Friday, September 15, 2017

Beyond Thought Change to Belief Change

You have the power in the present moment to change limiting beliefs and consciously plant the seeds for the future of your choosing. As you change your mind, you change your experience.
Serge King


Okay...By now we know that if we change our thoughts we can change our life.  Seems so simple, right?  We tell ourselves all these wonderful things in the mirror.  We change our thoughts into positive ones.  We speak positively to others.  We are doing the work aren't we? So why isn't it working for most of us? Why are many of us still stuck and not able to move forward into the life experience we want?

The problem we are often facing...is we don't believe the things we are telling ourselves.  We do not emotionally connect with the words because they do not make sense to our subconscious minds.

If we want effective change we need to dig a little deeper and change what is under the surface.  We need to go beyond the conscious thought to the subconscious belief to effect the change we want. We will know we are changing what needs to be changed when we "feel better".

Beliefs Are Different than Thoughts

Thoughts lay in the outer layer of our mind, in the conscious part of it.  They are easy to recognize, understand and therefore change. Though they can influence our emotions to some extent, their power is limited.

Beliefs are more deeply rooted and ingrained in the deeper layer of our minds .  They were established by years of conditioning, what we were told by others, what we were brought up to believe.  In a sense they are thoughts with hooks that were drilled into us  in our developing years. They are in there pretty good! Most important to remember about beliefs is that our emotions are more tied up in them than they are  to our superficial thoughts.

What do you really believe?

Often we are not even aware of what is going in our subconscious minds because these beliefs get buried beneath layers of superficial thought change, affirmation and clinging to what we "want to believe" rather than what we do.

In order to "heal" so we can produce the lives we want, we often have to do some excavating to determine what it is we truly believe so we can change those beliefs into ones that no longer limit us but allow us to soar. Thought restructuring  makes superficial changes, while belief restructuring makes life long ones. 

How Do We Determine Our Beliefs?

There are certain things we can do to understand what is going on inside our heads. I would suggest that you get some help to do the digging, especially if you fear that you may unlock some door of secrets you have hidden away from yourself.
  • Be Aware of the Conscious Thoughts as they occur. Use the A-B-C- techniques offered by Rational Emotive Therapy.  We can actually trace our thoughts back to an originating belief.  For example, if my thought when something unfavorable happens in my life is, "This isn't fair.  These things are always happening to me."  From this thought I can determine that my belief system is based on this idea that bad things are always happening to me.  I believe bad things will happen to me.  I must somehow be deserving of bad things and unworthy of good. etc etc
  • Be Aware of What You Are Dreaming.  Our dreams often bring forth our subconscious beliefs when we are ready to change them. Simone Wright, in her article in the Huffington Post tells us that the things  we learn from dreams are often  keys to our subconscious minds and our healing, "Often times these discoveries will reveal a deeply hidden and subconscious belief that has been running for a very long time without your awareness — and the reason it is coming to the surface now, is because you are now in a position to do something about it."  Keep a dream journal by your bed and follow Wright's tips. I have personally learned so much from my own dreams.
  • Be aware of how you feel when you test out new thought changes. As you progress to changing your thoughts, determine how you "feel", with each change in wording.  For example if I were to use the above example of "This isn't fair.  These things are always happening to me. " and begin to change that, I will probably notice that I cannot connect emotionally with a change to "Life is so fair! Good things are always happening to me. "  I won't feel better emotionally...I may actually feel worse because it is so far away from  my  actual belief system.  I can determine than that I do not believe I am worthy of these things.  If I tone the change down and try, " This doesn't seem fair.  It seems that these things are happening to me a lot."  I will probably feel a "yeah...that's what I believe without the drama" etc.  I can then begin to make small improvements in thought and feeling from there until the belief corresponds with something that will change my life more dramatically.
How do we change our Beliefs?

Once a belief is exposed with the A-B-C and examined for what it is, we can begin making changes in the same way we choose our thoughts:

Step One, according to The A-B-C-D-E of REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy), is dispute the thought: "D":

  • How realistic is it?  Are these things always happening to me? Is this truly unfair or just the way it is?
  • Where is the evidence that this is true?
Step Two is the "E" of the REBT process which is creating Effective Thought Change.  We can do that by:
  • Removing the "musterbations"
  • Removing the absolutes
  • Removing the put downs, judgements, criticism
  • Removing the "lack"
  • Removing the drama
  • Removing assumption
  • Moving up the emotional ladder toward "relief" one rung at a time.
Changing our limiting beliefs is all very doable!  We can learn to feel better and to live better by doing so! Determine what you truly believe, change it and plant the seed for the future of your choosing!

All is well!



References/Recommended Reads

Bishop, F. Michler. (2004) Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy: The Basics. SMART Recovery, National Training Conference. Retrieved on
http://www.smartrecovery.org/resources/library/For_Family_Volunteers_Professionals/basics-of-rebt.pdf

Lipton, Bruce. (2013)  The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles. Hay House.

Wright, Simone (December, 2014) Using Our Dreams as Intuitive Messengers. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/simone-wright/using-our-dreams-as-intui_b_6057292.html

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