Tag Archives: Beliefs

How To Change Beliefs To Skyrocket Your Capabilities

If you’ve ever been hampered by a limiting belief about your capabilities, you are in luck. Today I’d like to show you an easy way to gradually shift your beliefs from limitation to enhancement. Although it may take some time, from a couple days to a few weeks, its simple to do, and the results can be absolutely profound.

First, a little bit about how beliefs work. Beliefs are the sum total of labels or meanings that you’ve given to your past experiences. The stronger the emotional response to any past experience, the stronger the belief. For example, if you had to give a speech in third grade, and the teacher corrected you in the middle of it, you likely would have felt pretty bad. Then maybe later, when you had to speak in front of several people in fifth grade, and something else bad happened, like maybe nobody really listened to you, or maybe somebody laughed at you. Then maybe in high school you tried to tell a joke to people that you weren’t really familiar with, and it didn’t go over well.

These experiences will add up to the idea that you suck at public speaking. When you think of public speaking, your brain will quickly reference all the instances in your past, and come back with the belief that you suck at it. This happens in microseconds much quicker than the conscious mind knows.

When you project yourself into the future, you will filter any possible future through this belief. So when you think to maybe giving a best man speech, or giving a presentation at meeting at work, you will likely get nervous because you are projecting your future through this filter.

The good news is that you can easily change this belief. In the example of public speaking you can slowly shift the belief to a positive one where you will not only believe that you are a good public speaker, but you will actually seek out and enjoy opportunities of public speaking.

The easiest way to do this is through journaling. Sit down and start from as far back in your memory as you can go, and recall any positive experience of speaking in front of other people. Describe each experience in as much detail as possible, to the point of reliving it as you are describing it. You can even make stuff up if you want, and add really cool things that happened. (Just make sure to make them plausible, like people clapping, or strangers smiling).

If you do this for a few days, or even a couple weeks, your brain will automatically access these memories whenever the idea of public speaking comes up, and your fears will slowly start to vanish. Pretty soon, you’ll get to a tipping point where the good memories outweigh the bad memories, and you’ll suddenly feel like speaking in front of a huge group of people is as easy as chatting with your best friend on Skype.

This only takes a few minutes every day. The best time is to spend five or ten minutes journaling at night, just before bed. After a couple of weeks you’ll be amazed at how you can dramatically shift your beliefs about your capabilities.

And when you start to do this on a regular basis, and choose a new enhancing belief to reprogram every month, just imagine how powerful you will be a year from now. Pretty much any belief you want you can easily reprogram into yourself. For example:

Good a public speaking
Make money easily
Easy to persuade people
Natural seducer of the opposite sex
Learns quickly and easily
Lose weigh easily

These are just a few examples of things that are absolutely easy to reprogram yourself to believe. It’s simple, and quick and can powerfully enhance your life.

Have fun with this.

Choose Your Beliefs for Effortless Success

I was surfing the interwebs the other day and came across an interesting podcast. Some guy was talking about beliefs, and how they are really an interesting concept that, unfortunately, most people don’t give a second thought. They work as presuppositional filters on the reality that is outside our consciousness. The way they work is by separating out information that doesn’t match with what we think is true.

This is due to our evolutionary past. When we were in an area that was populated by red spotted tigers, our ancestors would quickly learn that they were dangerous. The brain was then programmed with a collection of information, sounds complex mathematical visual representations. If a red spotted tiger was detected by any one of our senses, it would automatically trigger a fight or flight induced panic, giving us the energy to run away. Conversely, when we lived in an environment which had a small green fruit that was extremely tasty and provided long term energy, that became important as well. So when our ancestors were out walking around and spotted one or a bunch of these out of the corner of their eyes, they immediately felt hungry and remembered how good these things taste.

Because humans can be so flexible and adaptable (arguably this is why we were the ones Mother Nature chose to give such big brains to,) we lived in several different environments. Because of this, we developed the capability of shifting the desirable and undesirable things in our environment for our brains to be on the lookout for. In one place and one generation, it might have been lions and purple fruits. In another place, and another generation, it might have been huge flying predators and small animals that were delicious.

