How Beliefs Work Part II: How To Re-Program Your Beliefs

Everything that you are experiencing now is your brain's perceptions of them, it may not be real. That is why hallucination is pretty much 'visible' to only that one guy. However, the hallucination or actual happenings have the same effect on your mind. In other words, your brain cannot tell the difference between something that had really happened or something that is make-believe. You can fool the brain by vividly imagining scenarios and the brain will believe it is true. This is also known as creative visualization. It is a vital step in the formation of our beliefs.

If you have ever skipped lunch, you will have probably experienced it too. Mental images of your favourite cheeseburger start to saturate your mind. You can see it now. As you grab the burger, you can feel the texture of the bun and the sweet meaty scent drifting into your nostrils. You take a long and slow bite, the cheese and patty goes so well together. You can feel the amount of saliva in the mouth now. If your visualization skill is that good, you will probably find yourself drooling.

Even though there is no burger, your mind can imagine one and still send signals to your body to start salivating. So how will this affect our beliefs?

Your beliefs are never absolutely true, they are merely generalizations and ill-conceived notions. Just like the burger, they are never real, they are just fractions of the real things and subjected to third party influences. If you can remember the beliefs analogy I gave, those evidences or truck parts, are contributed by other people or yourself and contain only a fraction of the truth, never complete. Your beliefs are a combination of feedback and generalizations from you and your environment.

Hence, you can also manipulate your beliefs to achieve peak performance, by using creative visualization techniques. In the simplest term, you can choose which truck parts to go with your ideal engine and optimise the truck's functioning. You can construct your own belief and either let it work for you or hold you back. So how do you change or modify an existing belief?

Firstly, you must find enough reasons to change your current beliefs. This first step helps to build a strong emotional reason for change. Secondly, you have to challenge every piece of evidence that had supported the faulty idea, by proposing counter-evidence. Now that the truck is bare, you can easily replace the faulty engine with a new one. Thirdly, replace the old idea with a new and better one. Fourthly, support this new idea with evidence. You are now integrating the new and better truck apparels with the engine.

However, the work is not done yet. Fifthly, you must write this new belief down. Remember that no beliefs are completely true. Writing it down helps you to review your beliefs and facilitate future changes.

Always remember that your beliefs are reliant on your perceptions and they can be fooled. Use this fact to your advantage and create better and more empowering beliefs. If you realise that a current belief no longer serves you well, you can always change it simply by

(i) finding enough reasons to change
(ii) disproving the evidence supporting your old beliefs
(iii) putting forth a new idea
(iv) supporting it with relevant evidence and then
(v) writing it down.

Always be aware of your beliefs and remember that you have control over them.