! And that is something you can really start to believe in – now!
One way to you remove these obstacles and realize your potential by changing your limiting beliefs is through NLP, advanced patterns of EFT and through hypnosis where you can change beliefs quickly and permanently to something you do want to believe, a more productive belief in the conscious and unconscious mind. With an experienced and competent facilitator, the process is subtle and often in-direct through stories, metaphors and life examples to elevate awareness and provoke a sense of curiosity, levity and ability to change by changing your internal thoughts. Furthermore, EFT, NLP and hypnotherapy processes can help you almost every aspect of life through the power of changing limiting beliefs to more empowering ones and to subjectively experience your new reality.
Personal history is only a record of the past and your future is filled with limitless possibilities.