So how does this affect you, and moreover, how can you profit from it? This is how beliefs work. Despite living in a modern society, where we have police to protect us from predators and grocery stores to provide us with all the food that we need, we still have these filtering mechanisms in our brains. These filtering mechanisms come into play when we have certain beliefs. The scary thing is, sometimes these beliefs can be self-sustaining. That is, if we believe a certain thing (even though it isn’t true) and see random events, which we take to be “proof” of these untrue beliefs, they reinforce the belief, making it harder to get rid of. Let’s say you believe that members of the opposite sex find you disgusting. You go through out your day, and because this belief has been programmed strong enough, you will only find evidence of it being true. Just like our cavemen ancestors only saw the purple fruits and ignored the rest, you will only register and remember the one odd fellow out of a hundred that behaves in a way that might be considered loathsome towards you. This of course reinforces the belief, which depressed you, changes your behavior, and actually invites behavior from others that reinforce this belief.

How about another example. You read the papers, watch the news, and decide the economy is in shambles. You go out, and only notice expensive things you can’t afford, people on the street begging for money, shops having going out of business sales, and so on. This reinforces this belief, and directly affects your ability to make money. What happens when you realize that even in a down economy, there are plenty of people making money? What do they believe about the economy? Many believe a down economy is the best time to start a new business venture, because you are getting in on the ground floor of future growth. Many people learn to see a down economy as an opportunity for wealth, rather than a scary situation.

The bottom line is you have two choices. You can choose to let your beliefs be set by others, and wander through life reacting to the world. Or you can sit down, spend a few hours, and choose powerful beliefs you would like to be true. For example, how would you feel if you believed you could easily make lots of money? How would it feel if you could easily persuade people to your way of thinking? How would it feel if you believed you were a highly talented writer, or musician, or actor? How would your life change for the better?

Although it does take effort, and time, the results are powerfully rewarding. You can either drift through life and hope to get lucky, or you can choose your beliefs, and go out and find (or make!) evidence of their truth. The longer you keep at this, the sooner the beliefs will start to sink in to an unconscious level, operating automatically.

This is where the magic really starts to happen.

Dropping Frogs Can Lead to Changing Beliefs

I was reading an article in the paper the other day about a small town in the midwest that experienced a very strange phenomenon. One fine during the summer, or perhaps the spring, it started raining frogs. It happened in the fifties, and it was a small town, so there is absolutely no evidence that this actually took place. Some say it was a hoax. Others think it was due to an extremely unlikely confluence of meteorological events pulled the frogs out of a lake them through some strange quirk of air pressure and deposited them on the unsuspecting town inhabitants. Others claim that it was mass hypnosis. Mass hypnosis is a strange thing when you think about it, because there have been many documented accounts of mass hypnosis. Some of them easy to understand, some unexplainable like the falling frogs.

I was reminded of this story when I recently saw a movie where a guy fell in love with a prosthetic doll. At first people thought he was completely nuts, but then slowly, as they realized he had deeper problems, decided that the best course of action would be to help the poor guy. At first he was the but of jokes behind his back. I’m sure you can imagine the jokes that would circulate should you show up at a party with a fake person and in all seriousness claim her as your girlfriend. One of the most fascinating things about the movie was how the townspeople slowly started to get sucked into his reality. Because he believed so completely that this rubber doll was a real person that he had real conversations, (and even a couple of arguments with,) the townspeople slowly started becoming involved in his obvious break from reality.

This is an example of when you have a really strong, congruent frame of reality. If you walk through life holding a strong set of beliefs in your head, others will believe them as well if the beliefs held tightly enough. It matters not if they are true or not. The key is when you choose a belief, to make sure to choose helpful ones, and act one hundred percent that they are actually true. When you do that, people will only follow your lead. Imagine some people in the world that have really strong beliefs, and act on them. Suppose you could have a strong belief that you are incredibly attractive to the opposite sex? Suppose that you held a belief that money is easy to come by? Suppose you were to hold a belief that you were able to learn new things easily and quickly? How easy would your life be then? What other beliefs can you come up with that once you believe them, others will as well? How easily can you imagine your life when you switch out old beliefs, and switch in new ones that support you and what you want to create better things in life?

So as the movie went on, the main character decided, most likely subconsciously, that he learned what he needed from his relationship with girlfriend, and imagined a deadly disease for her. So she could die, and clear the way for him to start to build relationships with real people. I think there are several important lessons in this movie, not the least of which is how powerful your mind is to create the life that you want, by almost any means necessary. Even enlisting the help of the entire town in some incredible group self induced hypnosis. That is pretty powerful stuff.

And as far as group hypnosis, sometimes called ‘mass hysteria,’ there are different kinds. Their are the organic kinds, like the raining frogs, and certain episodes of dancing hysteria, and laughing hysteria. Then there is created mass hysteria, although the creation of mass hysteria is not always the intent, as what happened in the famous Orson Wells “War of The Worlds” incident, where everybody thought we were under attack by Martians. Personally, I’d prefer some falling frogs. Unless of course they were Martians disguised as falling frogs.

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I’d Like to Change My Order

I was having dinner with a friend the other night. I was in a pretty good mood (as I usually am,) but he seemed to be out of sorts. I could tell because he usually orders a mixed cocktail (he has a really strange system based on the day of the week and the general weather pattern to choose his drink. Either that or he’s been pulling my leg all this time,) but that night, he ordered a beer. Not just any beer, well actually, yea, he just told the waitress “whatever’s on tap is ok.”

I asked him what was wrong. He said that he was having second thoughts about going forward with his business that he’s been planning on starting. “What changed?” I asked.

He said that he’d been talking with another guy that his advisor had put him in touch with, that had successfully started a business in the same general line of work. He said that he had worked 7 days a week, about 12 hours a day for the first two years. He had a supportive family, and finally after two years, his business was successful enough that he could hire other people to manage it for him.

“So what’s the problem?” I asked. He said he wasn’t really prepared to put in 12  hours a day for a year before he saw a profit. He seemed to think that all businesses need that level of commitment to get off the ground and become profitable.

I told him about this book I read (I forgot the title) about a kind of study they did on successful entrepreneurs. Now that I think of it, I think it might have been a tape program, and I’m pretty sure I got it from Nightingale Conant. If you’ve never had a look, I recommend it. They got some good stuff there. If you find something you like, you might check ebay first, because lots of times people buy stuff, listen and get great benefit, and then sell it at a pretty cheap price.

So what this program said was that there was a huge range of variables that went into successful business creation. Some people were successful right from the start, some had to work at it over several years, others had all kinds of loans and help from family. It really didn’t matter. The term ‘work’ is really a relative concept. What might seem like ‘work’ to some, may be totally enjoyable to somebody else. Some people might consider putting two weeks of effort to get a ton of money a huge burden, but others might consider three or four years total enjoyment, even if you don’t make a lot. So long as you enjoy what you do.

I asked my friend if he enjoyed doing what he thought he was getting himself into. He thought about, an decided that he really did enjoy it. Then I asked him if he would enjoy doing what the other guy did for two years, 12 hours a day for, and he said no way. Then he confessed that the other guy said the only reason he quit after two years, well not really quit but hired other people to take over, was because his wife had their second baby and really needed his help around the house. So it turned out my friend was imagining himself doing what the other guy was doing and imagining not enjoying it, while in reality the other guy was enjoying it so much it took a second baby and his wife’s demands that he ease off a bit.

When he put it into that perspective, it made total sense to him. Although the waitress was pretty confused when he sent back his beer and asked for a Vernal Equinox.

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You Want Fries With That?

“Dude why does this always happen to me?”
“Why does what always happen to you?”
“This!”
“What?”
“They always mess up my order.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I ordered the chicken burger with mashed potatoes, and they gave me the chicken burger with fries. I can’t eat fries, my doctor said so.”
“What does your doctor have to do with this?”
“He told me not to eat too much fried food.”
“I see. So is that why your order always gets messed up, because your doctor told you to stop eating so much fried food?”
“No, I’m just saying. They always mess up my order.”
“They?”
“Waiters, waitresses.”
“Both waiters AND waitresses?”
“Mostly waitresses.”
“So then they don’t ALWAYS mess up your order, only waitresses?”
“Yea. Yea, that’s it. Waitresses always mess up my order.”
“All waitresses?”
“Well, now that you mention it, usually only cute ones do.”
“Hmm. I see. Do they know they are cute?”
“Huh?”
“The cute ones that mess up your order, do they know they are cute?”
“Dude, what?”
“You said most cute waitresses mess up your order. How do they know that they’re cute? Is there some internationally agreed upon scale of cuteness that they have to check themselves against every day to see if they can qualify to mess up your order?”
“Huh? Dude, what are you talking about? Of course not. There’s no standard.”
“You’re not saying that cuteness is subjective, are you?”
“Of course it’s subjective!”
“So they’re psychic then, right?”
“WHAT?”
“Since there isn’t any international standard for cuteness, and cuteness is subjective, they can only mess up your order if they can read your mind and decide that you think they are cute. Right?”
“Um, I think I’ll just eat my fries…”
“No, no, this is getting interesting. Maybe, they read your mind, and because they realize you think they are cute, it makes them nervous and that’s why they are all messing up your order. Or maybe, they all hoping that because you think they are cute, you might want to ask them out, so they mess up your order on purpose so they’ll have a chance to apologize, and give you a chance to ask them out? Whatta you think?”
“I really just… dude, you wanna fry?”
“Do you have any other explanation?”
“Can we just drop it?”
“No, no, I’d like to get to the bottom of this. Perhaps there is another explanation. Maybe YOU are the one that is messing up your order. Maybe you actually said ‘fries’ when you meant to say ‘mashed potatoes.’ Did you ever think of that?”
“Seriously, these fries are pretty good, you should try one. They have like garlic or something on them…”
“What is cute, anyways? How exactly do you know that a girl is cute? I mean, say look over…there! Is she cute?”
“Dude, you really are starting to embarrass me.”
“Have you ever had a cute waitress that DIDN’T mess up your order? Or did you ever have a waitress that was really uncute, and HE messed up your order? I mean, that’s not really a cute thing to say, you know. Cute people have feelings too. I suppose I could order you to just be thankful you have some pota….dude, what happened to your fries?”
“I finished them while you were rambling on about whatever you were rambling on about.”
“How were they?”
“Great, I think I’ll order them again next time.”

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Ancient Laws for Instant Success

Achieve incredible results easily and effortlessly. Become known among your friends and others as somebody that they want to be like. Express your desires and have them magically appear. If you’ve read my other articles, you’ll realize that I am always looking for ways to learn new skills and improve results. The following is a quick, short list of ancient secrets you can put to use today to safely and naturally get exactly what you want out of life.

Law Number One:  The only failure is when you ignore the lesson.

If you focus too much on getting exactly the right result, you won’t notice the things that you can learn from any interaction to easily improve yourself.  Anything you can learn will be beneficial in some way. A great example is getting feedback from others. I gave a speech once to a Toastmasters group. I was nervous, and dropped my cue cards, and lost my place a couple of times. After the speech, you usually get feedback from a helpful experienced member. She told me my strong points, and some specific things to try to get better next time. Had I expected to give a perfect speech, I wouldn’t have been open to her kind suggestions.  This naturally leads to the next law:

Law Number Two: Detach from results.

This might be an easy to understand and often repeated concept, but sometimes it can be tough to put this into practice. The easiest way I’ve found is to go into every situation with an open mind. All you need to do is remember to focus on the process, and not the outcome. For example, if you want to start a conversation with an attractive member of the opposite sex, by focusing on the enjoyment of the conversation rather than the outcome, it allows you to be more relaxed.

Law Number Three: Allow yourself to want what you want.

Sounds simple, but how many of us want stuff, but are afraid to ask for it. We feel we need permission and somebody to give it to us without asking. It’s ok to want whatever you want. Did you think Bill Gates or Waren Buffet got where they are by waiting for their desires to be approved of by others? If you are unsure when asking for what you want, any strange reactions are not from the thing that you want, but from your behavior regarding that thing. When you proclaim proudly what you want with expectation, people will give it to you.

Law Number Four: Think big.

That’s right. You have a limited time on this chunk of rock orbiting around the big ball of fire. Don’t waste it on small things that you can get easily. Stretch yourself. Use your imagination. If you can think it, you can get it.

Law Number Five: Say good things to yourself.

We all have those voices in our heads, put there by well meaning parents and teachers. One of your jobs as an adult is to take charge of your own brain. Get rid of those old voices telling you to play it safe, and replace them with voices telling you how wonderful and powerful you are. Brian Tracy recommends that the first thing you do when you wake up every morning is to say “I like myself” over and over. If it sounds strange, do it anyways. Pretty soon, you’ll really believe it. And if you like you, other people will naturally follow your example.

All successful people, whether they know it or not, have applied these simple laws in one way or another to their lives. And the more you start to realize that they can improve your life, the sooner you will be able to do just that. And not only will you notice people around you treating you differently, you will also notice that because you are smart enough to understand these concepts, you will be able to powerfully make them work for you.

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Can You Let Go?

That man was scared. He had won the cruise in a company raffle. His wife couldn’t go, because she was needed at her work, and couldn’t find a replacement. She told him to go alone, even though he refused. It had been a long time since he’d had a vacation. “Go and have fun! You deserve it!” She said. Finally after much consideration, he decided, what the heck. You only live once. And it was only a three day, two night cruise along the Mexican Riviera.

But now he was wishing he could go back in time. Now he was wishing that his wife had not been so understanding. Now he’d wished somebody else won the stupid raffle.

The storm was horrible. Pitching back and forth. The lines holding the life rafts had snapped. Half of the people waiting to board the life rafts had washed overboard already. He was sure he’d be next.

The boat lurched, he was pitched forward, tumbling out of control. He reached out for something to hold on to, something to grab. Too wet. Too slippery. He knew he was going to die. Finally his hand rested on something cold, metal. He grabbed it with all his might. His hands slipped down the end of the chain, and found the anchor at the end, which had been thrown from its holding place on the deck of the ship.

He gripped the anger with all his might, wrapping both arms around, both legs. “Please God, I don’t want to die.”

He held fast to the anchor. He saw more and more people being thrown overboard. “Please God, not me,” he prayed. After several minutes he thought he may actually have a chance. Another five, another ten, he was sure he would live. As long as he held fast to his anchor. As long as he didn’t let go. He began to cradle the anchor, began to think of it as a friend, a savior. “Thanks, buddy,” he whispered to it.

The boat lurched. The anchor flew, so did the man. They both hit the water, he didn’t let go of the anchor. It was still his only hope. The chain loosed and the anchor started to slowly sink.  Surely the anchor wouldn’t let him down, would it? The anchor sank deeper and deeper, the poor man still clinging to it, not knowing what to do. It helped him before right? It wouldn’t be right to just let go, would it?

The anchor finally came to rest on the bottom. The man’s arms now lifelessly held fast to the anchor. The man, unable to let go, was dead.

What are you holding on to?

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This Mind For Rent

I had an interesting thought this morning while I was out for my daily walk. I make a trip through the neighborhood, and then finish up on a small hill hear a temple where I do my daily Ki Qong. As I was on my way back home, I passed by an apartment complex,  with a big sign out front saying “For Rent.” For some reason, it immediately reminded me of a line from the song Tom Sawyer, by Rush:

“…though his mind is not for rent, to any god or government, always hopeful yet discontent…”

Which naturally caused my mind to drift, as it usually does after a nice walk, to thoughts and where they come from. I’ve read and heard form a variety of sources that fully ninety percent of our thoughs are a rerun of thoughts from before. Yesterday, the day before yesterday, and so on.

I started to think about memes, which are thoughts but follow a certain set of rules, or patterns. They were first described by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene.” Memes can be described as self replicating bits of information passed on from person to person, or even to a whole culture.

Religious doctrines, political propaganda, cake recipes, and even The Macarena are examples of memes. Ideas or concepts passed through different levels of groups and culture. There has been much debate on what makes a good meme.  What makes some memes replicate, what makes others die off quickly. What makes some easy to believe and keep in your brain, and others to seem foolish and ridiculous. How much thought have you given to your thoughts? Are they yours? Do they really serve you? Do they make your life easier? Do they make your life happier? Where did you learn them from? Who taught them to you?

We are all born with a semi blank slate. (There is much debate on the blankness of that slate.) As we grow, we learn much from others.  Thoughts, strategies, languages, gestures, what is important and not important, what is scary and friendly, what we are capable of and not capable of.

There comes a point in our lives, though, when it becomes important to make a decision on what we accept in our brains, and reject.  It becomes evident that you need to stop blindly following others, and choose your own path.  Problems can occur if when we become adults, we still rely on the “I’ll let other people do my thinking for me” strategy that was useful as a child. If we cling to this way of thinking, it can be severely restrictive as we get older. What was a blessing early in life can be a burden later on. Not to say we should immediately reject all other thoughts that aren’t are own, but perhaps we should at least give them a quick once over, and hold them against the scrutiny of our own chosen direction in life. Are they helping us move forward, or are they holding us back?

Imagine for a minute if you could take out each thought and belief, examine it, change it around so it better serves you, and then stick it back into your head. What beliefs would you like to have? Making money is easy? Falling is love is natural and blissful? There are enough resources to go around for everyone? You are capable of achieving anything you set your mind to?

Would you like that? Would it make life more fun and enjoyable? What would be different?

Be sure to check back often, as I will post many more articles related to this subject.  I think this is fascinating. And please share this site with others, because the more you can share, the easier it is to feel better about what is possible. 

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Mind Benders for Fun

An interesting thing happens when you start to become aware of your natural ability to unpack reality.  When a person first begins to notice that reality is more of an internal game than anything else, a common tendency is to become a bit frightened. After all, most people like things just the way they are. Take a look around you, have a look at the items to the left and right of your computer screen. Feel the material on the chair you are sitting in, hear the sounds around your head. As you notice those things, you might be able to sense a feeling of familiarity.  And as you might be wondering exactly where I’m going with this, you might be able to open your mind to the interesting concept that people see only what is familiar to them, only what they think is safe. 

It’s like when I was sitting a coffee shop earlier today, and I was reading a fascinating book about how different people interpret various events. How you interpret different things like conversations, other people’s ideas and behaviors.  And this person was saying that when people communicate,  they are really communicating more of what they think is going on around them than what might be really happening. And I certainly didn’t want to get something fearful to happen like a brain spasm or something, so I tried not to let my thoughts be swirled into that particular reality too much.  And as I was reading, I noticed a girl studying next to me, so I asked what she was studying.  And she said it was history of some sort.  I think I remember it was someting about the construction of the Great Wall of China.

Which is kind of interesting, because I know that it is a common myth that the Great Wall of China is the only man made thing that can be seen from space, but I’ve read several places that that just isn’t true.  I even got into an argument about it with somebody back when I used to believe the myth. It’s wierd how that happens, you would swear you believe this thing, even argue about it, but something simple like a well written report can allow you to convince yourself  that you were wrong all along.  Like Santa Clause.

So anyways, I was talking to this girl, and after we finished talking about old Chinese Military Projects she started  telling me about her sister, who is a real supporter of President Elect Barack Obama, but this girl wasn’t (I never did get her name). And she even said that they sometimes fought over politics (I didn’t ask her who she supported, it was too interesting listening to her tell me about her sister). It’s funny how two people who grew up in the same house with the same parents could believe two totally different things. I think one of their main sticking points was the issue of his birth certificate. Personally I really don’t care where Barack Obama was born, I am just concerned that he’ll do a good job. Birth certificate or no birth certificate. I know I’d be hard pressed to find mine. 

I guess the two sisters held on to their beliefs so much because they are so familiar to them.  And one thing that few people have been able to realize is how you can easily change the reality around you simply when you question your beliefs. And the fantastic thing about changing beliefs is that it gives you a whole new perspective on things, and familiarity starts to look completely different.  One key ingredient among people who have really been able to achieve success is the ability to look at what they represent as true, and then ask themselves “Just in how many ways can you improve this?”

It’s amazing what you can find when you send your mind in new and wonderful directions.

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